Yesterday was a pretty wretched day, mainly because of those stupid things that life throws at you: yet another big snow, burying my car as I tried to get out of the driveway before my plow guy had come (leaving my Subaru thinking about flipping over and ending up down the hill) - our plow guy eventually came back later and heroically pulled the car out, Janet had to miss out on a book club discussion of Faulkner that she was really looking forward to, I didn't get the trash to the dump, the water heater stopped working (the repair guy came around at almost 9:00 p.m., and happily fixed it), the toilet was clogged, a mouse happily ran around the basement while the cats looked at it in a disinterested fashion. Yes, it was one of those days. However, in the midst of all the chaos, I was still able to get in my Quranic study, my Italian lessons, several hours of crucial writing on the epics manuscript - and, most importantly, spent some quality time with Janet. I was also able, while killing time waiting for our plow guy and the water heater guy to show up, to watch a couple movies. The first was No Greater Love, the first installment in Masaki Kobayashi's unmatched trilogy, The Human Condition. I just re-watched the entire trilogy (all nine and a half hours) last fall, but I'm going to use part two of No Greater Love in my Images of Fascism class this week, so this was partially class prep (and also a love of labor, obviously). The militarists and radical right wing hated (and still hates) the movie, just as they hated/hates the Junpei Gomikawa novel that it's based on. In my preparatory email to my students, I told them that as we watch the film to think about Stanley's How Fascism Works and our evolving understanding of Fascism, but also the question of memory, and what we owe to the present and the future to remember the horrors of the past. I firmly believe, and I don't think you can budge me on this one, that Kobayashi's The Human Condition is the greatest trilogy of all time, and one of the great films of all time. Clearly, watching it is not only highly recommended, it is essential.
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