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Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence is playing alongside the concert film Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus as a small tribute to the late maestro. Those wishing to raise a glass to Sakamoto at our Members' sake tasting can also claim £5 tickets for this screening if they have both tickets in their basket at checkout.
David Bowie stars in Nagisa Oshima's 1983 Palme d'Or-nominated portrait of resilience, pride, friendship and obsession among four very different men confined in the stifling jungle heat of a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Java during World War II.
In 1942, British officer Major Jack Celliers (Bowie) is captured by Japanese soldiers, and after a brutal trial sent, physically debilitated but indomitable in mind, to a POW camp overseen by the zealous Captain Yonoi (Ryuichi Sakamoto). Celliers' stubbornness sees him locked in a battle of wills with the camp's new commandant, a man obsessed with discipline and the glory of Imperial Japan who becomes unnaturally preoccupied with the young Major, while Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence (Tom Conti), the only inmate with a degree of sympathy for Japanese culture and an understanding of the language, 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 cruel façade.
Produced by Jeremy Thomas (The Last Emperor, The Sheltering Sky), it was the first English-language film by Oshima (Death by Hanging, In the Realm of the Senses, Gohatto), a leading light of Japanese New Wave cinema, and provided breakthrough big-screen roles for comedian Takeshi Kitano and musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, who also composed the film's hauntingly memorable BAFTA-winning score.
Cast:
David Bowie, Tom Conti, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Takeshi Kitano