Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence — A Clash of Cultures
Among standard Christmas movie fare beyond the Charlie Browns, red-nosed reindeer, and John McClanes is one particular film that I guarantee very few have seen, yet I always make a point to be a part of my yearly holiday screenings. It is a picture that is the farthest thing away from a well-known classic, but still has some of the most profound messages on the human condition and bonds between men during wartime which have seldom managed to be conveyed in other works with the same type of bizarre, yet endearing charm. This hidden masterpiece a 1984 Japanese-British POW drama called Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.
Based on the actual WWII experiences of Afrikaner author Sir Laurens van der Post, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (also known as Furyo and Senjō no Merī Kurisumasu) deals with the relationships between four men in a Japanese-run POW camp. After Major Jack Celliers (played by a hypnotizing David Bowie in the prime of his good looks), a British soldier with a guilt-ridden past is captured by the Japanese during battle and narrowly avoids execution, he is sent to be a prisoner in Java where he meets Lieutenant Colonel John Lawrence (Tom Conti). Unlike most of the other imprisoned Western men who view their East Asian captors as barbaric savages, Lawrence understands and respects the Japanese, fluently speaking their language due to an extended stay in Japan prior to the war. He acts as an interpreter and liaison, but is at constant odds with his own men who are somewhat suspicious of his true loyalty. The camp is run by Sergeant Hara (Takeshi Kitano) and Captain Yonoi (Ryuichi Sakamoto, also responsible for the film’s score), the former with whom Lawrence forms a peculiar friendship. Yonoi, on the other hand, develops a fixated obsession with Celliers, but is unable to properly express his attraction due to the rigid conformity of his position and firm belief in the samurai bushido code. Between the Japanese and the POWs, tension steadily grows each day, inevitably exploding into chaos.
The plot is a loose adaptation from the book The Seed and the Sower, a trilogy of three short stories that were directly inspired by van der Post’s own time as a POW in Indonesia. Like John Lawrence, he spoke Japanese (or at least had enough of a basic grasp of it) to form some semblance of a cordial relationship with his captors to spare the lives of himself and his men upon being taken prisoner in Java. Following the conclusion of WWII, he took an active role in mediating relations between Indonesian politicians and Dutch colonial authorities after the Japanese left the country. In his birthplace of South Africa, van der Post was a staunch activist against apartheid and contributed important anthropological coverage of its indigenous tribes, while also becoming the godfather to Prince William later in life.
Although certainly having an undeniably colorful career, much of van der Post’s actual achievements have been called into question by recent scholarship, and it is generally agreed upon that his talents were better suited to writing fiction over accurately chronicling his real-life exploits. Other controversies such as an ugly incident of him impregnating and abandoning a 14-year-old girl permanently soiled the man’s reputation. Like Salinger, Dickens, and Golding, however, it is difficult to deny the skills van der Post had as a storyteller even if the man himself was no saint.
Such lengthy context is necessary for understanding the far-reaching international origins of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. I am likely one of the few who has seen the film and actually read the original source material for comparison, the latter of which is not as easily available due to the relative modern obscurity of van der Post. I can personally attest to its lyricism and haunting prose as an underrated work of literature, both of which were left largely intact for this film adaptation even if the entirety of its contents are not present. The horrors of Japanese POW camps are well-known, but van der Post was a rare breed of writer able to paradoxically describe such places with a precise hand of beauty and splendor.
One would understandably wonder what this narrative has to do with Christmas apart from its cinematic title. I would personally make the case that, while not the entire focus of the plot, its relation to the season is far more relevant than the likes of Die Hard or Batman Returns which only use it as an incidental backdrop. The traditional view of Christmas is that of a time to celebrate family, bonds, and forgiveness, while establishing peace with one another. War is the exact opposite of this, an inescapable part of humanity and the culmination of strongly-held ideological and political differences. How these concepts interact with one another is made readily apparent with the example of the Christmas truce between France and Germany, which was a temporary ceasefire made in the early years of WWI in the spirit of the holiday.
Similarly, a “Christmas truce” is one of the many undertones of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence which depicts an intense hatred between East and West that was arguably much more hostile than any conflict European or American powers had previously among themselves. While Japanese culture enjoys much popularity and even admiration from outsiders in modern times, this could not have been more different during the Second World War. Racism and mutual antagonism were so high that neither Allied military forces nor the Imperial Japanese Army were interested in taking prisoners; most combat soldiers were simply killed on the spot. The Japanese in particular dismissed the few they captured as less than human, viewing it to be a source of great shame to not have been killed fighting for one’s convictions on the battlefield instead. As a result, Western-created international laws such as the Geneva Convention within Japanese-run POW camps were largely ignored.
