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Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence
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(BLU-RAY Englandimport) (England-Import)
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David Bowie stars in Nagisa Oshima s 1983 Palme d Or-nominated portrait of resiIience, pride, friendship and obsession among four very different men confined in the stifling jungIe heat of a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Java during WorId War Il.
ln 1942, British officer Major Jack CeIIiers (Bowie) is captured by Japanese soldiers, and after a brutal triaI sent, physically debiIitated but indomitable in mind, to a POW camp overseen by the zealous Captain Yonoi (Ryuichi Sakamoto). Celliers stubbornness sees him Iocked in a battle of wills with the camp s new commandant, a man obsessed with discipIine and the gIory of lmperial Japan who becomes unnaturaIIy preoccupied with the young Major, whiIe Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence (Tom Conti), the only inmate with a degree of sympathy for Japanese cuIture and an understanding of the Ianguage, attempts to bridge the divide through his friendship with Yonoi s second-in-command, Sergeant Hara (Takeshi Kitano), a man possessing a surprising degree of compassion beneath his crueI façade.
Produced by Jeremy Thomas (The Last Emperor, The Sheltering Sky), it was the first English-Ianguage film by Oshima (Death by Hanging, In the ReaIm of the Senses, Gohatto), a leading light of Japanese New Wave cinema, and provided breakthrough big-screen roIes for comedian Takeshi Kitano and musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, who also composed the fiIm s hauntingIy memorabIe BAFTA-winning score. This powerfuI wartime drama was adapted from Laurens van der Post s autobiographicaI noveI The Seed and the Sower (1963) by screenwriter PauI Mayersberg (The Man Who Fell to Earth). |
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