Description

A poetic trek across a pain-filled landscape, this powerful antiwar film is a classic example of Ichikawa's (Fires on the Plain) visual intensity and unyielding pacifism.Set at the close of World War II, The Burmese Harp focuses on the obsessions that drive one Japanese soldier to stay in Burma while his company tries to escape into neutral land.A stunning evocation of the private's spiritual conversion shows him surrounded by corpses, facing the insurmountable task of burying Japan's war dead. ... Read more

Reviews (8)

One Scene Stands Out
I won't restate what was said by those earlier reviewers who found this to be an amazing film. I agree and it has always been on my "Top Ten" list. I would add only one thing. The climactic scene in which the converted monk sits at night talking to his former fellow soliders who are behind a tall chainlink fence (they are now in a POW camp waiting to be shipped home to Japan) is one of the most moving moments I've ever experienced. This once scene captures exactly what it means for the individual to follow his (or her) own destiny.

The Difficulty Of Being A Good Buddhist
Many people, when they think of Buddhism, think of blissful meditation and serene contemplation. This movie graphically depicts the other side of Buddhism;i.e., hard work in the real world, in the real transformation of oneself and in one's efforts to help other beings, no matter how difficult or horrific the circumstances.
The film concerns a Japanese soldier separated from his unit in Burma, at the very end of WW II and its immediate aftermath. As he journeys to find his unit in a POW camp, he is confronted, at every turn in this wasteland of war, with dead and unburied fellow Japanese soldiers. At first, he disguises himself as a Buddhist monk (knowing that the Burmese respect and feed their monks). When he comes across British hospital staff burying an unknown Japanese soldier, with a formal Christian burial service and great respect, he is transformed. He recalls the hundreds of dead and unburied Japanese soldiers he had seen in his journey, he becomes a true Buddhist monk, and makes a singular and difficult vow; he will not return to Japan until he has buried all of the corpses he had seen. So he goes back, and begins his work.
Hardly blissful meditation, this. But he personifies what the Buddha taught; the purpose of Life is to be happy, but true happiness can only come from serving others. This soldier/monk, in devoting his life to active, difficult and gruesome work, is more a true fulfillment of the Buddha's teachings than is one who meditates on the weekend and wears prayer beads because it is "cool."
Sorry to sermonize, but this movie is not only a wonderful work of cinema, it is a Buddhist teaching in itself. Compassion MUST be coupled with the very difficult work of serving others.

The Harp of Burma
I first saw this film in the early '70's, on a PBS Japanese Film Festival, and never forgot it. I have been trying to buy this movie for years, and was finally able to find a copy here. It is very beautiful and serene. I usually describe a movie orally and in detail, so to write about it is difficult for me. The harp-playing hero wanders through a war-torn land trying to return to his comrades who are in a British POW camp. On this odyssey, he encounters the dead bodies of many unburied soldiers. A conversion begins to take place within him, and he is strongly affected by these powerful images. He begins to travel through Burma burying the dead, and becomes integrated into a Buddhist sect. By the time he sees his old comrades, he has become too changed to rejoin them. They, on the other hand, try several methods to convince him to come home with them. This is a thoughtful film, and I recommend it highly to all ages.

A wonderful, quiet film.
I saw this movie many years ago, an antiwar movie made by a Japanese director in the 1950's. Recently, it had began to come to mind over and over. An image here, an idea there. I wanted to see it again and, since I could not rent it anywhere, I bought it. After so many years, I found it to be even better than I had remembered. Grainy black and white film. Flickering subtitles. Perhaps overly sentimental and melodramatic in parts. But beautiful and uplifting. They don't make movies like this anymore. The technology now is too good, the ideas in the film are too simple and straightforward. It is a wonderful, quiet film.

Angels should play like this.
I watched this movie recently; ny only other viewing was 10 years ago. It's even better than I remember it - passionately sincere and honest, the sort of thing that pacifists like myself can only strive towards from a great distance. After thinking about The Burmese Harp, I went out and made a public Japanese Garden in the village centre, bearing the Japanese symbol for peace. And this was before Sept. 11!! We need the quiet wisdom of Kon Ichikawa more than ever now. ... Read more

Amazon.com essential video

The 1964 Olympics in Tokyo were a milestone as much for the intense athletic competition as the joyous commemoration of Japan's recovery following its defeat in World War II. Director Kon Ichikawa (The Burmese Harp, Fires on the Plain) created an epic film of the event, a documentary that covered the entire athletic competition while also capturing the surrounding atmosphere. Early in the film is a stunningaerial shot of Hiroshima, which first shows the devastated area, where destruction from the atom bomb has been preserved, before focusing on a beautiful park where an Olympic ceremony was being held.

