Philosophy of a Knife

Watching Philosophy of a Knife, it seems to me as though writer/director Andrey Iskanov considered T.F. Mou's 1988 Unit 731 shocker Man Behind The Sun to be A) not harrowing enough, and B) not nearly long enough: his film tackles the same harsh subject matter but in even more detail, and clocks in at over four hours. Not a film for the casual viewer, then.

A documentary consisting of genuine archive material, interview footage, and gory re-enactments of assorted atrocities, Philosophy delves into a world of callous, inhuman horror: the hideous experiments carried out on WWII prisoners in Unit 731, a Japanese biological and chemical warfare research complex. The film is, at turns, distressing, boring, and laughable: the historical imagery effectively drives home the depravity of war, the interview scenes, monotonous voiceover and interminable shots of heavy snowfall are sleep-inducing, and the splatter is way too excessive to be taken seriously.

Whereas, in reality, 731's unfortunate victims were primarily Chinese, here they are mostly pretty young caucasian women with far too much mascara and not enough pubic hair (was the 'landing strip' a thing back then?). The scientists carry out their grisly experiments with gusto, covering the walls and themselves in gore in the process, but the special effects aren't convincing enough to rival Mou's movie in terms of nastiness (Man Behind The Sun featured genuine autopsy footage and was rumoured to have used a real cadaver in its decompression chamber scene; Iskanov gives us rubbery prosthetic body parts and watery blood).

Amongst the 'so extreme they're actually funny' scenes, we get the removal of a fetus, extraction of teeth, the rape of a young woman by a man with syphilis, plague victims, frostbite experiments, face removal, phosphor burns, exposure to x-rays, gassing, and assorted clumsy vivisection. There's also a lot of nudity from both sexes, the most graphic moment featuring a large cockroach and a woman's nether regions.

With the film stretched out over such a long time (it's split into two halves, both of which are longer than most documentaries), and with risible attempts at art-house pretentiousness amidst all of the bodily fluids, the film is often gruelling for the wrong reasons. Man Behind The Sun remains the better and more disturbing movie by a long chalk.

I imagine, however, that no film will ever come close to capturing the real horror of Unit 731.

This movie is four hours long for one reason: director Andrey Iskanov wanted it to be. Lacking enough actual subject matter to warrant a four hour running time, he compensates by having virtually every scene go on for at least twice as long as necessary and inserting numerous shots of snow falling, each of which goes on for several minutes. I would say there's close to a half hour of footage of snow in this movie.

We get surgeons meticulously putting on rubber gloves, prisoners being led down hallways, soldiers trudging through snow, bodies being chopped up, flesh being scraped off a skull, and countless other such sequences all in glorious real time. If tedium and banality are what Iskanov was going for he succeeded admirably.

PHILOSOPHY OF A KNIFE is so devoid of any redeeming quality in its current state it barely even warrants discussion. One of the few positive things I can say about it is that I can see a riveting avant-garde horror movie hidden beneath all the baggage. Had he cut out 2/3 of the running time and tightened up all of his individual scenes, this could have been one of the most effective exercises in Hell-On-Earth sensory overload.

Of course, in an introduction which brings new meaning to the word "pontification," Iskanov informs us that this is not a horror movie, though he expects us unsophisticated westerners to think it is. So maybe I'm even wrong about that. Maybe there's NOTHING good to say about this movie.

Watching this movie has forced me to re-assess my opinion of MEN BEHIND THE SUN, which I thought was little more than an exploitive freak show as well. However, in MEN BEHIND THE SUN director T.F. Mou presented the atrocities in a brutally matter-of-fact manner and allowed us to sympathize somewhat with the prisoners. Now I'm thinking that Mou's film is at least somewhat earnest in its depictions of the horrors of Unit 731.

In PHILOSOPHY, Iskanov re-creates the experiments as highly stylized set-pieces that look more like a Nine Inch Nails music video than an attempt to hit home the true horror of these activities. All (and I mean ALL) the prisoners who are tortured are young, good-looking Russian kids with no backstory whatsoever. I wonder how many female prisoners-of-war during World War II had perfect breasts and shaved pubic hair. And while MEN BEHIND THE SUN acknowledged that Russian, European and American prisoners did fall victim to Unit 731, PHILOSOPHY completely ignores the fact that the vast majority of victims were Chinese.

And if what you want is nothing more than blood and guts, even that fails to live up to the hype. The effects (which Iskanov did himself) are amateurish and sloppy. Only a sequence in which a woman's teeth are pulled is even somewhat effective, not because it's well-done, but because pretty much everyone can imagine how much that would hurt. OLDBOY's teeth pulling scene is far more chilling and horrific than this.

This long, boring, dishonest, self-indulgent movie is a major waste of time. I want my four plus hours back.

Why is this 4 hours long? Could easily be edited down to 90 mnts

There are some interesting "historical" nuggets interwoven into endless B&W stills

Watch on fast forward if you must

I love Andrey Iskanov's other works such as Nails and Visions of Suffering and find Philosophy of a Knife along the same lines. While yes this movie is disturbing, graphic and based on real events I am amazed at the backlash the movie and Andrey have gotten.

Unlike other reviewers I knew what this movie was about going in. Yes there was a documentary aspect to it, part documentary and some historical footage which I thought helped connect the film as a whole, ramming it home even more that this was based on a true story. I am not sure what kind of movie others were expecting. Maybe they did not listen to the beginning interview or have not heard about Unit 731 before, or even seen Andrey's other works. I find the attack on actors and special effects ludicrous. How do you expect people to act in this scenario? Most of the special effects were very good in my opinion. There were some that could have been done better but that is the way it is and to me has no relevance to the movie as a whole. This movie was made in a certain style and is not your Hollywood pumped out generic horror crap or cookie cutter work. One reviewer even said it was a horrible movie because the actress had a Brazilian which apparently the character would not have at the time. Out of everything that is going on in that movie, the pain, cruelty, and deadening of humanity he focuses on that... I would go ahead and watch and listen to the quick interview at the beginning of the movie which answers all the questions other posters are missing. Yes it's not for everyone and for me its even hard to say I enjoyed it because it was very disturbing. My rant is over...

The small portions of this movie that have any merit, mostly the archival footage which is in some cases quite well applied, are over shadowed by a number of glaring flaws. The narrator blatantly overlooks other widespread abuses and atrocities committed by the whole of the Japanese military, instead claiming that any injustices were simply in response to pressures from the conflict with Russia. To try and whitewash Unit 731's role as a defencive measure is historically inaccurate, and since the Philosophy of a Knife claims to be a sober look at historical events, it fails on that level. I would say while there are few other movies that focus primarily on Imperial Japan's forays into chemical and biological warfare, this one does not ear points for filling a niche void.