Directed by Nagisa Oshima, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence stars David Bowie, Tom Conti and Ryuichi Sakamoto in a story set in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. Based on the book by Laurens van der Post, the film explores cultural conflict, authority and human relationships within a war drama setting.

Arrow Films

David Bowie stars in Nagisa Oshimas 1983 Palme dOr-nominated portrait of resilience, pride, friendship and obsession among four very different men confined in the stifling jungle heat of a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Java during World War II.

In 1942, British officer Major Jack Celliers (Bowie) is captured by Japanese soldiers, and after a brutal trial sent, physically debilitated but indomitable in mind, to a POW camp overseen by the zealous Captain Yonoi (Ryuichi Sakamoto). Celliers stubbornness sees him locked in a battle of wills with the camps new commandant, a man obsessed with discipline and the glory of Imperial Japan who becomes unnaturally preoccupied with the young Major, while Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence (Tom Conti), the only inmate with a degree of sympathy for Japanese culture and an understanding of the language, attempts to bridge the divide through his friendship with Yonois second-in-command, Sergeant Hara (Takeshi Kitano), a man possessing a surprising degree of compassion beneath his cruel façade.

Produced by Jeremy Thomas (The Last Emperor, The Sheltering Sky), it was the first English-language film by Oshima (Death by Hanging, In the Realm of the Senses, Gohatto), a leading light of Japanese New Wave cinema, and provided breakthrough big-screen roles for comedian Takeshi Kitano and musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, who also composed the films hauntingly memorable BAFTA-winning score. This powerful wartime drama was adapted from Laurens van der Posts autobiographical novel The Seed and the Sower (1963) by screenwriter Paul Mayersberg (The M