Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence

Having read Laurens Van der Post's "The Seed and the Sower" I have to admit that I was a little sceptical when I first heard about Nagisa Oshima's film adaptation. Although a fan of both Bowie and Sakamoto's music I had my doubts about their abilities to play the complex characters of Jack Celliers and Captain Yonoi. When I found out that the third of the four main characters, Sergeant Hara, was to be played by Takeshi, a Japanese comedian, I was dismayed. It seemed that the only "real" actors to be featured in this film were Jack Thompson and the brilliant Tom Conti. Nevertheless, I took myself off to the cinema the week the film opened and came out a couple of hours later quite speechless with admiration. I couldn't say it was better than the book (I've never seen a film that was) but it was certainly just as good. Rather than try to convey the many and complicated issues of Van der Post's novel, Oshima wisely opted to concentrate on the relationships between the four main characters. Lawrence and Hara are relatively straight forward characters who, through their dialogue, introduce the viewer to the many problematic situations surrounding the interaction between the Japanese soldiers and their prisoners. Much of what the viewer might not understand about the clashes between two widely opposing cultures is cleverly integrated into the script and skillfully conveyed by the two actors. But the main story belongs to Celliers and Yonoi, a subject that the book covers in great detail, deftly managing to get inside the heads of both characters. However, in the film, Bowie and, in particular, Sakamoto did not have the luxury of having the emotions of the two men explained for them and with limited dialogue they were faced with a difficult task. The extremely delicate, complicated and highly charged relationship between the two characters had to be effectively conveyed to the audience without the two men having much of an opportunity to actually speak to each other. However, with excellent direction from Oshima, the sensitive and subtle performances of both men saw them positively crackle with electricity and not a word was needed to make their situation clear for all to see. In particular, the scene in which Celliers kisses Yonoi left me breathless; the actors were magnificent, the camera work superb and the sudden crescendo in the exquisite accompanying music ensured that this one moment, more or less the crux of the film, was nothing less than perfect. On the subject of music, I cannot imagine this film would have succeeded on so many levels without the input of Ryuichi Sakamoto. Not only was his portrayal of Captain Yonoi a revelation but his soundtrack was incredibly beautiful and wonderfully evocative. Every note was perfectly placed and his subtlety, sensitivity and imagination as a composer were employed to their very best advantage. What more can I say? This is an amazing film and the talent and commitment of all those involved is exceptional. If you haven't seen it, what are you waiting for? If you have but haven't read the book, get on-line and find a copy (it's out of print); I promise you won't regret it.

I finally watched this yesterday and I am going to go out on a limb and register my disappointment with the film. When you look back on a film made when Bowie was at his peak, you have to consider his star power in being cast in a Japanese film. He is a fine actor and his work, small in number, is good enough to consider watching in other films. I feel that he was miscast for this film or put another way round, was cast because he was the blue eyed wonder boy from British pop. I mean, a English pop star in the same film as a Japanese pop star? Flags should have gone up on that. In Bowie's defence, he's not given a lot of latitude to move around in his role or much in the way of dialogue. He is used to glare at the camera a lot or else munch on flowers in a grotesque scene that, if important, passes over our heads. Conti is an excellent actor but what drove me nuts was his smirk or smile or fawning good humour with his Japanese tormentors, who were regularly killing soldiers. It made very little sense in the context of what camp life was really like for POW's. The flashback scenes to Cellier's childhood made little sense. What are we to make of this other than he has feelings of guilt, for having been such a cold hearted jack ass to his kid brother? So what are we to make of this guilt? It is not developed in a direct and full manner in the film. I mean, if you want to coat the film with Shakespearean drama, then do something with the guilt. Nothing; and so, it makes little sense. Which leads me to a deeper sense of disappointment. I might be dead wrong, but I had the sense throughout the whole film that the really shocking horrors of what the Japanese really did to prisoners were bleached a bit, sanitized to make the film more palatable to the Japanese market. It is fairly well known that the Japanese to this date have not dealt with their war crimes in a full face on mea culpa. Not even close to the soul cleansing that the German people have done and seen in their movies and literature. Go and ask the South Koreans, Chinese or Vietnamese what they think of the Japanese, especially about their war crimes and you'll get a totally different perspective than this film shows. I mean, it is not that Japanese films cannot be bloodily and bluntly honest. Most of Kurosawa's films are unsentimental, brutal and fearless in depicting the savagery of the Japanese warrior. Consider then, what this topic would look like if made by a British director, who might have known Brits who survived a Japanese concentration camp? I dare say that the drama would not have been so ambiguous, teetering as it does several times, on the travails of a camp commander as he has his Shakespearean moments of doubt. I was so sick and tired of the commandants pouting facial gestures and his childish tirades. If you really want a taste of what these camps were like then forget about this rather silly film. Read the book "Unbroken". It is a stupendous book on all levels and it covers the survival of a man in the midst of the most brutal, savage and bestial actions, that take place in a Japanese POW camp. That is the real heart of darkness and it is watered down in this film. I was not impressed. "The Bridge over the River Kwai" is far superior. This film should be remade and not by a Japanese director, with all due respects to some of their excellent cinema.

