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Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983)
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Reviews Counted:16
Fresh:12
Rotten:4
Average Rating:6.1/10
Runtime: 2 hrs 4 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Transferred from a military prison in Batavia, a British major is sentenced to a Japanese prison camp on Java in 1942. There, he clashes psychologically, culturally and physically with the camp's... Transferred from a military prison in Batavia, a British major is sentenced to a Japanese prison camp on Java in 1942. There, he clashes psychologically, culturally and physically with the camp's commander who is, in truth, infatuated with him. Despite the harshness of life in the camp, the major, along with fellow prisoner, John Lawrence, gain an understanding and hard-won respect for the Japanese code of honor. [More]
Starring: David Bowie, Tom Conti, Takeshi Kitano, Jack Thompson
Starring: David Bowie, Tom Conti, Takeshi Kitano, Jack Thompson, Ryuichi Sakamoto
Director: Nagisa Oshima
Director: Nagisa Oshima
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Reviews for Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
The Merry Christmas catalogue of atrocities finally becomes numbing, even ludicrous.
From Oshima's later career... 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.
David Bowie is outstanding as the defiant British prisoner whose erotic appeal undoes the Japanese commandant, played by Sakamoto, who was at the height of his fame as a musical icon in Japan
For all the praise heaped upon Oshima's admittedly ambitious film about East-West relations in the microcosm of a Japanese PoW camp during World War II, it's far less satisfactory than most of his earlier work.
Mr. Oshima has staged the film in a spacious tropical setting and filled it with a great number of extras. Even so, Mr. Bowie always stands out from the crowd.
Fine performances by Conti, Takeshi (brilliant in his first dramatic role), Sakamoto (a Japanese pop star in his film acting debut who also contributed the memorable score), and Bowie enhance this provocative film.
The context and frequent incontinence of the execution bring the film uncomfortably close to the pseudophilosophical bondage fantasies of Yukio Mishima.
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 45% 45% | Ice Age: Dawn of the D… |
| 19% 19% | Transformers: Revenge … |
| 55% 55% | Orphan |
| 43% 43% | The Proposal |
| 26% 26% | Land of the Lost |
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 98% 98% | Up |
| 88% 88% | Ballast |
| 67% 67% | The Merry Gentleman |
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