Akira Kurosawa is often seen as a fairly light, humanist director, but it's worth remembering that he was also willing to explore dark sides of humanity when he wanted to. Ran is a perfect example of finding nihilism in mythical battles. However The Lower Depths is probably the most pessimistic film he made about feudal Japan. This is a formless film, without a main character. It is a study of a world, deliberately plotless and aimless. Narratively it is a series of simultaneous little stories across just a few sets, preserving the play-like nature of the source material. This is a film of filth and squalor, making us wonder why people would choose to live in such a way. The recurring theme across the conflicts is that people are lying to themselves. The decision to embrace happiness or truth is the fundamental human condition, do we pretend to be grateful for what little the world offers us, or do we instead suffer by bitterly questioning why we have so little. Everyone in The Lower Depths is impure. There's no point to their activities, one spends an entire day scraping a bowl. Dances, games, and affairs are their only vices and distractions. The Lower Depths presents life as a party constantly ruined by the gatecrashing of bad events. This flippant metaphor is basically part of the brilliantly dark humour that re-enforces all of the film's cynicism. The Lower Depths is committed to nothing, no God (just a landlord as a devil), no hope, no peace, nothing worth fighting for, nobody who wants to fight for anything, and ultimately no plot. It's hard to be a god, which is why there isn't one.

Akira Kurosawa Ranked
My Top Films of the 1950s