The Human Condition Is 9.5 Hours, in Japanese...

The Criterion Collection re-release of Masaki Kobayashi’s The Human Condition does high-definition justice to the WWII film critic David Shipman has called “unequivocally the greatest film ever made,” according to Very Short List. The movie follows a good—and handsome—man through the “innumerable trials in World War II–era Japan.” You may even be "surprised by how profoundly moved you are by hour nine.”

“This sprawling film has a touch of everything—love, war, heroism—and is gorgeous to look at,” VSL continues. The “antiwar saga” was adapted from a novel by Junpei Gomikawa, and took two years to make, between 1959 and 1961. And fear not, viewer: The epic is broken down into three parts, do you don’t have to get all your pathos in one sitting. (More film stories.)