Philosophy of a Knife

PHILOSOPHY OF A KNIFE is not a horror / splatter / gore film. It is not meant to be enjoyed, or viewed as entertainment. It's not meant as pure exploitation, either. KNIFE is a documentary of sorts, by Director Andrey Iskanov, about the notorious UNIT 731 and the inhuman experiments conducted there during WW II.

The horrific, insanely extreme sequences are reenactments, much like in any other documentary. The difference being, of course, that Iskanov recreates the atrocities in as viciously realistic detail as possible. He intends for us to go along with these prisoners / test subjects for every excruciatingly long second of their hideous deaths. We are supposed to experience every bit of the terror, anguish, and torture of this mindless experimentation. All without hope of reprieve or possibility of escape. We are there for the deadening monotony of systematic mass murder.

This, as Iskanov drives home, is a slaughterhouse for human beings. He wants witnesses present for one of the darkest, most heart-destroying times in history. He makes a convincing case that man is capable of anything.

Anything.

One of the more chilling aspects of the film is the voice-over narration by Manoush, portraying a nurse at UNIT 731. Her words make it absolutely clear that in order to play a part in acts such as these, she had to forfeit her very soul.

This movie contains ultra-graphic scenes of human vivisection, mutilation, and other horrors that only a true sadistic psychopath could "enjoy". Rating this ten stars because I "love it" would be absurd and insane. No, the rating is high because it does exactly what it sets out to do. It takes us to this inconceivably terrible place, and makes us not only watch, but feel what is happening there. It does this in spite of its many flaws and budgetary constraints.

Not all stories have happy endings -or beginnings or middles- and exist simply because someone believed they had to be told...

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.

I am going to say now, as someone who disliked 'The Human Centipede' for the intended purpose and found it bad enough to be funny, you are better off watching that.

The movie is shot most probably on a DSLR in black and white. The conversion into black and white was unbearably Grey with obnoxious 'old film' effects. Overall the filming is very amateur, shaky and melodramatic. While there is a small handful of clever and interesting shots and overlays, most of them look pretentious and try-hard. Think 16 year old girl film project and windows movie maker.

The prisoners are all white females obviously cast from America's next top model, and a couple of Russian men. This is largely historically inaccurate considering in real life most of the prisoners were Chinese or Korean of all ages, not just a bunch of white hipsters. AND FOR GOD'S SAKE WHO THE F**K THOUGHT PUTTING MASCARA ON PRISONERS WAS A GOOD IDEA?

The acting itself was overall tacky and cringey to watch. The Asian nurse was the only decent actress, even then, her face is covered with a medical mask most of the time, and her makeup is far too modern, she has ipod headphones dangling out of her pocket in one scene, which is laughable. The cast of prisoners are healthy, white, middle class, attractive, plump, groomed and moody-teenage looking, this would be fine.. if you know.. they weren't supposed to be starving, suffering and psychologically disturbed war prisoners. It is beyond me why the producer thought he wanted the prisoners to look so prime and polished, I'm astounded to think that anyone with half a brain would think to have actresses with long brushed and shiny hair, perfect makeup (with absolutely no attempt in making them look tired or haggard)and plump curvy figures, cast in a film about some of the most malnourished and tormented prisoners of all time. The Asian male doctor looks like he's just stepped out of a Korean boy band, they could have at the very least styled his hair to look 1940's. Why is he wearing eyeliner?!

The entire cast are unconvincing and substandard actors. As a very squeamish person, i didn't even flinch. The gore was well produced in places, but the actors couldn't carry it. Screams of what was supposed to be agony looked like dodgy orgasms in some sort of soviet bdsm porn. The prisoners are calm and serene being led around. There is no kicking, struggle or fuss, not even the guards restraining them as they lead them to the operating room. They just lay down on the operating table compliantly, which is ridiculous.

There is a rape scene in the film that is just completely ridiculous and had me laughing at how poorly acted it was.

