In praise of Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence: David… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

In praise of Mer­ry Christ­mas Mr Lawrence: David Bowie’s fes­tive oddity

21 Dec 2017

Words by Tom Graham

Close-up of a man's face in the sand, furrowed brow and serious expression.
Close-up of a man's face in the sand, furrowed brow and serious expression.
Nag­isa Ôshima’s World War Two-era dra­ma is strange sea­son­al tale.

If films were made by pulling the lever on a fruit machine to gen­er­ate a ran­dom com­bi­na­tion of actors, plot and set­ting, you would occa­sion­al­ly get a hilar­i­ous freak like Mer­ry Christ­mas Mr Lawrence. The fact that some­one actu­al­ly made a World War Two dra­ma star­ring David Bowie and Takeshi Kitano – with queer under­tones, an 80s synth sound­track and a pow­der­ing of Christ­mas spir­it – well, it’s a miracle.

At heart the film seems sweet­ly, naive­ly sim­ple. It’s a sto­ry about East-West rela­tions that plays out in the micro­cosm of a Japan­ese PoW camp in Java. It’s a sto­ry about for­give­ness and under­stand­ing between cul­tures. It’s a film of clean-cut dichotomies. East ver­sus West, patri­o­tism ver­sus prag­ma­tism, guilt ver­sus shame. And each of these strug­gles is embod­ied in the bat­tle of wills of two pairs of offi­cers: Jack Cel­liers (Bowie) and Cap­tain Yonoi (Ryuichi Sakamo­to) and John Lawrence (Tom Con­ti) and Sergeant Hara (Kitano).

Bowie plays an upper-crust enig­ma, a para­troop­er who defies author­i­ty in typ­i­cal­ly unortho­dox ways like eat­ing flow­ers and lead­ing sing-a-longs. Cap­tain Yonoi, the camp’s com­man­dant, is from the war­rior class. He’s obsessed with two things: bushi­do and Bowie. And as the plot devel­ops, they pull him apart. Then there’s Lawrence, sen­si­tive and bilin­gual, con­stant­ly shut­tling between the two cul­tures and try­ing to trans­late their val­ues. He spars with Kitano, who plays a sort of Japan­ese Fal­staff, a vio­lent booze­hound prone to flares of largesse.

The ros­ter of celebri­ties has a strange effect on every­thing. This is a Let’s Dance’-era Bowie, with sharp teeth, tanned skin and per­ox­ide hair. Ryuichi Sakamo­to is a Japan­ese rock­star who kept the eye-lin­er and con­tour­ing for the role. And the come­di­an and film-mak­er Takeshi Kitano is one of the most well-known faces in Japan. Those whisky adverts with Bill Mur­ray in Lost in Trans­la­tion? Kitano does those in real life.

The icon­ic faces make it hard to sus­pend dis­be­lief. But the plot essen­tial­ly revolves around the esca­lat­ing ten­sions between the pris­on­ers and their guards: the noble, sto­ic Brits and the cru­el, code-bound Japan­ese. The film lionis­es the West and, at times, it demonis­es the East. Bowie is an eccen­tric hero, but cer­tain­ly a hero – and clear­ly where our sym­pa­thies are meant to lie. It feels like a stock bit of West­ern sto­ry­telling: not exact­ly racist, but not too sub­tle or bal­anced either. Which is why the hue of the film changes so sud­den­ly when you see the name of the direc­tor. Because Nag­isa Oshi­ma is Japanese.

Here it pays to know some­thing about Oshi­ma. At the time of this film, he was the best-known of the Japan­ese New Wave. He’s been called the Japan­ese Godard, con­cerned as his films are with pol­i­tics, sex, youth and exper­i­men­tal­ism. He made his name in part through pink films – Japan’s huge and sur­pris­ing­ly artis­tic soft­core porn indus­try. But most impor­tant­ly, he was anti-estab­lish­ment. To West­ern eyes, Mer­ry Christ­mas Mr Lawrence might seem like a Christ­mas tear­jerk­er – but Oshi­ma was chal­leng­ing his country.

With Cap­tain Yonoi’s obses­sive love for Bowie, Oshi­ma was ques­tion­ing Japan­ese ideals of sol­dier­ing and mas­culin­i­ty. With the por­tray­al of rit­u­al sui­cide as bru­tal and botched, Oshi­ma was ques­tion­ing the notion of a beau­ti­ful death. And by show­ing acts of sadism by the Japan­ese, he was chal­leng­ing the col­lec­tive, selec­tive amne­sia that had set­tled on his nation. The com­par­isons with the West are con­tin­u­ous, and most­ly and delib­er­ate­ly unflattering.

The Japan­ese actors are not helped by being made to speak Eng­lish. Dra­mat­i­cal­ly, it means the die are loaded: the Brits seem col­lect­ed, the Japan­ese sound strained. In fact it high­lights a more fun­da­men­tal clash in act­ing styles, too: where the British act as if the events were tru­ly hap­pen­ing, the Japan­ese act more the­atri­cal­ly, even histri­on­i­cal­ly, their faces at times con­tort­ed like Kabu­ki masks. By clash­ing styles, Oshi­ma is mak­ing a point – even if it does often punc­ture the drama.

Is Mer­ry Christ­mas Mr Lawrence a good film? It’s hard to say. It is – some­times delib­er­ate­ly, some­times unin­ten­tion­al­ly – strange, com­pelling and hilar­i­ous. It’s no Christ­mas clas­sic, but like any Christ­mas film worth its salt, it ends on a hokey note, with the tables turned and Kitano now Lawrence’s pris­on­er. In war, Lawrence mus­es, everybody’s wrong, and there­fore nobody’s wrong. The screen cuts to black with a final image of Kitano’s grin­ning face. But that final sen­ti­ment, smil­ing and con­cil­ia­to­ry, sticks in the throat. Because it’s exact­ly the log­ic used by those who white­wash Japan’s past today.

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