Burmese Harp - Criterion Collection
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Features
• Black & White
• DVD-Video
• Subtitled
• NTSC
In Theaters : 28 April, 1967
DVD Release : 13 March, 2007 |
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Burmese Harp - Criterion Collection description
Kon Ichikawa's Buddhist tale of peace, The Burmese Harp, is universally relevant in various eras and cultures, although it comments specifically on the destruction of Burma during World War II. Based on the novel by Michio Takeyama, The Burmese Harp stars a Japanese platoon stationed in Burma whose choir skills are inspired by their star musician, Private Mizushima (Rentaro Mikuni), who strums his harp to cheer the homesick soldiers. As the troop surrenders to the British and is interred in Mudon prison camp, Mizushima escapes to be faced with not only his imminent death, but also the deaths of thousands of other soldiers and civilians. Relinquishing his life as a military man, Mizushima retreats into a life of Buddhist prayer, dedicating himself to healing a wounded country. Filmed in black and white, strong visual contrasts heighten the divide between peace, war, life, and death in this highly symbolic film. Scenes in which the Japanese soldiers urge opposing forces to sing with them portray military men regardless of alliance as emotionally sensitive. Showing the humanistic aspects of war, such as the male bonding that occurs between soldiers, doesn't justify war as much as deepens its tragedy. This release includes interviews with the director and with Mikuni, further contextualizing its place in Japanese cinema. The Burmese Harp, with its lessons in compassion and selflessness, is so transformative that viewing it feels somewhat akin to a religious experience. --Trinie Dalton |
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Burmese Harp - Criterion Collection Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥ |
A "must see" movie, thoughtful and affecting, but with a BIG blind spot
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It is August 1945. Bands of Japanese troops are retreating before the advance of the British Fourteenth Army. One company of soldiers led by Captain Inouye (Rentaro Mikuni), resting in a Burmese village, realizes it is surrounded. As the troops scramble to meet the expected attack, they sing folk songs to hide their fear and conceal their preparations from the British and Indian troops. They are singing "Home, Sweet Home" in Japanese, and the enemy sings back in English! The war has been over for three days, and the unit surrenders with no further loss of life. This perfect, moving scene begins "The Burmese Harp."
One Japanese soldier, Mizushima (Shoji Yasui), is sent by the British to encourage a unit of holdouts to also surrender. That unit, however, is still in the grip of the bushido code. They refuse to surrender and are killed by British artillery. Mizushima survives and wanders through the countryside alone and disoriented. He encounters Japanese dead at every turn. Becoming an itinerant Buddhist monk, he takes on a personal mission to find and bury the dead. Though his former comrades are eager that he rejoin them so that they can return to Japan together, in a moving final scene he refuses so that he may purify his own soul by confronting the horror and suffering of the war.
The choral singing (Captain Inouye had been a music teacher before the war) is moving. The cast is uniformly strong. The scenes of Burma and its people are fascinating. A few now-passe photographic techniques do not diminish the high artistic standard of "The Burmese Harp." Although it is an anti-war movie, it is not heavy-handed.
The film's plot and viewpoint, however, have a glaring weakness, a blind spot that must be noted. Mizushima grieves for the Japanese dead, but there's no sign that he also regrets what the Japanese Army did in Asia in the years before the plot opens in 1945. There's no aggression. No brutality. No death marches. No beheading of allied POW's. No comfort women. And we never see Mizushima grieve for the allied or Burmese dead.
In this regard, the movie prefigures Japan's postwar failure to face its aggression and war crimes during World War II. That failure still troubles Japan's relations with China, Korea, and the other nations that experienced Japanese brutality at first hand. A cultural historian might judge that the omissions in "The Burmese Harp" helped shape the dominant postwar narrative, portraying Japan as the victim in the war. Director Kon Ichikawa sidestepped a true look at the war.
This is indeed a fine movie, well worth seeing for both its artistic and moral content. The viewer must, however, enlarge its message about war and peace, tragedy and suffering, and atonement.
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