Ôshima on UK BluRay: MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE (1983) review

For a film adapted from a semi-autobiographical novel by a writer who lived an incredibly storied life - and adapted by a near thirty-year veteran director, at that - Nagisa Oshima's famous Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence doesn't seem to reflect much of their collective wisdom. Set in a World War II prison camp for the Allied forces who surrendered to the Japanese after the invasion of Java, Merry Christmas is the story of Jack Celliers (David Bowie), a British commando (and stand-in for the novelist Laurens van der Post). Once Celliers is transferred to the camp John Lawrence (Tom Conti), an interpreter, realises the other man's arrival threatens to disrupt the fragile peace he's trying to maintain between the prisoners and their Japanese overseers. But the new commander Captain Yoroi (composer Ryuichi Sakamoto) is obsessed with Celliers, and his motivations only look to tear the rift between captors and captives open even further.

This is a film that ought to be continually on a knife edge; the allied troops continually aware the Japanese could happily kill them on a whim, unable to speak their minds or otherwise express themselves without risking being tortured or executed in return, yet far too much of Merry Christmas feels weirdly reserved. Worse, when characters' passions boil over more often than not it's presented in the kind of didactic, reductive "Japanese people be crazy" platitudes that would suggest the author had never met anyone who'd even been to Japan. There's still plenty to enjoy about it; David Bowie has rarely been much of an actor but he substitutes with rock star presence just fine, and the rest of the cast play off him effectively enough, particularly Takeshi Kitano in his breakout serious role. But the constant air of stiff upper lip simply doesn't convince us this is a matter of life and death, and Merry Christmas suffers for it.

It's not that the film is overstuffed, but both Oshima (who co-wrote the screenplay) and his cast seem to struggle with juggling the different plot threads. Veering between Powell & Pressburger, savage beatings, drawing-room farce and wartime bravado gives the production a slightly schizophrenic air, and - minor spoilers for some, perhaps - the Japanese and Western actors seem to be approaching the theme of homosexual desire from markedly different directions. Oshima had already explored the idea of what transgressive or uninhibited sexuality meant in traditional Japanese society with Diary of a Shinjuku Thief and In the Realm of the Senses, along with the price of closeting these impulses. Sakamoto and Kitano plainly treat it as serious business, but Conti seems bizarrely evasive given this is something influencing whether he lives or dies, and Bowie seems torn between playing up his otherworldly androgyny and backing away from it.

On that note, Merry Christmas was Oshima's first English feature and the director pushes the basic subtexts - those visual cues less dependent on language - like a man worried he's out of his depth. The central unrequited love between Yoroi and Celliers is part of it; Celliers' military trial is almost painful to watch in places, the Japanese actors struggling with their English and Oshima indulging in a comical zoom on Sakamoto's face so blatantly obvious he might as well have dropped a rose-tinted filter over the lens. Sakamoto allegedly doesn't look too fondly on his performance ("I couldn't believe how bad my acting was") but it's certainly not all him - the script swings far too quickly from trembling, wide-eyed obsession to full-blown mania, and never fully explores what it is about this lanky, taciturn war hero that fascinates the Japanese officer so much.

There are moments of quiet, fleeting genius. Bowie is excellent when he asserts himself, using his devil-may-care persona surprisingly effectively to make even the smallest acts of protest seem like the actions of a soldier's soldier. When Conti digs a little deeper than easy British stereotypes and the script hands him dialogue that doesn't trade in tired Orientalist clichés his nervous, jittery reticence becomes genuinely affecting, a man struggling with his powerlessness in the face of death and coping less and less by the day. Oshima's influence is still felt, even if he can't seem to exert full control over the production - despite the recurring view of the Japanese as a race of emotional cripples shackled to a restrictive martial code of honour, Merry Christmas does convey some sense of the madness and futility of war, and its effect on the human psyche (something Van der Post himself applauded).

But none of this ever really sparks to life. There's none of the energy that powered James Clavell's King Rat, another novelist who wrote a fictionalised account of his experiences in a Japanese POW camp and did a far better job of balancing multiple conflicts - between culture, class, race, morality, sexuality and more besides. Merry Christmas is clearly the work of a master director with a talented cast and crew, but a director who's stumbled into unfamiliar territory and a cast who don't really know where he's going. It never gets up on a knife edge - for all the cruelty and melodrama, there's barely any real pain, or any feeling there's ever much at stake. It's telling the one thing about the film that ultimately left the most lasting impression was Sakamoto's gorgeous score. Consider Merry Christmas, Mister Lawrence recommended for anyone who hasn't seen it, but there's simply nothing else here that has the staying power of that famous main theme.

