In 1942, Captain Yonoi is the commander of the POW camp in Lebak Sembada in Japanese-occupiedJava. A strict adherent to the bushido code, his only sources of connection to the prisoners lie in the empathetic Lt. Col. John Lawrence, the only inmate fluent in Japanese, and the abrasive spokesman Gp. Capt. Hicksley, who repeatedly resists Yonoi's attempts to find weapons experts among the prisoners for the Japanese army's interests. Lawrence has befriended Sgt. Gengo Hara, but remains at odds with the rest of the staff. Summoned to the military trial of the recently captured Major Jack Celliers, Yonoi is fascinated by his resilience and has him interned at the camp. After the trial, Yonoi confides in Lawrence that he is haunted with shame due to his absence during the February 26 Incident, believing he should have died alongside the rebels and implying that his focus on honour stems from this. Sensing a kindred spirit in Celliers, Yonoi's fascination grows into a romantic obsession: he treats him specially, watches him sleep, and repeatedly asks Hara about him in private.
When the inmates are made to fast as punishment for insubordination during the forced seppuku of a guard (Okura), Celliers sneaks in food. The guards catch him and find a smuggled radio during the subsequent investigation, forcing him and Lawrence to take the blame. Yonoi's batman, realizing the hold Celliers has on him, attempts to kill Celliers in his sleep that night, but fails after he wakes up and escapes, freeing Lawrence too. Yonoi catches Celliers and challenges him to a duel in exchange for his freedom, but Celliers refuses; the batman returns and kills himself for his failure, urging Yonoi to kill Celliers before his feelings overpower him.
At the funeral, Lawrence learns that he and Celliers will be executed for the radio, despite the lack of evidence, to preserve order in the camp; enraged, he trashes the funeral altar and is forced back into his cell. That night, Celliers reveals to Lawrence that as a teenager, he betrayed his younger brother, long bullied for his hunchback, by refusing to spare him a humiliating and traumatizing initiation ritual at their boarding school. Confronting his past, he describes the lifelong shame he felt towards his actions, paralleling Yonoi's predicament. During their conversation, the pair are released by a drunken Hara, as a different prisoner confessed to delivering the radio. As they leave, Hara calls out in English, "Merry Christmas, Lawrence!" Although Yonoi is angry at Hara for exceeding his authority, he only mildly reprimands him.
Hicksley, realizing that Yonoi wants to replace him with Celliers as spokesman, confronts him. The two argue over their withholding of information from one another before an enraged Yonoi orders the whole camp to form up outside the barracks, including the sick bay's ailing patients, resulting in one's death. Hicksley, who refused to bring out the patients, is to be punished for his insubordination with an on-the-spot execution. Before he can be killed, Celliers breaks rank and kisses Yonoi on each cheek, choosing to save Hicksley's life at the cost of his own. Caught between a desire for vindication and his feelings for Celliers, a distraught Yonoi collapses and is ultimately relieved from duty; the guards beat Celliers and drag him out of the area. His more rigid replacement has Celliers buried in the sand up to his neck and left to die. Before leaving, Yonoi sneaks into his pen and cuts a lock from his hair, moments before his death.
Four years later, Lawrence visits Hara, who is now a prisoner of the Allies. Hara has learned to speak English and reveals he is to be executed the following day for war crimes. Expressing confusion over the harshness of his sentence given how commonplace his actions were among both sides of the war, he and Lawrence both conclude that while the Allies officially won, morally "we are all wrong." The two reminisce on Celliers and Yonoi, the latter of whom was reported to have been killed after the war, before bidding each other goodbye. As he is leaving, Hara calls out, "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence!".
