Monthly Archives: July 2024

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
Directed by Nagisa Ôshima
Written by Nagisa Ôshima and Paul Mayersberg from a novel by Lourens van der Post
1982/Japan/UK
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel

Col. John Lawrence: You are the victim of men who think they are right… Just as one day you and captain Yonoi believed absolutely that you were right. And the truth is of course that nobody is right…

If I had known this was as brutal as it is, I might have given it a miss.

The setting is a Japanese POW camp on Java, Indonesia in 1942.  The conditions are absolutely appalling and the Japanese overseers and Korean guards are brutal.  Colonel John Lawrence (Tom Conte) is the liaison officer between the Japanese and the prisoners.  He speaks fluent Japanese and understands the culture.  The Japanese  seem to like him. That does not prevent them from dishing out beatings and other punishments to him.

Major Jack Celliers (David Bowie) is also a captive.  He is 100% defiant. He brings flowers for his fellows to eat when they are to be on an ordered fast.  He talks back constantly.  So naturally he suffers.  With Jack Thompson as the Group Captain above the prisoners.

This film is one horrendous scene of torture and violence after another.  It does make a plea for understanding and compassion.  Conti is excellent.  Bowie seems miscast but is not bad.  Another rock star, Ryuichi Sakamoto, plays the camp commandant. The film looks beautiful and the score is fantastic.

I took this one out of order because I had misplaced it in my 1982 list.

Deathtrap
Directed by Sidney Lumet
Written by Jay Preston Allen from a stage play by Ira Levin
1982/US
IMDb
First viewing/YouTube (free)

Clifford Anderson: Are you trying to say that you don’t think that you can trust me?
Sidney Bruhl: How clearly you put it!

This Sleuth (1972) wannabe is too clever for its own good.

Nothing in the plot is as it seems and  I don’t want to give much detail.  Playwright Sidney Bruhl (Michael Caine) has been living on his one big hit and his wife Myra’s (Dyan Cannon) income.  All his recent productions have been flops and critically savaged.  Myra is ditsy  but has absolute faith in Sidney.

After his latest dismal opening night, Sidney reveals that former student Clifford Anderson (Christopher Reeve) has sent him a script is sure to be a big hit.  In fact it is perfect.  The name of the play is “Deathtrap”.  Myra gets very excited about the idea that Sidney could either co-write or produce this.  So Sidney invites Clifford to visit.  This he does.

The other major character in the drama is psychic neighbor Helga ten Dorp (Irene Worth) who keeps dropping in to get vibrations of death and doom.

What made Sleuth so great was the oneupmanship between Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine.  They played tricks on each other.  In this, Caine plays the Olivier part and Reeve plays the Caine part. That is not a match between equals.  And the tricks are played on the audience.  They get increasingly unbelievable culminating in a huge eye-roll of an ending.  It’s entertaining but was not really for me.