I had a really hard time looking past the raw 80's of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. I have to be honest and say I found it a little boring, maybe I missed something, but the story seemed bland and slow. I know all films don't have to have a lot of action, but I didn't feel much of a conflict and nothing happened to make me care for any character. There's also the strange flashback that confused me more. I couldn't really figure out what the relevance of it was, that he's not saint? It just didn't seem to have anything to do with Bowie's character. Besides my indifference with the film I really thought David Bowie and the rest of the cast delivered great performances.

Disappointing. Had potential, but drifted and went nowhere, aided and abetted by some really hammy acting by David Bowie. As gritty and grim as the plot is, many of the scenes seem contrived and lame. If there was a point to everything, I missed it. As mentioned, David Bowie's performance certainly doesn't help matters. He is quite unconvincing in the lead role. The real actors hardly do better - Tom Conti and Jack Thompson are irritating. The Japanese actors put in the most convincing performances. Not worth watching, even at Christmas.

I saw this in the theater when it came out and I've seen it twice since (including just now). It's a very confusing movie. I'd recommend it overall for the discussions that will ensue with others after watching -- but I'd certainly also expect viewers to be irritated at some of the scenes and some of the apparent messages of the film. **** SPOILERS **** So much of this movie consists of scenes that are contradictory and also terribly hard to relate to any narrative. For example, we see Captain Yannoi in an early scene furious that Sergeant Hara has allowed a prison guard attempt hara kiri. So why does he later stage that guard committing hara kiri and insist that everyone watch it? We see repeated flashbacks to the childhood of Jack Celliers and later to his experiences at school. Yet these have no effect that I can see on the narrative in the prison camp. Why does Celliers: a) come out of the hills to surrender to the Japanese? b) refuse to fight with Captain Yannoi (when Celliers obviously has no problem fighting other Japanese)? If he had no desire to combat the Japanese, then why does he say he was thrilled to enlist when the war came? Why does Captain Yannoi simply drop the desire to replace the prisoners' leader? How can the movie pose a moral equivalence between the trial and execution of the brutal and sadistic Sergeant Hara (especially since the war crimes trial undoubtedly had due process -- all such trials did) when the movie has made the contrary point of the unfairness of Celliers' trial when he had no counsel after being taken as a prisoner of war? At the end of the movie, the brutal war criminal is told that the reason he is to be punished after four sadistic years is because "they think they're absolutely right, just as you thought you were absolutely right - and the truth is we're all wrong". REALLY? We're all wrong to judge the morality of beheadings, the burial of people alive, random beatings, crippling as punishment? If so, is there no brutality toward man that is immoral? And if there do exist things that are wrong, why is it wrong to punish? Are there no crimes of violence which should ever be punished? If not, why not? What is morally equivalent about giving a trial, establishing the facts and then finding that, well, burying others alive is quite wrong, and that the perpetrators should be punished? Is cruelty really merely a culturally relativist notion? I don't think so. I think it's held the world over. Otherwise, why would anyone be shocked by the Holocaust? Would this movie not say "it's a German thing; you wouldn't understand"? Would the movie say that condemnation of the Nazis for attempting to eliminate a whole people is simply due to the fact that we're "absolutely sure we're right to say that millions should NOT be gassed to death - and that's why they're being punished - but of course we're all wrong"? If we see a man on the street cutting the head off a child, should we deem the man's subsequent punishment to merely reflect a cultural bias against beheadings? The condemnors are merely morally self-righteous judges who don't understand that we are unable to judge the morality of the child's decapitation? And if we do so, we're all wrong? If such are the movie's messages, I reject them as foul. **** SPOILERS END **** The movie is interesting - David Bowie and Tom Conti are excellent. I wish Bowie did more movies, he has a real magnetism on screen. However, don't expect the movie to make a lot of sense.

I like the idea. I like Tom Conti, and even David Bowie. But if David Bowie looks here a patriot, then the Sun is turning around the Earth. See, his ever-arrogant face expressions badly spoils the picture! And he is a bad actor! A biographical film about David said that in this picture he gives one of his best performances, and there are some allusions on his real life. Undoubtedly , we expect something groundbreaking . But something's wrong .Some reviews say, the main flaw of this film is too much aesthetes and also the difference between Western and Eastern cultures, but i'm afraid it ain't so, the flaw is David's play.

