liftedface Review of Kyojin to gangu

Kyojin to gangu (1958)

The most truthful telling of Japanese business gone wrong

[9/10 · 16 April 2006]

A genius movie made during turbulent times where the Japanese economic monster had just given way to its hunger. In the 1950's Japanese corporations, after initial American patrimony, had begun to gain its foothold with an ambition that outrivaled its military initiatives of the previous decades. This movie tells a fictional story of corporate wars in the confections and sweets industry where people from all walks of life become sucked into the trappings of the corporate machine while all having the same dreams, not realizing they are different people with separate contributions. The story follows two main characters, Godo and his fresh out of college apprentice Nishi have just taken over the World Caramel ad campaign with aspirations to crush rival companies Giant and Apollo. Godo is a career strategist having acquired his head position by marrying the supervisor's daughter and next eyes the aging father in law's seat. The young Nishi is although hungry, young and principled in his ways and has difficulty losing his dignity to the company as Godo has. Along the way they wrangle a country bumpkin with tadpoles for pets and less common sense than a penny to be their poster girl. Also highly impressionable, Kyoko develops an unfulfilled crush on Nishi and then becomes too rich and famous to reconcile with her conscious. Apprentice Nishi meanwhile is in love with a rival worker and mixes business with pleasure as he falls for the girl and tries to extract corporate strategies from the enemy only to have his heart broken. This film is so sublime in its storytelling it it's surreal. This movie is a harsh criticism but completely stripped of all the hokey tongue in cheek one might find in "Office Space" or "Dr. Strangelove." In doing so it allows layers of credibility in its story and the characters that inhabit it. While we may be able to laugh at gangster rap Xerox angst or Brigadeer General Jack D. Ripper, viewers are not allowed the room to laugh at these overworked, half baked, ants caught up in the great race for domination. It is no surprise that director Masumura Yasuzo spent time in Italy studying film as no indiginant could ever make a film so critical of its own trappings. Quite possibly the best prediction of the direction of Japanese society, this film still stands as a timeless story of ambition and dignity in a world that demands too much from its inhabitants.