A film of tremendous formal grandeur and emotional discretion, qualities which seem terribly rare on screen, even when (or especially when) seen in as familiar and worn-out a context as the POW camp. The daily rigors of the place are swept to one side, for the most part, in favor of philosophical colloquy and one-upmanship among the officer class. Shades of La Grande Illusion, perhaps, but because the captives are British and their captors Japanese, the culture gap is somewhat wider: "I'd admire you more if you killed yourself," the bull-necked Japanese sergeant confides to the humane British liaison and master of two languages. On a rather higher plane, however, is the spiritual contest between two angelic types (Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Bowie) who aspire to very different heavens: the samurai-like Japanese commander, seen by the British as a ghost from another century, and the aristocratic British major, seen by the Japanese as an "evil spirit." The ultimate view of cultural discord is profoundly pessimistic, though a bit of heart might be taken in the movie's own hopeless effort to bridge the gap. There is an overlong and ill-conceived, but not ruinous, flashback to the Britisher's schooldays, and the pace all the way through is serenely slow. The visuals, though -- clean, solid, often symmetrical compositions, and a kind of anointing light -- are always arresting, and a great deal of interest hangs on the appearance of each successive image. With Tom Conti and Jack Thompson; written by Nagisa Oshima and Paul Mayersburg; directed by Oshima. (1983) — Duncan Shepherd
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