The scenes of athletic competition, some of which were shot by cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa (Rashomon), work beautifully on two levels. The camera frames the extreme effort expended by such athletes as the great American runner Bob Hayes, and thus the film functions as a credible sports documentary, yet the camera also goes in for close-ups, lingering on the athlete's muscled forms to provide images that would look perfectly at home on the wall of a photography gallery. The narration in Japanese is accompanied with English subtitles, and this edition retains the widescreen lookof the original theatrical release (in a letterboxed format) as well as thecomplete 170-minute running time. --Robert J. McNamara ... Read more

Reviews (5)

The human side of sport without the sap...
A lemon placed as a totem on a starting block. The torn feet of drained marathoner. The fleshy cheek of a shooter oozing over the butt of his rifle. The turkey-like jowls of older spectators. The squint against blinding lights of an athlete from Chad as he steps off a plane and into the alienation of city life for perhaps the first time. Rain on a sopping wet track. Trains clattering over bridges. The splat of a hammer in wet turf. The almost obsessive-compulsive preparation of a shot-putter has he prepares for his throw. The nonchalant strength and focus of a winning judo expert. A yachtsman, while leaning far out over the water to balance his craft, capricously dipping his hand into the water as it passes inches from his face. The giddy excitement of a little girl spectator clapping and cheering for the sake of it. A member of the American delegation breaking the solemn ranks of the opening ceremonies to chase away a pigeon.

All these things, and countless other human details, are elements that make up director Kon Ichikawa's loving portrait of human aspiration: "Tokyo Olympiad".

At least as important as what it does, is what "Tokyo Olympiad" does not do. Unlike television coverage of the last few Olympic games, it does not plead for our sympathy by drowning us in "human interest" stories of hardship, cancer and family tragedy. Unlike in newspaper and television coverage of the games, the politics and ambition of individual nations' teams is far in the background. Unlike Leni Reifenstahl's "Olympia", it does not hold the athletes up as demigods, asking us to fawn over the glorious perfection of their shining bodies and heroic achievement. And, most importantly, it does it seek present a complete account of the final results of the events. Doing so in a 2 1/2 hour film would be impossible anyway.

More important to Ichikawa is the experience of the event itself- from both the spectators', and participants'- both winners and losers- point of view. Each event that that falls under the directors gaze, is presented in its own idiosyncratic way- with much attention given to the composition and visual texture of events as well as the human elements of each sport.

In one of my favorite segments- the women's 80m hurdles- Ichikawa begins by showing us an almost abstract close-up of the race we are about to see. In this way, the director seems to be saying that it's not the official result, but the intense feeling of being in such a race, which is important. Cutting back to before the race, the camera follows the athletes as they pace the field and go through their often quirky preparations. The Japanese runner, psyching herself up, jerks her head from side to side, does a childlike summersault, jerks a few more times, then does a cartwheel. In the next shot, with no explanation, we see that she places a lemon on the staring block, which Ichikawa allows us to consider for a second. With the runners lined up, the camera goes into extreme slow motion. We witness the sinew, focus and tension at the starting block. The din of the crowd is faded out, and all that remains is the sound of ropes rhythmically clanging against the stadium's flagpoles in the wind. Then even that fades out, the gun fires, and, as the runners powerfully push out of the starting blocks, silence. We are shown a front view of the brief race in extreme slow motion. The mood is pierced once by the bang of a single runner hitting her hurdle. Then, as the final hurdle is cleared, the roar of the crowd swells and the lead hurdlers break the tape.

Compared to this, who ended up winning the race is mere trivia.

Each event is treated in own careful manner- revealing not the sporting drama of scores, distances and times, but the feeling of human aspiration embodied in motto "citius, altius, fortius". The dramatic marathon, the last event to be shown, is a masterwork, into which is impossible to not be drawn in.

