This quip scratches at the contradictions in the relationship between Celliers and Captain Yonoi. “It’s okay, everything’s all right,” gasps Celliers, as he hoists Lawrence over his shoulder. “Jack, the tube line doesn’t come up this far,” Lawrence wryly mumbles. Celliers frees him and says they’re getting out of there. A fellow officer in the British Army, Lawrence (Tom Conti) speaks fluent Japanese and often acts as a bridge between the powers that be and the prisoners in the camp. In the scene in question, Celliers finds the man he was calling out for tied to a post and delirious. The movie hinges on the complex ways in which these two men see each other. The POW camp is run by Captain Yonoi, an officer in the Imperial Japanese Army, portrayed by Sakamoto in his debut role as both an actor and film composer. The would-be escapee is Major Jack Celliers, a South African officer in the British Army, played by David Bowie. The film is set in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Java, Indonesia, during World War II, and was inspired by the books of a former prisoner who had endured life in such a camp. Much of what is communicated in director Nagisa Oshima’s 1983 Merry Christmas Mr. This is the middle section of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “The Seed and the Sower.” It tells us danger is close, but there is tenderness to be found, too. Over and over, he calls out as loudly as he dares, “ Lawrence!”Ī haunted arpeggio atop a bed of synthesized strings underscores the delicacy of the situation. A man in army fatigues runs from an open-air cell with a rolled-up rug in one hand and a sword in the other, stolen from someone who just tried to kill him. With simmering performances (including a young Takeshi Kitano as a mercurial Sergeant), stunning images, and a transcendent film score, director Nagisa Oshima crafts a hauntingly beautiful testament to the power of the human condition in resistance, inviting us to ponder what we might gain from crossing the boundaries that define hostility with open hearts instead of closed fists.In the blue moonlight of a humid December night, an escape is underway. Cultures, classes, and identities collide as a seductive battle of wills unfolds between Celliers and the camp commandant, Captain Yonoi (played by the film's composer Ryuichi Sakamoto). The precarious balance of life in the camp is challenged by the arrival of Major Jack Celliers (David Bowie in a gloriously angelic role), a defiant British officer whose rebellious spirit threatens to ignite the tense atmosphere like a powder keg. **Free Admission for Music Box Theatre Members**Īt a prisoner of war camp in the Pacific, Japanese guards and allied prisoners struggle with and against one another to maintain dignity, sanity, and physical survival under brutal conditions.
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