Review Essay
There will be other films in this blog project that I describe as more intense, serious, or challenging than what we think of on average as a “holiday movie”, but I can’t emphasize enough: Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence is the most difficult movie to watch of anything I’ve seen in this very loosely defined genre, and while I think the film has a lot to recommend it, I don’t particularly encourage you to watch it at this time of year. Though maybe you’re looking for something unexpected, and if so, this movie (starting with its innocent, seemingly cheerful title) is a real bait and switch from the get-go in a way that’s undeniably compelling and also deeply unsettling.
The movie orbits around a small handful of men encountering one another in a Japanese POW camp in World War II. Our primary characters are Japanese officers who show varying levels of compassion and cruelty to the prisoners in their charge, and British prisoners who show varying levels of capacity to understand and communicate with their captors. I do hear you asking, “James, you’re sure this is a Christmas movie?” But yeah, it is, on some level — the title’s no throwaway, at least. Maybe the movie’s most surprising act of mercy occurs on Christmas Day, with a character explicitly identifying his reasoning as being connected to the holiday. And the phrase “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence,” is spoken not once but twice: the gap between those two moments in every respect, from power dynamic to emotional intent to camera angle and edit, is huge and meaningful, with the line’s second appearance coinciding with the film’s final scene and argument. Die Hard is a Christmas movie, after all, but where that action film revels in the more traditional Hollywood use of stylized and sanitized violence to provide a palette from which the hero can paint, this arthouse war movie devotes itself to an unflinching and grim depiction of what violence really looks like, especially when the object of violence is essentially powerless to resist. If Christmas is about redemption, about hope, about light shining in the dark, this movie seems to say, what is it about humanity that needs those things — what is it about humanity that strives to oppose them?
I wouldn’t want anyone to go into this film without being forewarned, too — a lot of its interest is in masculinity (especially mid-20th century Japanese ideas about masculinity) and therefore the film often depicts both homeroticism and homophobia, with crude and cruel violence done to men who are apparently in violation of its code. It might easily seem to the viewer like it’s a condescending white Euro-American attack on Japan, since a lot of the script puts critique of Japanese society in the mouths of the British prisoners. But this is a film co-written and directed by a Japanese film-maker, Nagisa Oshima, who was known for his daring and sometimes controversial films that criticized what he saw in society around him — in other words, what we’re seeing is a Japanese man’s film about his own nation, and the world he grew up in, as he understood it. When the movie knocks arguments about “honor” or the idea that suicide by sword (which we see, vividly and graphically, on screen) might be the only way to restore one’s manhood and dignity, this is Oshima’s arm taking the swing.
But this isn’t just a film about Japan. Oshima (and his collaborators) have infused it with a lot of things — David Bowie (at perhaps the height of his considerable physical charisma) plays the main character of Jack Celliers with so much pathos that it’s not hard at all to see the Christ imagery that surrounds him (starting with those “J.C.” initials), including being chained in a crucifixion pose at one point, and later in the film engaging in a dialogue with the camp’s commander, Yonoi, that so deeply parallels the confrontation between Jesus and the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, that this started to feel more like an Easter film than a Christmas movie. There are other moments of Christ imagery, too, that I think would spoil too much to mention here. And, to consider another of its angles, so much of the film is interested in power — the “commanding officer” of the British POWs is a man named Hicksley, but he cannot speak Japanese while another POW, the titular Mr. Lawrence, can. Which means that when there are delicate matters to discuss or negotiate, it’s often Lawrence talking with Commander Yonoi, or Sergeant Hara, and not Hicksley. Or, to take another example, it’s obvious from the moment we see Yonoi meet Jack Celliers that the Japanese officer nearly collapses with desire at the sight of a man that lovely. So, when Yonoi tries to assert his (very real) power over Celliers as the camp’s senior military official, and Celliers starts to realize how dangerous it would be for Yonoi to be discovered as gay (and, too, how much Yonoi wants on some level to protect and even win over Celliers)? In either of these situations, who’s actually in control?
