There used to be four of them, but one was killed, and now the three friends are drifting apart. One became a doctor, but can't seem to hold a position for more than a year before he quarrels and leaves. Another wanted to be a lawyer, but now is a drummer at a club. The third works at a plant. Even the young lovers, Isao Kimura -- he's the doctor -- and Yoshiko Kuga find themselves drifting away from each other. Each of these four young people see themselves as failures, unable to be the good people they had imagined. So they beat themselves up, and they quarrel with each other.
It's difficult to think of the writer Zenzô Matsuyama and the director Masaki Kobayashi without THE HUMAN CONDITION trilogy coming into your thoughts, but this movie, about the large, sprawling interconnections of human beings, and how people are better than they imagine themselves, was their first collaboration. It's a good movie, too, centering itself on the lovers, but with plenty of time to investigate other characters, like Akiko Tamura as Miss Kuga's grandmother, and her friendship with the man who almost ran her over with her car. It's sprawling, it's kind-hearted and it made me think kindly thoughts about people that I don't often think.
