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| 20th Century Fox Brazil | Release Date: September 2, 1983 |
Starring:
Alistair Browning, Chris Broun, David Bowie, Jack Thompson, James Malcolm, Johnny Ohkura, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Takeshi Kitano, Tom Conti, Yûya Uchida
Summary:
During W.W. II, a British colonel tries to bridge the cultural divides between a British P.O.W. and the Japanese camp commander in order to avoid blood-shed.
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A prisoner-of-war drama as fever dream, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence fascinates mostly for the hit-and-miss alchemy of its discordant elements: in performance, pop-star charisma versus British actorliness; in narrative style, genre expectations coming up against modernist psychosexual undercurrents.
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From Oshima’s later career (after one stroke, he made 1999’s Taboo; after two strokes, it’s unclear whether he’ll direct again), most notable is this bilingual, end-of-WWII tearjerker about forgiveness and understanding between cultures, which could have been dubbed The Man Who Fell to Java.
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Oshima, the director who was once celebrated for the elaborately scandalous eroticism of In the Realm of the Senses, is here merely impenetrable -- though whatever it is that Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence is about, Oshima does seem to mean it. [30 Sep 1983, p.D2]
The elliptical narrative centers on the unspoken erotic attraction between Sakamoto and Bowie, and Oshima appears to be treating ideas of elegantly transmogrified, purified emotions, yet the context and frequent incontinence of the execution bring the film uncomfortably close to the pseudophilosophical bondage fantasies of Yukio Mishima.
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The less-than-original theme is illuminated with grace and insight, with sensuality and spirituality, and Oshima stumbles only twice. Unfortunately, the missteps are major. [16 Sep 1983]
It's like nothing you've seen before. Yet, over all, the story it tells seems predictable, secondhand, and its "profound" revelations hackneyed. [12 Sep 1983, p.88]
Jun 26, 2021
For many years I wanted to see this movie, and it turns out that the hype and its fame were much greater than the results delivered.
Excellent performance by David Bowie. And Ryuichi Sakamoto's music is marvelous, but there's not much else to rescue here that is worth mentioning.
Excellent performance by David Bowie. And Ryuichi Sakamoto's music is marvelous, but there's not much else to rescue here that is worth mentioning.
1 of 1 users found this helpful10
Jun 29, 2021
1 of 2 users found this helpful11
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