When it comes to Nagisa Oshima, the most controversial and talented "new wave director", we may immediately think of his 1976 terrifying work "The Kingdom of the Senses". In this film, Nagisa Oshima asks the actors to do real sexual intercourse in pursuit of realism, and directly expresses all kinds of physical and psychological abnormal behaviors without shyness, making this film with a beautiful and decadent style became a classic in erotic movies.
Many directors often ignore their other works because one of their works is too conspicuous, just like some people who mention Akira Kurosawa will only think of "Rashomon".
Nagisa Oshima also encountered this situation, in fact, from his 1959 directorial debut, "The Street of Love and Hope," until his 2000 "Godfather". In the past 40 years, he has directed many excellent films, and this "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" is one of the outstanding works.
First of all, this is a movie that music fans around the world cannot miss, because the famous British rock singer David Bowie is one of the leading actors, and he is played opposite the famous Japanese musician Sakamoto Ryuichi Sakamoto. Bowie's own stage image is as gorgeous and fickle as his musical style over the years, and Sakamoto Ryuichi is young, handsome and talented at this time. The ambiguous and obscure same-sex love performed by the two in the film naturally filled their fans all over the world with curiosity and imagination.
And in the film, Kitano Takeshi, who was still very young at the time, also played a major role. Although Kitano Takeshi plays an often fierce Japanese officer in the film, he still can't hide his slightly immature youthfulness, especially when he shouts "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence." - I think of him Those films with a cruel and cold style that were directed or starred after 2000 really make people wonder what terrible things are hidden behind the time...
Equally exciting, or even more addicting than the film itself, is the film's soundtrack. One of them, "Forbidden Colours", a collaboration between Ryuichi Sakamoto and former "Japan" frontman David Sylvian, is even more captivating. charm.
The lyrics of "Forbidden Colors" written by David Sylvain are as elegant and solemn as ancient biblical verses, filled with the eternal meaning of timeless and old, and poured out a great sense of beauty.
And Sakamoto Ryuichi's arrangement is a beautiful, low-key, tear-jerking soulful work. But that's the soundtrack to "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence," a film with few women. And the extravagant and deep emotion in the music makes people unable to help but have an inexplicable charm to the same-sex love performed by Sakamoto Ryuichi and David Bowie in the film...
This film is based on the British writer Lawrence Fan (Laurens van der Post) novel "The Seed and the Sower" (The Seed and the Sower), some versions also translated it as "Captive".
This film is also a "first work" in a sense of the three leading actors mentioned above: it is the film debut of David Bowie and Takeshi Kitano; it is also the film debut and film music debut of Ryuichi Sakamoto.
David Bowie, a man who thought he should have died in loneliness and betrayed the world a long time ago, was already a hugely successful artist in 1983. At the beginning of his debut, he quit the music industry for two years due to the unpopularity of his songs. During this period, he actively participated in Buddhist activities and almost cut his hair to become a monk. Fortunately, he didn't put this idea into practice, otherwise the world would have only one more blond British monk, and one less charismatic bisexual astronaut - the "Beatles" band Britain's most influential rock singer after the breakup. Bowie released the album "The Man Who Sold The World" that made him famous in 1970. The album's self-titled song has Bowie's typical grim vocals and dark guitar melody, expressing a man living in the world. A man on the edge, a dark state of mind in the shadow of the will to die. In the winter of 1993, 23 years after the album came out, Nirvana's Curt Cobain covered Bowie's famous song at that famous "Unplugged" gig in New York, in a sense, Cobain should be another man who betrayed the world.
It is precisely because of this "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" that Takeshi Kitano entered the film industry and became another master Japanese director in the future - it should be said that Nagisa Oshima is Takeshi Kitano's mentor. In 2000, 17 years later, in another work "The Imperial Law" directed by Nagisa Oshima, Kitano Takeshi and his teacher collaborated again. In front of his elderly teacher, Kitano Takeshi, who has already made a name for himself, sometimes helps to carry the props needed on the set-in this small act, it undoubtedly reflects Kitano Takeshi's heartfelt reverence for his teacher.
