Suffering With Joy

The Quiet Duel – A Pro-life Film

January 26, 2011

I seem to be on a pro-life kick this week.  It must be the effects of grace from the March for Life.  Since I can’t march, my contribution to keeping the sanctity of life in the forefront is to blog about related subjects.

The Quiet Duel was written and directed by the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa.  It is not a film that comes to mind first when his name is mentioned.  Most are more familiar with Seven Samurai and Roshomon, but, as are most of Kurosawa’s films, it is very special.

The action begins in 1944 at a Japanese army facility in the jungle where Dr. Fujisaki is operating on a soldier he later discovers is infected with syphilis. Syphilis was nearly incurable in 1940s Japan, rather like AIDS and hepatitis C today. The night Dr. Fujisaki discovers he has contracted the disease from a cut sustained during the operation, the happiness he hoped for in life is shattered.   Worse yet, poor medical supply conditions meant that for the rest of the war, he had no access to salvarsan, the only drug known to cure syphilis at that time. He knew well that syphilis untreated was much harder to cure.

After setting up this grim scenario, Kurosawa takes us to 1946 and the clinic Dr. Fujisaki and his obstetrician father run. Fujisaki begins the long and arduous treatments to cure himself, but his hopes and dreams for a life with the woman he loved and had waited six years for perished because of the disease. He could not tell her what was wrong because he knew she would want to wait for him and, in typical Japanese thinking, he could not take those years away from her.  His sense of duty to others as a doctor and a man drives his character.

That’s the nutshell.  But the nutmeat is a multi-layered tale of life amid death – of sacrifice and self-denial, of nobility, of courage, of forgiveness, of rescue and redemption. The film is named for the intense internal struggle Dr. Fujisaki underwent to do the right thing always.  Misunderstood and misjudged, he did not defend himself and only once allowed the grief of his situation to overcome him.

We also see the man who gave him syphilis continue to indulge in selfish behavior and ruin other lives.  Nakata is everyman, drawn to self-gratification without care of consequences and in denial of his disease and the wickedness of his conduct.  When he rushes into the surgery to look at his syphilitic still-born child (off camera), we hear an unearthly scream of horror and witness his collapse as at last he sees what he has done.

Dr. Fujisaki is the Christ figure – suffering, self-denying, healing and saving.  He encounters mankind at it’s worst and offers the chance for life. A young lady who attempted suicide is brought to him, pregnant, and he refuses her demands for an abortion.  Instead, he gives her a job at the clinic.  One of the wonderful parts of the film is seeing her transformation from an angry, cynical, and resentful youth to a devoted nurse and mother through her interactions with Fujisaki.

If you watch The Quiet Duel – I own it and have seen it many times – you will see what medical conditions were like at the Japanese front in WW II, and you will also see something that no longer exists: a typical medical clinic of postwar Japan with all its poverty. You will also see Japanese culture and interaction, which is much different from our western ways of relating.

The acting by Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura and the rest of the cast is compelling, as is the script.  The film is amazing in its beauty at all levels. Akira Ifukube, the great 20^th century Japanese composer scored it, and again, we have something quintessentially Japanese.

Dr. Fujisaki (Toshiro Mifune) Says Good-bye to His Fiance (Miki Sanjo)

The Quiet Duel is one of the most profoundly pro-life films I’ve ever seen. In a culture where suicide is rampant even today, the doctors prevent it.  Where abortion is looked upon as a way out, the doctors forbid it and provide an alternative.  Where revenge would be understandable, forgiveness rules.  Always, life is held up and deliberate killing blocked.

In light of the tremendous cruelties visited by the Japanese conquerors over civilians and prisoners, Kurosawa presents another side of what his countrymen could be: live-giving, not life-taking, compassionate, not rigid, unfeeling and cruel. I am reminded of the life of a real Japanese physician which I wrote about in Dr. Takashi Nagai – A Song for Nagasaki.

One of my favorite scenes comes toward the end.  A policeman arrives at the clinic to visit Fujisaki’s father and tells him people are calling his son a saint.  Fujisaki elder is walking up and down rocking the nurse’s child as she works elsewhere in the clinic.  He answers, “I don’t know about that.  He’s just trying to give hope back to the people who are unhappier than he is.  If he had been happy, he might have become a snob.” That alone deserves a discussion on the role of redemptive suffering in our lives.

I highly recommend this film for its masterful treatment of very sensitive subjects. While the suffering of the characters is palpable, it does not leave the viewer without hope. Loss because of sin and the social effects of sin are as relevant today as they were in 1949. It is a great film for showing a good example of how to live uprightly and in a Christian manner even when you have been grievously wronged.  Because of the subject matter, not because of the visuals, I would recommend it for adults down to 16 year olds.

I bought my copy from Amazon, but if you have a Netflix subscription you may be able to access it there or you may be able to view it somewhere on the internet.

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V.  Praised be Jesus Christ!

R.  Now and forever.  Amen.

(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)

Tags: pro-life

9 Comments to The Quiet Duel – A Pro-life Film

1. 

   Thanx for visiting me Barb and for your comments on the song Oh my Papa.

   You may wish to read a story I wrote about this song about a year ago.

   Check out this link: http://timeforreflections.blogspot.com/2010/03/memories-memories.html

   God bless.
Victor S E Moubarak on January 27th, 2011
2. 

