Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence

Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) is a film beyond like or dislike, an object that I find it hard to imagine releasing in theaters. On the one hand, it boasts two pop sensations from two continents (David Bowie and Takeshi Kitano). On the other, it’s the homoerotic tale of torture and cultural misunderstanding in a Japanese POW camp during WWII. The camp commandant Yonoi (Ryuichi Sakamoto) wears make-up and practices swordplay (very loudly, I might add). David Bowie, by contrast, looks barer and more cornfed than ever.

Sakamoto of Yellow Magic Orchestra fame also composed the score, which is probably the most unambiguously affecting part of the movie. The minimalistic synth tracks complement, rather than undermine, the sweltering jungle environments and crowded prisoner barracks.

The rest plays out unlike any POW film I’ve ever seen. Jack Celliers (David Bowie) is a committed British Army major out of India who stands accused of fomenting indigenous resistance to the Japanese occupation of what is now Indonesia. Yonoi stands up for him at trial and convinces the authorities to commute his execution. But why? Sexual tension seems one reason, though the movie never quite goes there. There also exists, as best I can tell, a species of mutual warrior’s respect between the two men, or at least from Yonoi directed at Celliers.

Sergeant Hara (Takeshi Kitano), Yonoi’s subordinate, mixes sadism with mutual understanding, especially when it comes to the camp translator, Lt. Col. John Lawrence (Tom Conti). While not the center of the film, Lawrence seems to be its key, as the title suggests. By osmosis and in a manner that we human beings seem only able to pull off when pushed together, he attempts to make life livable in the camp. To the Japanese, he is a British stooge, while to his own people he makes excuses for Japanese brutality.

Seppuku, samurai ritual suicide, stands as the most glaring example of this bind. Lawrence and Hara fight endlessly about whether it is better to take one’s life or submit to capture. Lawrence, not yet dead, is perfectly happy as a prisoner, at least more so than as a corpse. His willingness, however, to explain the custom with reverence and dignity makes his superior suspicious of him.

The world, alas, cannot quite sustain the bridge Lawrence wants to build. I suppose that’s why the film left me so unsure of what I felt. There’s beauty in human understanding, even when the circumstances are brutal, disgusting, and cruel. But that understanding is always transitory, produced by time and place. In the end, the Allied victory leaves the world a happier place. But these characters will never be the same; their experiences will force them apart and the understanding, what little could take root to begin with, will die.

Unease. That’s what I felt and maybe still feel—unease at the frailty and ephemerality of human life, its victories, its cruelties, and its foibles.