The whole film is poorly written and very historically inaccurate, therefore making it very difficult to believe. There is no way in hell a Japanese war doctor is going to flirt with a prisoner, i felt this was some sort of mockery , and absolutely out of place. I can see the director trying to write in some romance to make the movie ever-so-slightly less dull, but it was just utterly disrespectful to the rape victims of the real unit 713 and to a degree racially insensitive and ignorant of the well documented historic Japanese attitudes to foreigners. Other historic inaccuracies included sedation. The real Unit 713 preformed abortions and vivisection's without anesthetic, painkillers or any sort of sedation, this not only would have been much more interesting to see on screen, but made a world of difference in historical accuracy. Operations were also preformed laughably, doctors removing all sorts of organs like picking tomatoes out of a salad, while patients in pristine makeup look barely phased but let out the occasional girlish scream. Not even a drip of sweat on their faces or their lipstick smudging.

Props used, such as a toy baby are again laughable.

The only positive thing i can comment on is the well made opening credits and mixing of archive footage to trendy music.

The film is a massive waste of time overall, and you're better off gnawing your own appendages for better a quality entertainment and insight into the Japanese war atrociousness.

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.

Philosophy of a knife is a 4 hour long documentary recalling the atrocities of unit 731. This film has some real footage from ww2, along with interviews and of course the poorly made reanactments which are all compiled together in a pretty good way to create this movie.

The real ww2 footage is pretty good in this with some moments being really interesting, the interviews are also good but I do feel as if the person being interviewed is gratifying the atrocities in some way. However the reanactments are just aren't that great, for example the acting is just atrocious and there isn't a single bit of emotional response coming from the victims or even the pathologists and guards. Every time a victim gets strapped to a chair or an operating table they make absolutely zero attempt to struggle or even react to the pain being afflicted, the perpetrators also don't produce any emotional reactions either which is somewhat accurate to historical events but they should have also explored the different ways they couldve looked horrified at the orders given, giving those characters moments of humanity instead of making every member there a mindless psycho cutting into people randomly. Another problem I have with the reanactments is the actors themselves, the majority of unit 731 victims were Chinese with a small amount of russian and an extremely small amount of Americans, however philosophy of a knife has no Chinese victims and instead has a ton of white, russian and American prisoners. This not only white washes the cast of this film but also history itself which is extremely disrespectful to the actual victims. The final problem I have with the reanactments is the extreme butcher shop violence which are ment to be the experiments, the many pathologists just seem to slice and dice in a very non professional way, most of the experiments don't even seem like they have any contribution to science which is kind of the point of experimentation, like there's one "experiment" where they stick a cockroach up a prisoners vagina to see if it will come out the mouth, it isn't even explained why they do this it just happens. The real unit 731 had professional pathologists and doctors which did there work strategically and somewhat professionally when they conducted there inhumane experiments, the professionalism is also whats most horrifying about unit 731 as it shows that even though there profession is targeted at helping people, they still committed these atrocities and I do wish this theme was done better in this movie.

The effects in this film do vary in quality, from crappy effects which look lazy and don't fit the moment and to pretty good effects which did make me cover my face. The makeup is pretty decent as well which definitely excelled the scene at times. The camera quality however wasn't the best with moments being way to shakey and the majority of the camera work being uncomfortable shots just made it get pretty boring after a long while.

The music in this film though is fantastic, being a mixture of uncomfortable ambience and sinister tunes which made this film generally scary at times. A really good example of how good the music is can be seen in the title theme, as the song progresses the music gets more chaotic and distorted which may represent the stages of unit 731 throughout the years, going from questionable experimentation which still remains in the boundaries of ethics and then progresses to extremely evil and Inhumane experimentation which loses its grip on ethics. This progression could also be a euphemism on how the experiments went from improving biological warfare to having little to no connection with the betterment of humanity. Truly chilling stuff.

The intro to this film is pretty cool aswell, having some badass music and some pretty good footage. This moment is the only part of the movie I actually enjoyed and gave me some hope to this being a fairly good movie but was disappointed after seeing the rest of the film.

In conclusion even though this movie has its pretty good moments it still falls short due to the dramatic amount of gore and exploitation, the incredibly long runtime of 4 hours and the poor acting which does let down a really good idea to adapt this dark part of humanity into a movie like this.