For one moment only, Christmas Day, Takeshi Kitano’s character Sgt. Hara pardons John Lawrence and Jack Celliers who are about to executed for having been wrongfully accused of smuggling a radio into the camp. It’s an unforgettable scene of Kitano playing a violent thug turned laughably childish in a fit of drunken stupor (and very much in line with what would be a long career of similarly dualistic roles), but more importantly one that shows the absurdities of “unquestionable” authority whose decisions end up being arbitrary. In an otherwise dismal state of affairs, both sides grab the brief chance to make temporary peace with one another before an inevitable return to hostilities. It’s only one scene among a plethora of others that shows just how emotionally resonate the film can be with its audience, being neither overly-sentimental or disingenuous in calling for an attempt of mutual understanding between Japan and the West.
One cannot talk about Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, however, without discussing the sensibilties of its director Nagisa Oshima. Like contemporaries Akira Kurosawa and Masaki Kobayashi, the rebel director was an unrelenting critic of aspects of his own country he found hypocritical and restricting. Night and Fog in Japan was arguably his first success at establishing notoriety, an angry work that directly explored the dynamic of idealistic student activism against establishment authority. Another political picture, Death by Hanging, garnered international acclaim with its exploration of Japan’s system of capital punishment and historical oppression of Korean minorities. Oshima’s magnum opus of controversy was the 1976 erotic drama In Realm of the Senses that blurred the line between art and pornography. Based off true events where a Japanese prostitute killed and castrated her own lover, it contained unsimulated sex acts performed by the main cast and had to be edited under the guise of a French production to avoid being confiscated by the Japanese authorities. An uncensored print to this day has never been screened in Japan, though it is available for viewing outside of the country.
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence was created with a far wider audience in mind and is perhaps the director’s most accessible movie. The film’s British producer Jeremy Thomas would become a noted industry figure in distributing Asian cinema to Western audiences; later with Oshima’s samurai drama picture Taboo, Takeshi Kitano’s international crime thriller Brother, Bernardo Bertolucci’s epic biopic The Last Emperor, and Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins and Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai. In the development process of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, Oshima aimed to show both sides of World War II equally, claiming that he was the first Japanese director to do so.
Despite taking place in Java, the film was shot on the Polynesian island of Rarotonga, with some other parts in New Zealand and the UK. Although Oshima commissioned a large set to be built for the POW camp, only a few parts of it were actually used in the film. Takes were seldom repeated, and all footage was sent to Japan through standard mail. One would perhaps think that Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence has all the workings of a cheaply made B-grade film given its economical production, but the results prove much differently. Oshima’s direction is raw, bare, and devoid of anything unnecessary or distracting. What is shown instead is an electrifyingly shot film that leaves maximum emotional impact with its desolate prisoner camp scenery.
This is further exemplified by Ryuichi Sakamoto’s atmospheric synthesizer score. Like Vangelis’ Blade Runner, this is perhaps one of the finest electronic soundtracks to ever grace cinema. Coming off from Yellow Magic Orchestra, arguably Japan’s most popular electronic rock band of the 1980s, Sakamoto was on top of his game and the film’s main theme would go down as one of his most popular compositions, being covered and sampled many times by various artists. It would later provide the basis for the vocal piece “Forbidden Colours,” exceptionally sung David Sylvian and sharing the title of Yukio Mishima’s novel of the same name. There is a high chance that even those who have never heard of or seen the film have at least heard its memorable theme.
The most enduring element of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence is its all-star cast who carry the intricate relationships between the film’s four key characters. British rock star David Bowie is wildly unpredictable as Jack Celliers, proving that he was more than a capable actor when given the right material. Throughout he is stoic and straight-faced, unwilling to yield to the enemy, yet at the drop of the hat will taunt his captors with sheer eccentricity and borderline insanity. It is a role that most probably would never have expected from Bowie, and I find it a shame that during his entertainment career he was not given more opportunities to play similar dramatic roles. Regardless, Bowie is probably the film’s major selling point and the reason why it has not faded into total obscurity. Although he is advertised as the main character for obvious star power reasons, viewers will realize that John Lawrence is the true focus.
Tom Conti is the straight foil to Bowie’s wildness, and the two actors complement each other perfectly. He offers warmth and compassion to van der Post’s Lawrence, while smoothly delivering his phonetically practiced Japanese lines with confident ease despite not actually knowing a word of the language. Conti himself has a long career in cinema, though is more well-known for his theater work and is still widely acclaimed today. American viewers will likely remember him for appearing in The Dark Knight Rises as the prisoner who fixes Bruce Wayne’s back in Bane’s prison, but I think his Academy Award-nominated performance for the titular character of the criminally obscure comedy Reuben, Reuben is a far better example of his acting range.
Regarding the Japanese performers, composer Ryuichi Sakamoto undertakes double duty in playing Captain Yonoi. As mentioned before, Sakamoto was part of the Yellow Magic Orchestra, arguably David Bowie’s equivalent in Japan at the time. Seeing the world’s biggest rock stars from opposite sides of the globe perhaps unintentionally parallels the film’s idea of culture clash. Even the acting shows this. The Western players are withdrawn and more “realistically” performed, while the Japanese are over-the-top and wrought with emotion. Critics like Roger Ebert who were not enthusiastic with the film upon initial release cited this difference as jarring, but I personally view it as yet another part of its exploration of cultural differences on a meta-level. Oshima made it a point to let the British actors handle their performances with as much freedom as possible and this is to me is what allows Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence to be authentic with its depictions of both sides. Sakamoto was not a fan of his own performance due to his stilted English delivery, but such imperfections are anything but an unnatural aspect for a film so heavily interspersed with cultural and linguistic barriers.
