Rating: 3.5/5
Criterion Challenge 2024 | 18/52 | Dreaming of a Holiday Movie Marathon
Java 1942 John Lawrence is a British officer at a POW camp. Because he speaks fluent Japanese, he acts as an intermediary between the guards and the inmates.
Captain Yonoi (Ryuichi Sakamoto) attends a trial in Batavia. The defendant, British Major Jack Celliers (David Bowie), waged guerrilla warfare and seized supplies. The jury decrees the death penalty, but Yonoi requests to question him and determines they should make Celliers a POW at Yonoi’s camp.
Celliers invites abuse with his bizarre and forthright behavior. They pretend to kill him at a firing squad before taking him into the camp.
Lawrence recognizes Celliers, having served with him in Libya. Yonoi questions Lawrence about him.
He was a soldier's soldier. Why are you so interested in him?
Yonoi has trouble rectifying his feelings with Celliers’s defiant behavior. Celliers breaks out and takes Lawrence with him. When Yonoi catches him, Celliers puts down his weapon.
Why do you not fight me? If you defeat me, you will be free.
The guards approach, ready to shoot Celliers, but Yonoi steps between them. They must punish someone.
The film itself is about the contrasts in how the Japanese and British engaged in warfare during WWII. The Japanese were strict adherents to the bushido code, meaning harakiri abounds for any misdemeanor. Lawrence argues for letting some crimes go unpunished lest the wrong people suffer.
It also looks at fantasy and limerence — how we use others to fill a hole we can’t define. In Ôshima’s world, queerness is inevitable — prison walls create a lack that seeks annulment and oblivion. Identity does not fix itself but meets the boundaries of experience and folds into it. It is the humanity that emerges from a dehumanizing experience.
Sakamoto and Bowie stand out for several reasons beyond their rock star recognition. Sakamoto has the wildest kabuki makeup that gives him a soft, youthful glow. Bowie is bleach blonde, which further highlights his heterochromia.
Their characters suffer from a past in which they betrayed someone they loved. The way their characters react stems from these unresolved wounds.
The first act is dense and throws attention at several characters. The movie does not invite you in — it gets to it and lets you find your way. I had a similar experience watching In the Realm of the Senses.
Holy fuck, the Ryuichi Sakamoto score sent immediate chills through my body. The primary theme is incredible.
The influence on Beau Travail is apparent in a few ways. If I’m being honest, I liked its approach more than this movie’s.
I don’t think everything works for me here. The movie overstays its welcome a bit, and its critique of bushido isn’t as layered as the movie seems to think. The flashback is odd, and I’m unsure how I feel about it.
Still, the movie has moments of beauty that stick with me.