No Regrets for Our Youth is Kurosawa’s fifth film, set just prior to WWII in Kyoko.

While The Most Beautiful was definitely a Japanese propoganda film, No Regrets for Our Youth seems to be Kurosawa’s attempt to work through what happened to his country during the 1930s with the focus being on the suppression of anti-militarist Kyoko University students.

Setsuko Hara is mesmerizing as the female protagonist, Yukie. She begins as a flirtatious, carefree daughter of an well-known professor who, to her surprise, is dismissed from his post by the government. From that point on, the oppressive nature of her society (which is becoming increasingly fascist and dictatorial) slowly begins to dawn on her. She follows her heart with the constant reminder that “Freedom demands sacrifice”.

Yukie is well-bred and wealthy, yet she discovers that this life leaves her unfulfilled and that she is actually more fulfilled through the hard work demanded of a peasants life. She gives up her social status and returns to the honor of a much more simple rural life and discovers her independence (which does come at great sacrifice).

Apparently, the film is based on the true story of Hotsumi Ozaki who was the only Japanese person to be hung for treason during World War II.

I must admit that I don’t know that much about this period in Japanese history so the historical part of the story was somewhat difficult to follow. I imagine this would have made far more sense to someone in Japan shortly after WWII.

My kids make fun of me because I have watched Wild Strawberries so many times. I LOVE this movie!!

I guess I relate to it in a lot of ways. It’s the story of an aging professor who comes to realize just how cold he’s been over the years. His wife leaves him and he has a distant relationship with his son. I don’t relate to those things - at least not yet. I may be deluding myself but I think I have a very close relationship to both my husband and kids.

But - go outside of my little family and my relations to my extended family are “cold”. We are amiable, but we are not emotionally close and will likely never be close as long as we maintain an idea of how the relationship “should be”. The relationship the professor has with his mother maintains a deep respect on both sides, but there is an icy formality that cannot be breached because of the inherent “shoulds”.

The professor, Isaak Borg, recognizes the cold, empty life he has been living and is ultimately redeemed through the forgiveness and love of his immediate family and through his extended family which he encounters through memory (not physical reality).

The end of the film, where he meets the memory of his mother and father happily waving at him from the shore, makes me cry every single time I watch this movie - which has been five or more times at least by now!!

I’ve been meaning to mention the latest movie from Film Movement, The Grocer’s Son. I watched it some time last week but have been preoccupied with getting the house ready to sell so failed to mention it.

It’s worth mentioning because t’s an absolutely fantastic film from France about a grocer who has a heart attack and the reluctant son who goes home to help his mother run the store while his father is recovering.

Part of the wonder of the film is the absolutely gorgeous French countryside the story is set against. It’s a way of life I didn’t know existed!

I have been steadily impressed with the Film Movement offerings.

Early critics called Sawdust and Tinsel “a piece of vomit”!

I’d only seen two Ingmar Bergman films (Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries) before watching this series of early Bergman films.

Torment was Ingmar Bergman’s first screen play and directorial debut. The film was actually directed by Alf Sjöberg but changes were requested and Bergman was asked to direct the changes.

Bergman: “When the film was virtually done, I made my debut as a movie director. Originally, Torment ends after all the students have passed their final exam, except for one, played by Alf Kjellin, who walks out through a backdoor into the rain. Caligula stands in the window, waving good-bye. Everybody felt that this ending was too dark. I had to add an additional scene in the dead girl’s apartment where the principal of the school has a heart-to-heart talk with Kjellin while Caligula, the scared loser, is screaming on the star below. The new final scene shows Kjellin in the light of dawn, walking towards the awakening city. I was told to shoot these last exteriors, since Sjöberg was otherwise engaged. They were my first professionally filmed images. I was more excited that I can describe. The small film crew threatened to walk off the set and go home. I screamed and swore so loudly that people woke up and looked out of their windows. It was four o’clock in the morning.”

The story is about life in high school and an abusive Latin teacher the students call Caligula who makes their lives hell - especially the life of one boy in particular, Jan-Erik. It’s a very dark psychological film.

After hearing in interview with Bergman about high school being “hell”, Bergman’s high school principal had this to say:

“Mr. Bergman’s statement, that his entire time at school was hell, surprises me. I clearly recall that he, his brother and his father were all very satisfied with the school. After his final examinations, Ingmar Bergman came back to school to attend our Christmas party, bright and cheery as far as one could tell, and not seeming to harbor any grudge, either against the school or its teachers. In all probability, the fact of the matter lies elsewhere. Our friend Ingmar was a problem child, lazy yet rather gifted, and the fact that such a person does not easily adapt to the daily routines of study is quite natural. A school cannot be adapted to suit bohemian dreamers, but to suit normally constituted, hard working people.”