THE DISC:

Available to buy now, the UK edition of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence from Studio Canal UK - previously known as Optimum Films - has been released as one of three Oshima films available on BluRay in the UK for the first time. While far from flawless, it does give the film a reasonable HD presentation with some substantial extras. The disc boots straight from the distributor's logo into the main menu, a simple, stylised animation looping between the three leads' faces. The different sections are easy to navigate. The film has been divided into sixteen chapter stops.

The basic 2.0 stereo soundtrack is adequate (5.1 is also available), though it bears mentioning the majority of the English dialogue in the film is either the Western cast talking softly or the Asian cast reciting their lines phonetically, and both of these can occasionally be very difficult to make out without the volume up. Subtitles are clear, legible and seemingly free from errors, though English subtitles for the Japanese dialogue are fixed and those for the English dialogue apparently cannot be turned on while the film is playing [or at least this could not be done on a Playstation 3].

The picture is good, but far from Studio Canal's best work - the image on this HD transfer varies markedly in quality. Strongly lit scenes have the most definition, and much of the film is appreciably much sharper than a regular DVD, but there is a fair amount of grain throughout (which doesn't seem to be entirely intentional) and although colours seem natural for the most part several night scenes have a weird bloom effect reminiscent of old heavy metal music videos. The disc is clear and watchable throughout, but not remotely demo material.

Extras are fewer than the other Oshima films in this series, but Studio Canal still include a good selection of archival material. The Oshima Gang is a a half-hour Making Of feature dating back to the film's original release. Presented in regular 4:3 with no subtitles, once it's got the expected opening montage out of the way it's a fairly interesting collection of interview clips with the principals (including Laurens van der Post, who was still alive at the time). While a touch scattershot there's still a good amount of interesting trivia here to engage with (it's telling, for example, that Conti knew little about Oshima before agreeing to the film whereas Bowie was a great admirer).

There are two interviews, one with producer Jeremy Thomas and the other with actor and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. Both are fairly quick and dirty pieces (Thomas doesn't even get title cards) but still worth watching. The producer proves an affable subject, laying out his memories of the shoot with succinct, easy charm - his interview was filmed recently enough he reflects with obvious amusement on the novelty of having shot in New Zealand long before Lord of the Rings revolutionised the country's film industry.

Sakamoto is much more reticent; his English has clearly improved a great deal over the years, but he still takes a great deal of time over his answers, speaks very quietly and fidgets uncomfortably every now and then. It's still an interesting summary of his process, and his thoughts on the film, not to mention it's further ammunition with which to argue the two sides of the production weren't really working in harmony - for example when asked for his opinion on the idea of East versus West he insists he never saw the film that way, more as a love story.

An excerpt from "Scenes by the Sea" is fairly perfunctory - this is three minutes talking about Merry Christmas snipped from the documentary on Takeshi Kitano's life and work. While undeniably interesting, and sure to push a few people into looking up the other film, it does smack a little of reaching for something to flesh out the disc. The last extra is the original theatrical trailer, which can be safely skipped - it's fairly clumsy even by the standards of the era and gives away far too many of the key moments.

Ultimately, while Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence stands up fairly well after three decades the film doesn't really live up to the reputation of the talent behind it. There are moments of wonder here, when the script, Nagisa Oshima's direction and the actors' choices dovetail and the film becomes the quiet, wounded reflection on man's inhumanity to man it wants to be, but these vignettes are frustratingly few. Too much of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence is brought down by a lack of real drama and a weird, stereotypically British reserve, where other people have written about the same subjects with far more pathos. Despite what the trailer claims, it's hard to imagine anyone moved to tears by this one. Despite that, Studio Canal UK's BluRay gives the film a solid, if hardly exceptional HD presentation and should prove a satisfying viewing experience for anyone interested.

(Thanks go to Optimum Films/Studio Canal UK and EM Foundation PR for facilitating this review.)