The Burmese Harp [Criterion Collection]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

Set against the final days of World War II, The Burmese Harp portrays the experiences of a group of exhausted, war-scarred Japanese soldiers as they prepare to return to Japan. The film focuses on Shoji Yasui, a soldier known to his comrades for his harp playing, who fails to convince a resistant company to surrender and is presumed dead when a battle destroys their hillside encampment. To rejoin his fellow soldiers, Shoji steals the robes of a Buddhist monk and begins to make his way across the countryside. But along the way, he becomes fixated on the hundreds of abandoned, unburied war casualties and begins to assume the duties of his costume and tend to the bodies. Meanwhile, Shoji's friends mount a search for him, eventually noticing the monk to whom he bears an uncanny resemblance. Director Kon Ichikawa's film was adapted by frequent collaborator (and wife) Nato Wada from a book by Michio Takeyama designed to introduce children to the fundamental principles of Buddhism. ~ Keith Phipps, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 1
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Pre-1954 Standard)
• Audio: Dolby Digital Mono
• Screen: Black and White
• Subtitle: Eng
• Features:
  • New restored high-definition digital transfer
  • New video interviews with director Kon Ichikawa and actor Rentaro Mikuni
  • Original theatrical trailer
  • New and imporved English subtitle translation
  • Plus: A new essay by renowned critic and historian Tony Rayns

AWARDS

• Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

•     Nominated Best Foreign Language Film - 1956 (Kon Ichikawa)

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Shoji Yasui - Private Yasuhiko
       Rentaro Mikuni - Capt. Inouye
       Tatsuya Mihashi - Defense Commander
       Tanie Kitabayashi - Old Woman
       Yunosuke Ito - Village head
       Jun Hamamura - Ito
       Akira Nishimura - Baba

• Director:

  Kon Ichikawa

• Producer:

  Masayuki Takagi

• Screenwriter:

  Natto Wada

• Book Author:

  Michio Takeyama

• Cinematographer:

  Minoru Yokoyama

• Composer (Music Score):

  Akira Ifukube

• Editor:

  Masanori Tsujii

REVIEW:

• Though exceptions abound, from The Best Years of Our Lives and The Story of G.I. Joe through the readily explicable rise of film noir, the most visible American portrayals of World War II in the years following its conclusion tended not to dwell too heavily on the psychological or spiritual impact of the war experience. While it is reductive to credit Japanese filmmakers as a whole with a boldness wanting in their American counterparts -- Joseph Anderson and Donald Richie dismiss most war films of the period as "frank audience exploitation" -- one look at The Burmese Harp with its mounds upon mounds of untended corpses is enough to grant that impression. But while graphic, Kon Ichikawa's film has more on its mind than immersing its viewers in the horrors of war (for that experience, see the director's harrowing Fires on the Plain). Almost immediately upon its release, Harp rightfully earned a reputation as one of the finest and most succinct statements of humanism. Portraying war as a profound violation of the human spirit, it at times resembles Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory, particularly in its use of music. But Ichikawa's mastery of moments both grand (a beach awash in corpses) and small (the gentle interactions between the soldiers and the friendships they form with their by-all-rights unfriendly hosts), instantly sets his work apart. The pace is sometimes inadequate, perhaps due to some invasive editing, but only a slab of stone could fail to be moved by the film as a whole and by the heart-rending finale in particular. ~ Keith Phipps, Rovi