I made a big mistake by reading all of the commentaries, telling me how "enlightened" this movie is, that I should look for all kinds of hidden morales, etc. This is the only movie I can remember liking less than I had on the previous viewings. Guess what?: I didn't find any deep, hidden emotions. I didn't shed one tear, and that's unusual for me...... I now recall that the majority of the commentators were male and all unbiased against gay people, if you can read between their lines. So??? What I found in tonight's viewing was a bunch of men with full faces of make-up - none more "painted" than Ryucihi with OBVIOUS amounts of blush under his already-high cheekbones and some penciling in his temple-hair to almost meet his eyebrows - let's don't even comment on those ! WOW ! black-lined eyes, with the "doe" look; mucho eye-shadow. I admit I had never heard of him - guess you have to be under 30, huh?, to know of his being an "icon" in Japan? Rock star, maybe? I kept waiting for him to smile - pretty face, but he looked constipated all the time. WE ALL know about Bowie - I've seen HIM in full drag. You guys are right: the film does show how brutal the Japanese soldiers were-are (?). Even the Grande Dame de China-novels, Pearl S. Buck, let us know during the Japanese "rape" of China, many of them did prefer young boys. This film did graphically show how small the Japanese soldiers were - Bowie isn't very tall ! Looked like a giant in there. And, the only part of the score I REALLY liked was the hymn all the guys were singing to Bowie..... I did love the cinematography - if it's true, as one person wrote, that all of the scenes were "first-take", that's nearly miraculous. I wasn't the least bit fooled with the excuse Yonoi's samurai buddy, "that man is a devil, he'll spoil your spirit." He was just jealous !!!! More than sword-play in there ! If Yonoi's characterization of Japanese officers were accurate, then I guess he did his role well. Bowie should never have shown those scrawny shoulders, although he played his role well. You're right about the "brother sequences:" didn't mean a thing to the movie. Maybe that's one of the "morales" I should have been looking for. Gosh - I am so disappointed to have to write such a droll commentary. I'm not going to give-up, though - I'm going to watch this movie again - sometimes - and try to love it as much as I did the first time I saw it. 'Spose I was taken with Bowie up-to-his-chin in sand.......I'm taking back my 10......

An excellent movie. The relationship between Celliers and Yonoi brought tears almost to my eyes. The depth and feeling of the movie, moved me enormously, especially the final scenes. The only part I wasn't particularly keen on was of course Bowie as a school boy- that was just strange. However the movie as a whole was a supremely good one, and Bowie excelled himself. I'm not a huge fan of his movies, but here, he became an actor. I saw it at Christmas, and it probably made it for me- the scenes of eating the flower, 'Merry Christmas' and the final scene between Yonoi and Bowie

When this movie first came out, I remember the movie critics were very snippy about David Bowie's apparently "spaced out" performance. In actual fact he demonstrated an ability to genuinely dig deep into a complex emotional pit to produce an incredibly watchable performance. In addition, the casting of Bowie "against type" enables one to see more in Jack Cellier than the typical quiet British War Hero with a tragic past. Just by dint of his being played by Bowie adds a necessary varnish of mysteriousness and removes the possibility of clichéd playing. Ryuichi Sakamoto similarly was able to completely subsume his pop-icon persona into a utterly convincing portrayal of an honourable but damaged Japanese army officer. In my view his is one of the greatest performances by a Japanese actor in an English language film. Scenes between Bowie and Sakamoto are rare, but well worth the wait. Takeshi Kitano (famous Japanese comedian "Beat" Takeshi, more recently a renowned director) brilliantly performs as the typically brutal camp sergeant, and then successfully shows that even this character is not actually all bad: he has a sense of humour; he has a family who miss him. Tom Conti gave one of his finest film performances as the utterly human liaison officer, the Mr Lawrence of the title. Jack Thompson does the bluff British officer (being Australian, perhaps he overdoes the "Now look heah!" accent a little) - and then, at the point of facing a summary execution, he gives out a harrowing, quavering cry, showing the complete collapse of his stiff upper lip. It can be difficult to "get" exactly what this movie is about - Cellier and his hunchback brother? Lawrence trying to keep the peace until all his best efforts appear to result in his own death, and how he handles that? The relationship between Cellier and Yonoi? The point is that as a movie, it really doesn't matter. It's an actors' movie, and the best thing is just to watch the brilliant performances.

Movie distributors are the only business people to get away with false advertising. They are always trying to grab your money by promising one thing and giving you another. They marketed this film, with posters and publicity, as a war movie. I gave them my money, and was fooled again. It's not a war film, it's not even an adventure tale, it's really just a waste of two hours of film footage mainly showing people talking to each other. I can only remember a scene in which David Bowie, as a prisoner in a Japanese POW camp, eats some flowers. The only other thing I recall is that Bowie was not named Lawrence, that was some other character who was equally uninteresting. Usually I can generally remember the storyline of movies I've seen even years ago, but this was similar to watching icicles melt so I kind of dismissed it from my mind.