   Barb, this sounds like a profound and beautiful film. Are we told anything about the religious faith of Dr. Fujisaki?

   God bless,
   David
   wheat4paradise recently posted..Sunday Snippets
wheat4paradise on January 30th, 2011
3. 

   The Japanese, it can be taken for granted unless otherwise obvious, are Shinto, which is derived from Buddhism. They are animists. Nothing in the film indicates otherwise for Dr. Fujisaki, and Kurosawa was not Christian. How Shintoist or Buddhist he was I don’t know. Yet up until his 1965 film “Red Beard”, he always portrayed good triumphing over evil and gave very strong protagonists who were good.

   After “Red Beard” he became very discouraged with corporate and government corruption and in his subsequent films showed what I call the human condition where people were not focused on higher ideals, although some characters were good. “The Quiet Duel” to me is a lesson in how the natural law is carved in the hearts of man. Even if you’re not Christian you know what is right, and a person with authority or status can influence powerfully for good or evil.
barb on January 30th, 2011
4. 

   Two points come to mind:

   1) Stories involving such admirable virtue in a non-Christian should cause us Catholics to reflect on how far short we fall of what Christ expects of us.

   2) While we must admire a life so imbued with heroic virtue and learn from it, we should marvel even more at the fact that apart from Christ it does not merit heaven.

   3) Vatican II was right to observe that the Church does not reject anything that is holy in non-Christian religions.
   wheat4paradise recently posted..Sunday Snippets
wheat4paradise on January 30th, 2011
5. 

   David, thanks for these comments. Regarding #2, it is because of Christ that a life imbued with heroic virtue merits heaven, whether the person knows Christ or not. The 10 Commandments are His Word, and He is the Word. The grace to live heroically comes from God, whether or not the person realizes it or not. When we see such virtue in someone we should all the more be moved to show Christ to them. Certainly we should thank God for them. I am reminded of the story of the disciples complaining to Jesus that somebody not of their following was running around casting demons out in Jesus’ name. Jesus told them to leave him alone because “he who is not against us is with us.”
barb on January 31st, 2011
6. 

   Barb, the key difference in the Gospel story that you mention is that the person in question was casting out demons in the Name of JESUS. I don’t mean to detract from the main point of your post, which is to share what is clearly a wonderful film that we should all benefit from viewing. However, I must strongly disagree that a non-Christian merits heaven through virtues imbued by the Spirit of Christ. I quote Bishop Schneider:

   Such a proclamation [of the Gospel] must be explicit: that is, faith in Jesus Christ, to which one arrives by the grace of conversion and repentance. Therefore there is no room for a theory and a practice of so-called “anonymous Christianity”, there is no acceptance of alternative ways of salvation other than the way of Christ: Christ is the one Mediator between God and men.

   It is precisely by observing the great tragedy of one so “holy” as Dr. Fujisaki, who will surely not merit heaven on the sole basis of his virtues, that we are spurred to bring such a person to the saving acceptance of Jesus Christ and His Catholic Church.

   God bless,
   David
   wheat4paradise recently posted..Sunday Snippets
wheat4paradise on January 31st, 2011
7. 

   Actually none of us merits heaven on our own because we cannot do any good of ourselves – only by God’s grace. The merits are Christ’s. We share in them by conforming ourselves to him. I don’t think of Fujisaki as an “anonymous Christian”, whatever that is. Really, I think it is a very odd construct. His character is not given a religion. But he lives in a Christlike way. The good he does is a sign of God’s love, even if not recognized as such by people unschooled in the Lord. He could not do that good without actual grace.

   The Church holds all the merits of Christ by His design, and it is through these merits that anyone is saved. That is why anyone who is saved is saved through Christ and His Church. No Christ, no Church, no salvation. But we do have Christ and we have a sober obligation to bring Him to everyone we meet by example and word.

   God will judge everyman justly according to His laws and we should not be in the business of running around deciding who is saved and who isn’t as I have seen and heard some people do. That is why I am very uncomfortable with people saying categorically all Jews are going to hell, or all Buddhists or Hindus or even Muslims are going to hell. We have no right to say that. If God wishes to apply the merits of Christ to someone who is not Christian, so be it. It changes nothing about the merits being Christ’s nor does it change anything about the Church being the repository of those merits.

   It seems that we Catholics are doubly charged with living the Gospel because we have been given the incredible gift of knowledge of Christ and salvation. God will surely look at us and ask, “What did you do with the graces I gave you?” We better have a really good answer when we meet Him at our particular judgment.
barb on January 31st, 2011
8. 

   Barb, what you have said here (especially the last paragraph) gives me pause to stop and reflect. For whenever I hear about the virtue of a non-Christian, my knee-jerk reaction is to question the salvific efficacy of his virtue. Perhaps this is just a reaction to the religious indifference and relativism that surrounds us. In any case, my typical response has the ultimate effect of taking my eye off the ball, so to speak. What answer will I give to Jesus Christ at my particular judgment? That is the real question.

   God bless,
   David
   wheat4paradise recently posted..Sunday Snippets
wheat4paradise on January 31st, 2011
9. 

   Thanks, David. I really enjoy our exchanges. I am convinced that many times we fool ourselves into thinking we are virtuous and about the work of God but in reality we have, as you said, taken our eye off the ball. I, too, have knee-jerk reactions and am working hard to think things through so that I don’t become an obstacle to someone’s salvation.
barb on January 31st, 2011