I remember some DJ night at The Bird when someone ended their set, or played as ‘closing up’ music, Ryuichi Sakamoto’s theme to Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983). I mean, what an all timer piece of music, so ethereal, plaintive, calming, just plain beautiful. And it is kind of bizarre that it is the title track to a movie set in a Japanese POW camp during WW2 in Java, which doesn’t shy away from brutal violence, but the music helps set the film’s enigmatic tone. Directed by Nagisa Oshima (who directed In The Realm Of The Senses), it brings together Sakamoto in his acting debut as the camp commander, Captain Yonoi, who has an increasingly obsessive interest in a new prisoner, Jack Celliers (David Bowie) who consistently defies their rules and is beaten and tortured for such defiance. The other important relationship is Lt Colonel Lawrence (Tom Conti) who speaks fluent Japanese and is the only one at the camp who attempts to understand Japanese culture, expressed in his testy, probing conversations with Sgt Hara (Takeshi Kitano) who doles out harsh beatings and more to the prisoners. It’s an intriguing, unique, very arthouse take on the POW experience with shades of queer desire and a yearning for some sort of transcendental understanding (the final scene moved me to tears). Even Celliars’ defiance is not framed as heroic, revealed to be born of personal guilt and a masochistic need for punishment. There are great shots and framing throughout, particularly when the men are filmed above but at an angle, as if from a balcony, observing them in this locked struggle. Sakamoto and Bowie are both iconic presences, almost a pair of extraterrestrials in orbit of each other; while Conti and Kitano are more down to earth in their back and forth. Kitano particularly gives the most unaffected, naturalistic performance. Recommended. Available to stream on SBS OnDemand.
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