Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence

During World War II, two men meet in a Japanese prison camp on Java: British officer Celliers (Bowie) and Japanese commander Yonoi (Ryūichi Sakamoto, who also composed the haunting film score). A quiet, dangerous dialogue of fascination and moral resistance develops between them. Bowie plays with androgynous vulnerability, Sakamoto with disciplined severity – two mirror images trapped in the violence of their roles. The contrasts also run through Ōshima's restrained staging: beauty and brutality, honour and desire, spirituality and guilt form the leitmotifs of this extraordinary and painfully moving parable about humanity – in a place where one would least expect it.
(Florian Widegger)