The Burmese Harp

Based on a novel by Michio Takeyama, The Burmese Harp was the first film that brought director Kon Ichikawa to international attention. It is the story of Mizushima (Shoji Yasui) a Japanese soldier in Burma at the close of World War Two who is sent on a mission by his Captain to inform another unit of the Japanese surrender and to convince them to stop fighting. When the unit refuses to give up and are destroyed by the British Army, only Mizushima remains alive and must come to terms with his nation's defeat. Pretending to be a Buddhist monk, he undergoes a religious conversion when he comes face to face with the staggering amount of death and destruction he sees as he travels across the region in search of his unit. Determined to honor and bury the dead, Mizushima is conflicted about remaining in Burma to live a life of service or returning to Japan to help rebuild his own country.

The film takes its name from a Burmese harp acquired by Mizushima. He has become an expert harpist and plays while the soldiers sing beautiful chorales with a sound so lush it feels as if it is coming from the Mormon Tabernacle. While the depiction of the soldiers may be idealized, The Burmese Harp transcends its limitations to become a universal testament not only to the madness that prevailed in Burma, but to the unspeakable horror of all war. Ichikawa, in spite of the fact that film became a classic, loved the story so much that he filmed it again in 1985.

`I cannot leave the bones lying scattered on the hills.'

More melodramatic than his harrowing Fires On The Plain, Kon Ichikawa's The Burmese Harp is still an excellent film and a fascinating glimpse at another perspective of the 2nd World War than the usual (myopic and infantile) Hollywood triumphalism. As with many Japanese films from this period, from Kurosawa to Godzilla, it has an elegiac and reflective quality to it born of the shock and disillusionment that followed the war.

I personally was a little uncomfortable with the first 20 minutes of the film that were a little hokey with the singing platoon trying to slip through the forests of Burma to the Thai frontier. However, the film really begins to become compelling and very poetic with the character Mizushima's mission to Triangle Mountain and his voyage south to Mudon to rejoin his unit now in prison camp. Undergoing a symbolic `death' and injured, he is nursed by a priest, but steals the priest's garb as a disguise. However, on the way he passes great numbers of Japanese and is horrified by what he sees. When he arrives at his destination and is staying at a monastery, one monk comments, `You seem to have come through such severe hard training.' He cannot return to his unit. He is determined to bury the dead, to extend empathy to each of them and to pray for their souls. The physical journey is symbolic of a physiological and spiritual journey and is some very creative and effective storytelling. There is much more to the movie, plot wise and thematically, than this, but this is what impressed me most.

The imagery is incredible whether it is raindrops collecting and then running along barbed wire, dripping off; or the mud along the riverbanks; or the scene of Mizushima burying corpses at the river, a few villagers standing behind, watching; or the priest bathing in the river; or the shot of Mizushima disappearing into the mist. There is one moment in the prison camp which occurs during a rainstorm. I was really impressed with the natural lighting which gave me the sense of being there. I have looked out windows on days like that as those characters are and the experience "feels like that scene looks". It is incredible how evocative the Japanese films of the period were.

The film reminded me of Stone's Platoon with similar music, symbolism, characters, and melodrama. It also seems to have affinities with Apocalypse Now, in that the central concern is not action or tension (though they do not lack these qualities) but potent ideas and a sense of mystery. Both Apocalypse and Harp involve `pilgrimages' and characters transformed by the horror of the situation. They both involve characters unable to return home after this evolution. I do not know if either of these films was influenced by The Burmese Harp, but if they were they modeled on an excellent and moving predecessor.

Akira Ifukube's score is classic and will probably sound somewhat familiar to the viewer. He has scored nearly 260 films, including films in the popular Zatoichi series and many of Toho's sci-fi films.

Powerful, if slow moving, and relentlessly allegorical anti war film. The problem I have with allegorical works, be they movies, plays or novels, is that the characters, being more symbols than living, breathing characters with living, breathing quirks and contradictions, tend toward the stiff and humorless. And with the partial exception of the lone woman in this film, a subtly wry old crone, that is the case here.

What redeems the film and gives it its force is director Kon Ichikawa's imagery and use of music. Aided by his cinematographer Minoru Yokoyama, Ichikawa has many shots that are arresting and that linger in the mind. The most visceral, of course, are the killing fields through which the soldier turned monk Mizushima must pass in order to attain inner peace but for me the most affecting is the shot, from behind, of Mizushima, twin parrots perched on each shoulder, playing "No Place Like Home" on the eponymous musical instrument, child acolyte by his side and Japanese prisoners, behind barbed wire, listening, one hopes attentively and not just sentimentally, to the plaintive song. Which brings me to Ichikawa's use of music, mentioned by several previous reviewers. It is brilliant in its ability to convey the themes of humanity and brotherhood that are at the heart of this eminently good hearted work. In fact, the score is so striking that at times it reminds me of a John Ford film. And where I come from that is high praise, indeed. B plus.

Living in Thailand at the age of 10, I saw this movie broadcast on TV. Thirty years later I still think of it. And eventually I became a dharma student. Coincidence? I think not! Such is the awesome impact of this movie. More than an important anti-war film, it can really bring out some seldom expressed feelings - not because of carefully crafted scenarios which bring moral indignation against war, confusion or cruelty, but instead showing a more natural horror of war's results. After watching the film for the third time, I still feel a deep visceral pang when Mizushima covers his face and runs past yet another mountain of rotting bodies he finds on the shores of the river.

What's really sad is that you can't get the movie on DVD!

Many in the United States have heard about how Germany (and maybe about how Italy) had to do a lot after World War II in order to deal with the residual effects of their actions during the war. It's also worth looking at how Japan had to do the same. Kon Ichikawa's "Biruma no tategoto" ("The Burmese Harp" in English) does a good job with this.

In July, 1945, a Japanese platoon in Burma gets captured by the British army. One of the men - named Mizushima - has to go to the mountains to convince another Japanese platoon to surrender. But the latter platoon refuses to do so and all the members get killed in a shootout. As Mizushima walks back to his platoon, he comes across the bodies of more soldiers who perished in the war. Thus he sees his new mission in life: no longer can he be a soldier, but becomes a Buddhist monk, with the aim of healing all affected by the war.

I see Mizushima as representing what Japan as a society had to do following its defeat in WWII. Aside from the fact that the Land of the Rising Sun has had to be a pacifist country (the US forced it to have a constitution prohibiting military intervention), the bombing of Hiroshima made the Japanese people averse to militarism in general. Certainly this movie's anti-war stance makes it all the more relevant in this day and age. I recommend it.