Chip Kaufmann’s Pick:
Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983)
While I was watching The Railway Man (see my review this issue), I was struck by how similar it was to a Japanese-English film that I had seen a number of years ago. That movie was Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence from 1983 and it starred Tom Conti and David Bowie. The film has just been released on Blu-Ray & DVD by Criterion and is readily available for viewing.
Both films feature British P.O.W.s in Japanese camps and both are initially told from the commanding officer’s point-of-view. They also focus on an individual soldier and his effect on his Japanese captors and what happens to him and them as a result of that.
Tom Conti plays John Lawrence, a British officer living in Japan when World War II breaks out. He is fluent in Japanese and acts as a go between for the prisoners. One of them, Major Jack Celliers (David Bowie), is rebellious and is hiding a secret from his past.
The two Japanese principals are Captain Yonoi the camp commandant (Ryuici Sakamoto who also did the film’s haunting soundtrack) and Sergeant Hara (Takeshi Kitano) who is responsible for enforcing discipline. Naturally David Bowie’s character gets more than his fair share but why?
Gradually the lives of the four men intersect more and more leading to some powerful personal revelations and ultimate tragedy as those revelations play out and the culture clash between the Japanese and the British become more pronounced.
Unlike The Railway Man which shifts back and forth between the past and present, Lawrence takes place in only one time frame as we watch the story unfold. An epilogue takes place one year after the war when Lawrence visits Sgt. Hara in prison and they reminisce about what happened there.
While not as harrowing as Railway Man, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence is still a powerful film with a potent ending before the epilogue. If you were gripped by the former then you need see the latter. The reverse is also true.
Michelle Keenan’s Pick:
Dead Man (1995)
Enthused by Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive this month, I thought it only fitting to pick a another Jarmusch film. Jarmusch’s 1995 film Dead Man is an old and eccentric favorite of mine. Knowing I was going to see Jarmusch’s latest film this month, I was compelled to revisit this macabre and darkly offbeat but also darkly comic little film.
It had also been almost twenty years since I’d seen the film, and I wondered if it would be as disturbing to me today as it had been when I first saw it. As I suspected, it was not as disturbing. I’m sure this is in part due to age, and in part due to the desensitization of our viewing culture (e.g. what we see on television in thirty minutes of AMC’s The Walking Dead is far more brutal than what we used to see in the cinema). One thing Dead Man did do twenty years later is still provoke discussion.
Dead Man takes place in late 19th century. Johnny Depp is William Blake, a naïve, young accountant heading to the outskirts of the frontier where he thinks he’s secured a position with a factory. The film’s brilliant opening sequence takes place on the train on his journey west and it sets the tone for the movie. We see what William Blake sees and with each leg of the journey the passengers become less and less civilized looking until he is surrounded by a carriage-full of pelt wearing, tobacco spitting trappers and buffalo hunters.
When he arrives in the town of Machine, Blake is met with a culturally depraved rough and tumble world of which he has no understanding. Adding insult to injury, there’s no job waiting for him. At this point, he becomes inadvertently entangled in a love triangle, which leaves him wounded and left for dead, if not for the help of an Indian (Gary Farmer).
The Indian named ‘Nobody’ thinks William is the great poet by the same name. Nobody is as much of a misfit among his own people as William is in the Wild West. Until he meets Nobody, William is apparently unaware of his famous namesake. Ironically the less civilized world they find themselves in and the dawning industrial age paint a picture the opposite of Blake’s words (which Nobody recites often).
Dead Man is filmed in black and white and filled with remarkably bizarre and colorful characters. Robert Mitchum delivers his last performance as the factory owner and Lance Henriksen is memorable as a grisly, cannibalistic bounty hunter. The supporting cast also includes John Hurt, Gabriel Byrne, Michael Wincott, Iggy Pop and Jared Harris. Jarmusch’s photography and imagery is wonderfully striking. Neil Young’s score drones ominously in the background permeating every ounce of the story and complimenting Jarmusch’s efforts perfectly.
Dead Man is not your run-of-the-mill movie or video rental material, but that’s what makes it worth your time.