David Bowie was cast as Jack Celliers after director Nagisa Ōshima saw him in a production of The Elephant Man on Broadway. He felt that Bowie had "an inner spirit that is indestructible". While shooting the film, Bowie was amazed that Ōshima had a two- to three-acre camp built on the remote Polynesian island of Rarotonga, but most of the camp was never shot on film. He said Ōshima "only shot little bits at the corners. I kind of thought it was a waste, but when I saw the movie, it was just so potent – you could feel the camp there, quite definitely."[6] Bowie noted how Ōshima would give an incredible amount of direction to his Japanese actors ("down to the minutest detail"), but when directing him or fellow Westerner Tom Conti, he would say "Please do whatever it is you people do."[7] Bowie thought his performance in the film was "the most credible performance" he had done in a film up to that point in his career.[6]
The boarding school sequence was shot on location at King's College, a private high school in Auckland, New Zealand. In a shot of two students playing billiards, another boy in the room can be seen wearing a King's blazer. Other scenes were filmed in various locations around Auckland including Auckland Railway Station.[8]
Ōshima chose Ryuichi Sakamoto after seeing his photographs in a photo book Fifty Representative Figures of Today, and without even meeting him. The film was Sakamoto's debut soundtrack just as it was his inaugural acting role. It was also Takeshi ‘Beat’ Kitano's debut movie acting role, having only been known up to that point as a comedian on TV variety shows in Japan.[4]
Contrary to usual cinematic practice, Ōshima shot the film without rushes and shipped the film off the island with no safety prints. "It was all going out of the camera and down to the post office and being wrapped up in brown paper and sent off to Japan", said Bowie. Ōshima's editor in Japan cut the movie into a rough print within four days of Ōshima returning to Japan.[6]
On set, David Bowie made a bond with his on-screen brother, James Malcolm, whom he later called his “New Zealand brother”. For one pivotal scene, Malcolm had to sing for Bowie. The next year, Bowie invited Malcolm to join him on stage at Western Springs in Auckland for the Serious Moonlight tour, where they released a dove together as a sign of peace.[9]
Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence is the soundtrack from the film of the same name, released on 1 May 1983 in Japan and towards the end of August 1983 in the UK. It was composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto, who also starred in the film. It was Sakamoto's first film score, though it was released several weeks after the film Daijōbu, My Friend, for which he also composed the music.
Despite receiving mixed reviews from critics, the film has since become a cult classic, largely due to its soundtrack.[13] For the film's soundtrack, Sakamoto won the 1984 BAFTA Award for Best Film Music as well as the 1984 Mainichi Film Award for Best Film Score.[14]David Sylvian contributed lyrics and vocals on "Forbidden Colours", a vocal version of the main theme, "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence", both of which were released as singles. A special 30th anniversary edition, which included a second CD of tracks, was released in November 2013 in Japan.[15]
Reception
Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gives Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence an 86% approval rating and an average rating of 6.60 out of 10 based on 28 reviews. The site's consensus states: "Worthy themes and strong performances across the board make Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence an impactful story about bridging cultural divides."[16]Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 53 out of 100, based on 13 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[17]
David Bowie plays a born leader in Nagisa Ōshima's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, and he plays him like a born film star. Mr. Bowie's screen presence here is mercurial and arresting, and he seems to arrive at this effortlessly, though he manages to do something slyly different in every scene. The demands of his role may sometimes be improbable and elaborate, but Mr. Bowie fills them in a remarkably plain and direct way. Little else in the film is so unaffected or clear.
On the film's Japanese actors, Maslin wrote that
the two main Japanese characters who have brought [Lawrence] to this understanding are Sergeant Hara, a brutal figure who taunts Lawrence while also admiring him, and Captain Yonoi, the handsome young camp commander, who has a fierce belief in the samurai code. Both of these actors perform at an obvious disadvantage, since their English is awkward and the motives of their characters are imperfectly revealed. However, they can convey the complex affinity between captors and prisoners, a point that is made most touchingly in a brief postwar coda.
In Japan, the film earned ¥990 million in distributor rentals.[21] In the United States, it grossed $2,306,560 (equivalent to $7,100,000 in 2023).[22]
It sold 2,385,100 tickets in the United States, France and Sweden[23] (including 1,579,223 in France[24]). It also sold 423,778 tickets in Germany,[25] and 54 tickets in Switzerland and Spain since 2007,[26] for a combined 2,808,932 tickets sold in overseas territories outside of Japan and the United Kingdom.