Bergman’s response:

“Let us start with the ‘12-year hell’ (coarsely expressed, by the way. Not a word used by me, but by the person who interviewed me. I recall using a milder term, which is somewhat different). Indeed…I was a very lazy boy, and very scared because of my laziness, because I was involved with theatre instead of school and because I hated having to be punctual, having to get up in the morning, do homework, sit still, having to carry maps, having break times, doing tests, taking oral examinations, or to put it plainly: I hated school as a principle, as a system and as an institution. And as such I have definitely not wanted to criticize my own school, but all schools. As far as I understand it, and as I clearly pointed out in that unfortunate interview, my school was neither better nor worse than other institutions with the same purpose. My revered headmaster also writes (somewhat harshly): ‘A school cannot be adapted to suit bohemian dreamers, but to suit normally constituted, hard working people’. Where should the poor bohemians go? Should pupils be divided up: You’re a bohemian, you’re a hard-working person, you’re a bohemian, etc. Would the bohemians be excused? There are teachers one never forgets. Men one liked and men one hated. My revered headmaster belonged and still belongs (in my case) to the former category. I also have the feeling that my dear headmaster has not yet seen the film. Perhaps we should go and watch it together!”

Torment was the second film to win the 1946 Cannes Film Festival Grand Prize (now known as the Palme d’Or).

I’m on Lecture 14 of Solomon’s lecture series, No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life. (Still on sale. )

For this lecture, I read the first part of Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground in Walter Kaufmann’s Existentialism: From Dostoevsky to Sartre. I highlighted a whole bunch of stuff I’ll try and make sense of that later. I’ve read Crime and Punishment several times and just read Brothers Karamazov last August. I think that’s all I’ve read by Dostoevsky.

I also bought Kafka’s Metamorphoses, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories intending to just read Metamorphosis, but got totally engrossed and ended up reading the entire book. (This is all I’ve ever ready by Kafka but definitely want to read a novel or two now.)

“Metamorphosis” is heart wrenching!! Just way to close to home - the idea that you completely deny who it is you are and what you are passionate about in order to fulfill a duty, only to find out that your existence was completely reliant upon fulfilling that duty AND that in the fulfilling of that duty, you were incapacitating others around you as well. (Probably a shallow reading, but that’s what I took away from it.) What’s interesting is that the Underground Man in Dostoevsky’s Notes says he can’t even turn into an insect. Yet here Gregor Samsa turns into a monstrous vermin that seems to resemble a huge insect of some sort. (But I’ll try to make sense of that later.)

I also just finished reading Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf. I read Siddhartha several years ago and in 2005 I read Demian. Besides Willa Cather and Ray Bradbury, he may very well be my favorite author! Steppenwolf, the movie, is available to “watch now” on Netflix, so I did. I think it stayed fairly true to the novel, but I found it incredibly annoying. I didn’t envision the characters in the same way or the events as being quite so “big”. But it’s probably worth watching. (Not sure how much you’d get out of it if you haven’t read the novel, though.)

I think what I relate to most in Hesse novels is the idea that as a child, there was a “wild side” that our dutiful parents felt had to be beaten out of us which left us with a split that is very difficult to reconcile. (My biggest concern in elementary school, junior high, high school, and well into my 20s with remnants that show up here and there now was that I wasn’t “sweet” enough. I woke up every day praying to God that he’d make me “sweet”. But I was far too inquisitive to be sweet!)

I highlighted a ton from Steppenwolf, too. But this post is supposed to be about Solomon’s ideas on these writers so in true form of a child who has had the wild side almost totally beaten out of her, here are my notes…

Dostoevsky anticipates some central themes in Heideggers works. In Notes from Underground, we are introduced to an unlikable character. Spite and resentment characterizes everything he does. The central theme is that of freedom and free will. Dostoevsky is attacking the enlightenment and the idea that people can improve themselves (which is something Nietzsche also attacks). And he attacks the idea that people can have free choice in a way that it leads to happiness.

Dostoevsky shows that freedom and happiness are opposed. Happiness is very often the absence of freedom. Dostoevsky attacks the entire Enlightenment. What he specifically attacks is the idea that we can create a society that will make everyone happy. But what gets left out with this idea is our personal freedom. What is most important to us is our free will. But in so far as we go along with the plans that are supposed to make us happy, what we loose is our freedom. The Underground Man sees being spiteful as a philosophical freedom, not a character deficiency.

Freedom is a good in it’s own right, it is the most important benefit that we have. Joining and sacrificing freedom for the grand plan of society is to render us inhuman.

In The Idiot, Dostoevsky challenges the assumption that a person who is “very good” will contribute to the well-being of society. Aristotle, Christianity (through the idea of following Jesus’ example) and the Enlightenment all subscribe to this idea: the better the person, the better society. In contrast, the main character of The Idiot, by doing good, makes everybody’s lives terrible. The consequences of goodness are not always good themselves.

