The Movie Room

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence 1983, directed by Nags Oshima

Rating: 9/10

In a Japanese-run Prisoner of War camp in Java during WWII, the prisoners prepare for Christmas while Capt. Yanoi (played by Ryuichi Sakamoto) finds himself conflicted about his feelings for his prisoner Maj. Jack Celliers (played by David Bowie). This wartime Christmas story is directed by Nagias Oshima, so it is unsurprising that it is a complex psycho-sexual examination of the characters involved.

The Christmas setting works fantastically well with Oshima’s recurrent themes of sexual power dynamics. The Christmas ideas of peace and unity and loving thy neighbor are twisted here both by the general setting and the characters involved. POW camps are supposed to be areas where civility reigns due to accords and soldiers of other nations are treated fairly, but that is a very hard task to accomplish during wartime (even though that is a necessary prerequisite for the camps to exist). Having this tense setting deal with the ideas of Christmas really shows how such concepts as peace and love can be twisted and corrupted and used in a way that results in the opposite. The Japanese guards put in place things that are supposedly meant to allow peace and happiness for the season, but then in practice this film shows how such “gifts” are really further means of punishment and dominations. This is then furthered by the relationship between Celliers and Yanoi—they bond in a way that is true to the Christmas spirit, perhaps, but because of their situation their relationship is quite twisted.

So is this a romance? Maybe. The tension between these two men is very sexual, but the two actors are both phenomenal at showing how confused each is about the situation and how their feelings aren’t easy to define. Yanoi may not be so much in love as obsessed—he treasures moments where he can touch Celliers or take things that have been Celliers’s or otherwise have some kind of physical contact even by proxy with Celliers. It is a kind of possessiveness that confuses even Yanoi, who sees a similar kind of guilt within himself and Celliers. This shared sense of guilt over past deeds also seems to draw Celliers to Yanoi. Celliers uses his guard’s obsession to his advantage and to help the other prisoners when he can, but to keep these advantages he never really scorns Yanoi’s advances too much—is this just to help them stay alive or is it because he actually does find himself romantically drawn towards his captor? Celliers is the first one to make more romantic contact, but again it’s a question of how much of it is meant and how much is pure defense mechanism. The fact that everything is so up in the open in this relationship is a testament to the actors involved.

Much less comedic than Stalag 17, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence takes its POW Christmas setting very seriously and uses the contradictions inherent in both the holiday and the camps to show how thorny and complicated human relationships can be, especially with unbalanced power dynamics getting in the way. This is far from a happy Christmas movie, but it is one I still watch every holiday season.