Ryuichi Sakamoto, who also acted as the starring role and composed the soundtrack of the film, just entered his thirties in 1983. This man with the same beautiful eyes as Leslie Cheung is said to have the same sexual orientation as the character he plays in this movie in real life - of course this is his personal privacy, perhaps because of similar Emotional experience, he can create a touching and beautiful work like "Forbidden Color". As the debut of Ryuichi Sakamoto's film music, "Forbidden Color" seems too perfect. Even Sakamoto Ryuichi's future creations are difficult to surpass his own creations this time. Although a few years later his score for The Last Emperor won him an Academy Award for Best Score and reached the pinnacle of his career. Because for him success may only be in the eyes of others, and his own art and the personal emotional experience contained in it are the most precious. Perhaps it is precisely because of this emotional experience that in Nagisa Oshima's "Godfather", which is also about same-sex love, he, like Takeshi Kitano, once again collaborated with him to create an equally moving film for the film. movie soundtrack.
The story takes place in 1942 in a Japanese prisoner of war camp on Java Island, Indonesia.
Captain Yai, played by Ryuichi Sakamoto, is a young and promising Japanese officer with idealistic psychological tendencies. The former sergeant, played by Takeshi Kitano, is a strong man who blindly emphasizes the spirit of Bushido. He treats his captives and his soldiers very cruelly and severely, but he also shows compassion to his friends.
Although the British prisoner, Lawrence, was not the captain of the prisoner, he successfully mediated between the Japanese soldiers and prisoners of war because he was familiar with Japanese and Japanese culture, and became a buffer and coordinator of the cultural conflict between the East and the West.
David Bowie plays the British officer Jack, a confident and mysterious handsome man who, in the film, is a symbol of freedom and faith in a sense. The appearance of Jack confuses the somewhat narcissistic Captain Yai, and has a vague homosexual love full of self-loathing, which slowly leads to the fate of self-destruction.
In fact, homosexuality prevailed in the prison camp they were in at this time, although Sergeant Hara also said that being a Japanese samurai would not be afraid of homosexuality. But the taboo of moral self-loathing, and the subconscious belief that homosexuality undermines their own masculinity, has turned this same-sex love into a "forbidden sex" that dare not name it.
And Captain Yejing and Sergeant Yuan both carried out harsh punishments on the soldiers who had homosexual acts in the concentration camps - among them, they even frantically ordered some of them to open their abdomens to commit suicide...
In the film, in addition to outlining the relationship between men In addition to the secret same-sex love, it also depicts another emotion between men, that is, the friendship between men. Such as the friendship between Lawrence and the original Sergeant, and the friendship between Lawrence and Jack. However, in such a special age of war, both same-sex love and friendship were intertwined with huge conflicts, especially Western values, religious views and their humanistic traditions, and militarism, a modern transformation of the traditional Japanese Bushido spirit. The conflict between the characters runs through the entire film.
The culmination of the conflict is that Captain Yai prepares to execute the captain of the British prisoner, and this act also triggers the gorgeous climax of the film. When Captain Yajing raised his sword in silence to prepare for execution, Jack quietly walked in front of Yajing. After being overthrown by Yajing, Jack slowly got up from the ground and walked in front of Yajing again. This is Jack grabbing Yajing's shoulders, and gently kissing Yajing's left and right cheeks under the watchful eyes of all the Japanese soldiers and prisoners of war. And Yejing was also under the extreme emotional shock caused by this unexpected move, the whole body was shaking, and finally collapsed into a coma after a cry of shame.
Although the captain was rescued because of this, Jack was punished. His body was bound and buried in the soil, only breathing on the ground and waiting to die. On the night Jack died, Yai came behind him and carefully cut a strand of Jack's hair with a razor. After carefully hiding the lock of hair, Yejing walked over to Jack and gave him a solemn military salute, then turned and left. At this time, a white moth landed on the cheek of Jack, who had sunk into the confusion of death under the moonlight...
After the war, before Yai was executed as a war criminal, he entrusted Lawrence to sacrifice Jack's hair in the shrine in his hometown. He finally can't forget the man he loved but was ordered to be executed by himself until he died, he wants God to bear witness to his unswerving love, even though this love wears forbidden colors...
At the end of the film Before, Lawrence went to visit Sergeant Yuan. At this time, he became an officer of the victorious country, while Sergeant Yuan became a war criminal like Captain Yai who had been executed. They were still as happy as old friends reunited.
The two brought up Yejing and Jack again, and shared memories of that Christmas four years ago. When Lawrence was about to push the door to leave, Sergeant Yuan shouted out again, "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence."...
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