I’ve said a lot about the film and yet I intentionally haven’t revealed much about it — there’s a lot packed into the relatively brief days depicted in the movie, and I wouldn’t want to spoil it for someone ready for the intensity it offers. As a guy raised on somewhat less realistic and more “plucky” POW movies from the mid-20th Century, I went into this viewing experience expecting something with a little more humor, more moments of triumph. But even the movie’s kindnesses and mercies are tinged with loss and fear. As were the war’s, I expect, for the men who on both sides were called upon to do violence to one another. Those moments of gentle connection are still there, though — if you are ready for the film’s violence and for the characters’ often callous treatment of gay men, all through it I think there are instances of real compassion and insight. Whatever we want to argue the “Christmas message” is, I think it cannot be too far from this film’s central claims about the corruptibility of power, about the idea that love is more enduring than the forces that seek to blot it out, about the possibility for mercy and the power it wields. That’s why, to me, this movie belongs here, and why, though I would never advise someone to add it to their Christmas mix, its words and images loom in the shadows of these long winter nights for me, in ways that I think do add meaningfully to my thinking about why humans make these festivals of light on the darkest days of our year.
I Know That Face: Jack Thompson (who here plays the British POWs’ commanding officer, Hicksley) later appears as Bandy in 2007’s December Boys, a film set on a Christmas vacation trip for four orphans in the Australian outback. And of course David Bowie (the charismatic Jack Celliers, here) is closely associated with Christmas for many of us from his performance singing “The Little Drummer Boy” on television with Bing Crosby in 1977. But we may also remember Bowie from another holiday context, since it’s his filmed introduction that appeared before the incredibly lovely animated short film The Snowman when it was shown to American audiences (in 1982, the year prior to this film’s release), replacing the introduction offered to British viewers by Raymond Briggs, the author of the original picture book that the film’s based on (since apparently it was assumed Americans wouldn’t know or care about Briggs).
That Takes Me Back: Nothing here really takes me back anywhere, thank goodness: the few scenes in this film that occur outside a POW camp depict similarly abusive/oppressive spaces, and there wasn’t anything really for me to hang my hat on for nostalgia. I was reminded, at times, of conversations with my WWII veteran grandfather, who served in the Pacific, and whose most haunted memories were of the liberation of POW camps at the end of the war. But that’s not really what this category is for.
I Understood That Reference: A drunken Japanese officer’s act of mercy is, he says, his way of playing “Father Christmas” — a strange twist on a familiar childhood image, and one that I think heightens my sense that Christmas means something to the filmmaker, Oshima, that he is trying to work with as a part of this film’s thematic material.
Holiday Vibes (0.5/10): I mean, again, I think if we pay close attention, on a deep level there’s a message here that’s resonant with the holiday. But I have to be honest: the movie’s violence is so gutting and gripping that it’s very hard to have that experience in the moment — if you want a movie with holiday vibes, this ain’t it.
Actual Quality (8.5/10): I wouldn’t call this a lost masterpiece (as some do), but the film is extraordinarily powerful for much of its running time. I think there are moments where the sequence of events (and their causation) is a little too murky, and I think fundamentally it loses its way a little bit in the final 5-10 minutes — even though I like some individual lines at the closing, overall I think the movie wants to argue it’s made a case that I don’t think it really has. But the acting and the music are really tremendously successful, and a lot of the writing and direction lives up to that standard. If you’d normally watch an intense arthouse movie from the 1980s, I think this one should definitely go on your list of things to consider.
Party Mood-Setter? I mean, you saw what I wrote earlier, I’m guessing, about how the movie depicts a man committing suicide by sword on screen? If you’re throwing a party that this would set the tone for, just playing in the background, I don’t want to be invited.
Plucked Heart Strings? Truthfully, yes, assuming you can hang in there with the movie: the fate of more than one of its characters is both bleak and heart-wrenching, but I think no one’s final outcome is devoid of meaning (that is, this isn’t just suffering for suffering’s sake). If you’re watching this, you’d want to be ready for a real emotional ride.
Recommended Frequency: To be totally honest, I doubt I will be in the mood for this any holiday season: it’s just too far from where I want to go with my December media consumption. But I might watch this film again, since I think it’s undeniably well made. It’s just very grim, and I would be really selective about when I watched it and who I watched it with. Speaking to you, though, if you’ve time and attention enough for it right now and it’s calling you on some level, as I said above, there’s a Christmas narrative here, mostly subtext and very challenging. And if it doesn’t sound like the kind of film you can stomach, I get it, and this blog is fortunately full of all sorts of alternative options!
If you decide to take on the intensity of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, the only ways to stream it that I know of are either to be a subscriber to the Criterion Channel or else to rent it from Amazon Prime. The folks at Amazon will also sell you the movie on disc. Honestly, I push libraries all the time, but this particular movie is maybe most readily available from us librarians — Worldcat says well over 500 libraries hold it on disc, including (I bet) a public library somewhere near you.
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