I really hate Christian Rock.

That probably seems an odd sentence to begin a review of a Kurosawa film with, and I suppose in a lot of ways it is. However, in one important respect I find that it’s actually the best way I can think of to start off my thoughts on The Most Beautiful – the second film directed by Akira Kurosawa and thus the second of my reviews for this blog. I’ll explain.

As a musical genre, I can find nothing enjoyable in Christian Rock. Importantly, this isn’t necessarily because it’s Christian. Sure, the constant praising of God and Jesus is something I find pointless as an atheist; but beneath that lies a deeper problem for me. Namely, that the music itself is awful. In my experience with Christian Rock (which admittedly isn’t terribly vast) I’ve found it to be dull, unoriginal, and generally poorly arranged and executed. I’d feel the same way about the music were it Buddhist Rock or Agnostic Rock. When music sucks, it just sucks, regardless of its particular religious persuasions.

Similarly, propaganda films have always been a genre that, for me, lack the important features that a film needs to be even remotely interesting. I’m not the type who likes to be told what to think, and propaganda films are designed to do exactly that. Sometimes this is through manipulation – they try to establish a particular viewpoint as evil to make you think theirs is good. Sometimes it’s through outright lies – facts are distorted to shore up a position that has no basis in reality. Often it’s a combination of these methods. And always I find these films dreadful for their lack of meaningful imagery and theme.

So admittedly I wasn’t expecting much from The Most Beautiful which, I knew from reading about it, was commissioned to be a propaganda film; and I was actually fully prepared, having never seen it, to be bored stiff. Not because I lacked faith in Kurosawa’s ability to make any type of film interesting, but rather because I assumed that the wartime Japanese censors would have had their way with it – cutting whatever they felt was too individualistic a scene or editing out shots and dialogue that didn’t fit with the message that the Japanese people were meant to be fed. I was quite wrong; and was pleasantly surprised that the film did turn out to be a nice little story. Of course, it was still a “propaganda” film and there are elements of that which I find disturbing; but I’ll get to those in a bit.

The overall plot of The Most Beautiful is quite basic. It’s about a group of female workers in a military optics factory who come together in a spirit of national pride to increase production and help the war effort. There’s very little mention of the actual war, save the occasional sign hanging in the background (which I think were meant to be “in the background” but because of the necessity for subtitles are given more prominence then they would have had for a native speaking audience), although it does have an ever present hold on the characters within the movie. Wartime Japan is the setting, and the audience it was meant for would have understood that and certainly wouldn’t have needed constant reminding.

The film was shot in a semi-documentary style, and apparently the cast lived and worked on location in a real Japanese factory. While this meant for me that much of Kurosawa’s trademark photography was absent, I’m sure that it had the intended effect on the Japanese audiences of the time. Because of the style, we see all of the women throughout the film as more of a group than as individual characters – a theme in keeping with the wartime message that the nation must all come together as one to prevail.

The focus on the journey of the individual, another defining feature of Kurosawa’s work, is also almost non-existent in The Most Beautiful. The main character of the film, a young woman named Tsuru Wantanabe, is held to an ideal almost throughout the picture. Her growth is shown only in that, as the film progresses, she becomes more dedicated to her tasks and to the success of those around her – even at a personal cost to herself. Thus, The Most Beautiful is a complete affirmation of the group over the individual. This was odd to see in a Kurosawa film, especially knowing that this was not a view he particularly embraced.

This is not to say that there were no moments of individual tenderness. Towards the end of the film, Wantanabe – who is tired and distracted (demonstrating the weakness of the “individual”) – loses a small lens destined for some far off military usage. It’s one of thousands that the factory has produced, yet she is so distraught over it that she stays up all night in the factory searching for it. The managers of the factory actually tell her at one point to go home and get some rest, and that she need not expend so much effort over just one lens. Wantanabe, however, refuses to do so. She has what she feels is a duty to the nation and to the other women that every lens they make be perfect and ready for use in the war effort. In the end she finds it, and as she is leaving the factory finds that the managers have stayed there all night with her (though apparently not helping?) in a show of solidarity. Again, this scene demonstrates that in order to win the war the nation as a whole must come together and support each other and to focus on the task at hand above all else.

In the last scene of the film, Wantanabe receives word that her mother has died; but rather than travel home, she stays and works and mourns in her own way. It is this scene more than any other that tells us that the individual is unimportant when compared to the nation. And while this is an emotional and very effective moment in the film, I also found it to be almost inhuman. Wantanabe’s sense of duty, which to a wartime Japanese audience may have been uplifting, suggested to me that she was merely being stubborn. She seemed unwilling to care about anything but her tasks, and thus became more a machine than a woman.

The Most Beautiful does what it sets out to do. Taken from the perspective of a wartime Japanese populace (one who by 1944 was already well on their way to military defeat) it is an uplifting tale of determination in the face of personal tragedy, and pride in what a group can do when they collectively set their minds to it. However, I can’t help but feel that in the end it was simply just a waste of a prodigious talent. Like Christian Rock, something about propaganda will never sit well with me. It can’t or won’t do the things that I need it to in order to remain completely engaged. For Kurosawa to have done it is completely understandable, but it also seems a bit like sending Neil Peart to drum in your mother’s church choir. Wonderful for them to be sure, but just kind of depressing to me.