Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence Japanese Senj no Mer Kurisumasu ? , Merry Christmas on the Battlefield , also known in many European editions as Furyo , Japanese for prisoner of war, is a 1983 BritishJapanese drama film directed by Nagisa Oshima, produced by Jeremy Thomas and starring David Bowie, Tom Conti, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Takeshi Kitano and Jack Thompson.
The film deals with the relationships among four men in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during the Second World War Major Jack Celliers Bowie, a rebellious New Zealander with a guilty secret from his youth Captain Yonoi Sakamoto, the young camp commandant Lieutenant Colonel John Lawrence Conti, a British officer who has lived in Japan and speaks Japanese fluently and Sergeant Hara Takeshi, who is seemingly brutal and yet humane in some ways and with whom Lawrence develops a peculiar friendship.Just as Celliers is tormented with guilt, Yonoi is haunted with shame. Having been posted to Manchuria previously, he was unable to be in Tokyo with his Army comrades, the Shining Young Officers of Japans FebruaryIncident, a 1936 military coup dtat. When the coup failed, the young army officers were executed. Yonoi regrets not being able to share their patriotic sacrifice. Jack Celliers had betrayed his younger brother while the two of them were attending boarding school in New Zealand. Although Celliers confesses this only to Lawrence, Captain Yonoi senses in Celliers a kindred spirit. He wants to replace British RAAF Group Captain Hicksley the ranking Allied officer and prisoner representative with Celliers as the spokesman for the prisoners. ........
Source: Wikipedia