Takeshi Kitano rounds off the cast with his unforgettable role of Sergeant Hara, switching between humane and sadistic on a dime. At this point in his career, Kitano had built up unexpected success with his manzai comedy routines and increasingly regular television appearances. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, however, was one of his first serious roles in a major film and attempts at international stardom; Oshima described his character as having, “the naïveté, the shyness of a young child” (Sato, Criterion Collection). A close-up of his round face is the image that both opens and closes the film, yet the context between both shots shows a considerable transformation of Hara’s character. Thanks to precise direction of Kitano’s performance, Oshima fully has the audience’s emotions within his grasp by the end and hits them at full force with a powerhouse conclusion that few ever will forget long after the credits are over.
While not on the level as something akin to Schindler’s List or Saving Private Ryan, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence has still been called a “brutal” picture by many. In response to this, Tom Conti affirmed that the violence shown is never without purpose, nor is it gratuitous: “It’s violent, but not gory. There’s more gore on evening television… [Oshima] lets you use your imagination” (Conti, Criterion Collection). Indeed, the on-screen violence proves to be only one aspect of the film’s raw emotional power. The fact that Oshima insisted on only shooting parts of the extensively built sets for the POW camp is a testament to the “hidden” being a more effective force than the “seen” at times. The psychology of these characters felt by the audience alone establishes a constant foreboding sense of tragedy and desolation which is a far more effective approach than simply stating such feelings outright.
Contrasting this to the explicitness of In Realm of the Senses which was nothing short of the frankest look on the limits of raw sexuality between human beings, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence is far more subdued. David Bowie praised the screenplay for how much it hinted at the homoerotic connection between Celliers and Yonoi by intentionally leaving the true meaning ambiguous. The Japanese captain is tormented for not being able to stay with his fellow soldiers during a 1936 coup d’état in Tokyo, while Celliers is ridden with guilt due to betraying his younger brother, as shown in an extended flashback sequence which is among the film’s most powerful moments. It is only John Lawrence who knows the full background of these two men, despite them feeling an undeniable connection with one another. Is Yonoi attracted to Celliers only on a physical level? Or is it more of a spiritual link? Was such an attraction a futile and misguided notion in the first place? Oshima is far too clever to leave anything concrete and thus leaves the audience to decide what to take from his works.
Following its theatrical run and successful showing at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence surprisingly faded away soon after its release. It is occasionally stumbled upon by die-hard fans of David Bowie and Takeshi Kitano, but for the most part is unknown, only remaining in the minds of a very minuscule cult following. Its most lasting legacy lies within its main theme music, listened to by millions both at home and abroad who are unaware of the deep and profoundly moving cinematic work it was originally written for. While generally enjoyed by those who happen to discover it, more cynical critics have called the picture a dead-ringer for David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai, a comparison I never quite understood as the two have next to nothing to do with one another apart from being about POWs in a Japanese-run camp. More modern war films like The Railway Man and Unbroken have dealt with similar themes, but with nowhere near the same degree of subtlety or nuance that Oshima brought forth.
In 2010, The Criterion Collection re-released the film with a painstakingly restored high definition transfer, along with the label’s usual deluxe treatment of including a booklet with essays and numerous video interviews related to the production. Some hoped that this would renew interest, but to not much avail. Even the 2013 passing of Nagisa Oshima did little to raise awareness of this sorely underrated picture. David Bowie unexpectedly died in 2016 which led to a very brief spike in home video sales, but it barely received any further press notices and was eclipsed with his better known roles in films like Labyrinth and The Prestige. Ryuichi Sakamoto still regularly performs the theme due to popular demand, but he clearly considers it to be a less meaningful work than his other compositions and has few good things to say about his acting. Takeshi Kitano does not discuss it at all as he has no interest in his early roles, while Tom Conti will occasionally speak nostalgically of the production when asked. In short, everyone has moved on to bigger things. With such a high-profile Japanese director and A-list international talent, it will always remain a tragedy that Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence never earned the mainstream popularity it deserved, either as a Christmas film or a rightful classic of the war genre.
Sources:
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. Director: Nagisa Oshima. Performers: Tom Conti, David Bowie, Takeshi Kitano, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jack Thompson. Criterion Collection, 1983. Film.
Oshima, Nagisa. “Oshima: Sex, Militarism, and Empire.” Interview by Tadao Sato. Reprinted in the Criterion Collection, 1983: 12–20. Print.
The Oshima Gang: The Making of “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.” Performers: Nagisa Oshima, Tom Conti, David Bowie, Jeremy Thomas. Re-released in the Criterion Collection, 1983. Documentary.
