The Burmese Harp
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DVD Details
- Rated: Not Rated
- Run Time: 1 hours, 56 minutes
- Video: Black & White
- Encoding: Region 1 (USA & Canada)
- Released: March 13, 2007
- Originally Released: 1956
- Label: Criterion Collection
Performers, Cast and Crew:
Starring | Shôji Yasui | |
Performer: | Rentarô Mikuni & Tatsuya Mihashi | |
Directed by | Kon Ichikawa | |
Screenwriting by | Natto Wada |
Entertainment Reviews:
Rating: 4.5/5 --
This lyrical antiwar film is the picture that brought the brilliant Japanese director international renown.
Full Review
TV Guide
From start to finish, there's a stirring humanism to Ichikawa's little seen classic. A powerful and affecting anti-war movie.
Full Review
Film4
Ichikawa Kon's spiritual odyssey offered the most convincing attempt to date to convey the psychological impact of the country's surrender at the end of WWII.
Sight and Sound
Rating: B+ --
This is the pic that brought international acclaim to Ichikawa.
Full Review
Ozus' World Movie Reviews
much like the soldier Mizushima dressed in the robes of a Buddhist monk, Ichikawa's war film tries on borrowed spiritualist attire and finds that it is an unexpectedly perfect fit.
Little White Lies
Rating: 5/5 --
Thoroughly engrossing in its humanism and often heartbreakingly beautiful in both tone and image.
Full Review
Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)
Rating: B+ --
Nominated in the first year of the foreign-language Oscar, Ichikawa's art film was innovative at the time with its anti-war spiritual message and lyrical imagery.
Full Review
EmanuelLevy.Com
Product Description:
Shôji Yasui stars in director Kon Ichikawa's adaptation of Michio Takeyama's antiwar novel. Set in Burma during the waning days of WWII, a unit of Japanese soldiers hangs on, inspired by the virtuoso Burmese harp playing of Private Mizushima. When the war finally ends, the unit is taken to an internment camp at Mudon to prepare for repatriation. The British plan on cleaning out a pocket of die-hard Japanese mountain fighters, but Mizushima volunteers to try to persuade the men to surrender. When they refuse, the mountain garrison is wiped out, and Mizushima himself is badly wounded. A Buddhist monk nurses the soldier back to health, and when Mizushima leaves for the camp at Mudon, he dons the garb of a monk. As he makes his way slowly across the Burmese countryside, observing the endless of miles of torn and broken corpses, the impact of the war's waste begins to weigh on the harp player. Mizushima begins to either burn or bury as many as he is able to, increasingly overtaken by the idée fixe of burying all the Japanese dead in the country. An oblique yet moving film, THE BURMESE HARP achieves much of its power and poignancy through the juxtaposition of the detritus and horror of war with the beauty and tranquillity of nature. As is often the case in Japanese films, humanity is accorded a humble role in a vast universe.