Brothers Karamazov is Dostoevsky’s crowning achievement. The main concern of the novel is nihilism which Dostoevsky is radically against (as is Nietzsche and Kierkegaard - nihilism was taking over Europe during their time.) Ivan has represented the Enlightenment philosophy and represents the nihilistic principles. Through Dmitri, Ivan, and Alyosha - we see the whole spectrum of society with Ivan caught in the middle.

The idea that freedom is central to Christianity is something Dostoevsky wants to throw into question. This isn’t just a religious problem, it’s a dilemma of humanity writ large. He shows this through the Grand Inquisitor who is stunned by Jesus’ reappearance. He decides Jesus has to go because what Christianity has done over the past 1400 years is succeeded in making people happy. They are happy at the hopes it raises, in being saved, in being in the shadow of Jesus who has not yet appeared. But with the appearance of Jesus, people now have to face reality. Given the choice between freedom and happiness, the Grand Inquisitor says people will always choose happiness. So in the end, Jesus is re-crucified.

The same story is presented in Crime and Punishment. A man commits a brutal crime under the spell of nihilism - there is nothing worth obeying. Although the crime itself is petty, the man is haunted by a deep guilt. In Brothers Karamazov, Ivan said that if there is no God, then everything is permitted. But what we get from Ivan is a picture of nihilism at it’s absolute worst. Ivan’s world is a world that entirely depended upon God for it’s values and depended upon God for the authority for us to obey those values - and it had cast off that God. If we are dependent upon this God, then it follows that without this God we are left with nothing. Both Nietzsche and Dostoevsky were against this sort of nihilistic thinking. This is why Nietzsche said “God is dead and we have killed him”. Both Nietzsche and Dostoevsky think this dependence on an abstract God is hugely problematic.

The absurd is taken to spectacular heights in Kafka. The novella, Metamorphosis, is likely his most spectacular work. It deals with self-identity. In this story, the body is thoroughly changed, but the mind remains exactly as it is. Samsa has to cope with this change. He has to work with his horrible effect on his family. Kafka explores how our self-identity is construed by our body, but especially by our role in society and especially how other people treat us. His family comes to despise him and hate him. (What happens when you redefine the role in your family?)

Kafka’s The Trial sets the stage for Camus’ trial for Mersault in The Stranger. The idea is that we are all essentially guilty and it doesn’t have to do with any particular crime, there may be no crime at all. Just being human, just being conscious, makes us guilty. Consciousness is not just a blessing, it is also a disease. It allows us to see ourselves as inadequate creatures. With that self-consciousness comes not only guilt, but despair. If we say something is Kafkaesque, what we mean is that something is not only absurd, but also upsetting to our very notion of ourselves as human beings and our concept of life as it should be. We think life should be orderly, but life is not orderly.

Hermann Hesse was primarily influenced by Nietzsche and Buddhism. Hesse is one of the few writers who tries to bridge European and Indian thought. Siddhartha (1922) is an entire novel attempting to make this bridge. In Demian, Demian is a very well-adjusted young man. So well-adjusted that he is independent in a way that young men and children are not supposed to be independent. It is a refusal to go along. His influence on his fellow classmates and friends is far from being demonic. It’s just the kind of challenge that philosophers in Existentialism like to talk about.

In Steppenwolf, the central metaphor is of a 45-year-old man who is half man and half wolf. This was a metaphor used by Goethe and secularized by Descartes. Hesse wants to challenge this bifurcated notion of the Cartesian self - not in terms of a unification of the self, but a further fragmentation or elimination of the self altogether.

Harry Haller, the main character, is in every way a Nietzschean man. He considers himself to be one of the Masters but not in a brutal way. He is polite, mannered, and a good citizen. But he is brilliantly educated, extremely creative and exactly what Nietzsche represents in his discussion of the higher man. Like Kafka, Hesse challenges the very idea of NIetzsche’s “self” (the idea of aspiration, the idea of taking life so seriously). What Haller is mistaken in is thinking is that his personality is split half and half (half man, half wolf). Instead, Hesse says Haller has “no self” (which is the same as saying he has many selves). This is demonstrated through the Magic Theater where all values are turned upside down.

The Western conception of the self imagines the self as a fruit - peel off the skin and there is a hard pit core at the center. In Steppenwolf, the self is presented as an onion. Peel off one layer and there is another layer. Peel of that layer and there is yet another layer. There is no center. This is a Buddhist picture. In accepting this picture, Haller can accept a joy and happiness that he was unable to learn otherwise.

Nietzsche’s theory is admirable and persuasive, but there is something obviously missing and that is humor, joy, and happiness. Nietzsche talks about these things, but we are never convinced. Hesse makes us convinced that we can start with something like Nietzsche but attain a passion that even Nietzsche didn’t understand.