Ichikawa views the Olympics idealistically. Through stunning images, and the color-commentary-like narration (in subtitled Japanese) we come to experience the Olympics as an event about human beings (instead of nationalistic athletic juggernauts) coming together to compete in an atmosphere of peace. After seeing athletes and spectators from all over the world cheerlly mingle, cheer, and celebrate, one sees the Olympics as a reminder what world peace can look like. It's just the sort of thing that the planet needs from time to time. It gives us something to work towards.

The DVD is mastered beautifully, and the colors are subtle and rich as a documentary film from 1964 can be. The sound is excellent. The enclosed liner notes by sports-writer legend George Plimpton are vivid and enlightening. (Can you tell I like this DVD?) The commentary by Peter Crowie provides the fascinating back story of the film through stories of the athletes of the Olympics themselves- though I would recommend watching the film without it the first few times. He also makes comparisons between today's Olympics (Sydney) and these games- relatively (though not entirely) untainted by the politics of performance enhancing drugs (though it is quite likely that they were used extensively) and the excessive commercialism of the modern sporting world. The finely sculpted, corporate sponsored, bodyguard protected, superstars of today seem, somehow, less human than these athletes- allowed to walk freely around the field before their heat, who were not ensconced in some distant, private training camp away from the lesser mortals from lesser countries, and who were allowed to experience the Olympics in much the same way that Ichikawa wishes to portray them- as a big celebration of what it feels like to have something in common with new friends from all over the planet.

In the included 1992 interview in Tokyo Stadium- where the track events had taken place 28 years earlier, Kon Ichikawa was asked how he would film today's Olympic games, if commissioned to do so. "Pretty much the same way", was his reply. I would love for this to happen.

Greatest of All Olympic Films
I am ordering this post-haste.

I had the extreme thrill of seeing this film several times on the huge movie screen of a theatre Toho operated in Los Angeles when the film was released. About five years ago, I saw it in a smaller theater and it holds up wonderfully.

This is one of the most majestic films I've ever seen, but it is also dramatically compelling with sequences that will always be memorable. Perhaps most memorable is the real sense of caring and comradre among ALL the athletes AND spectators. Since these Olympics, the games have degenerated into political doo-dah of the worst sort. These games and this film have a dignity, humaneness and spirit that has all but been lost.

This is worth owning just for the Ethiopian's winning of his second Olympic marathon in a row. I seldom care about sporting contests, but the marathon literally had me grasping the theatre seat and verbally pulling for this incredible man--who along with Ali--is the greatest athlete I've ever witnessed.

The American version praised by another reviewer here, was IMO one of the worst desecrations of a masterpiece I can imagine. It was cut from the almost three-hour original version to about 90-minutes and accompanied by the most inane sports announcing ever. If you saw this atrocity, you haven't seen "Tokyo Olympiad."

If you are an Olympic fan or love breathtaking, intelligent and humane filmmaking, Ichikawa gives you the royal treatment in this film.

Thank you, Criterion, for re-issuing this. My only regret is that it isn't being re-released in big-screen theatres, where it can be properly appreciated.

See this. I think most of you will be cheering this monumental achievement.

Memories of good ol' Tokyo
I was only 2 when the Olympics was held in Tokyo in 1964 but had various opportunities to view excerpts on TV. It was really nice to see what people wore, drove, etc during that time. It was especially exhilarating to see footage of Abebe Bikila running thru the streets of Tokyo and winning the Gold Medal two Olympics in a row. I think he is one of the greatest atheletes who ever lived and they don't make them like him no more.

Perhaps more appeal for the cinephile than the sports fan.
there is something about sport that seems to lend it to abstraction. Once you have removed the familiar 'narrative' elements (start/finish, victory/defeat, struggle/result etc.), what is left - movement, bodies - becomes formalised, ritualised. The 1964 Olympics were the first mass live TV Games, so when Kon Ichikawa came to assemble his film, he knew millions had watched the 'real time' experience of the events, and so could be freer in his own interpretation.

And so he magics the most extraordinary visual architecture, constructed from a blueprint of pure lines - the gestures of the human body; its movement (or that of sporting implements) through space; the markings on tracks, pitches, courts, pools etc.; the structure of arenas and halls; the urban grid of Tokyo itself, its buildings and roads - all captured in exquisitely formal widescreen photography, in which the most banal element, be it the colour of a pair of shorts, or an official carrying a towel, becomes a vital part of its design.

Ichikawa's most obvious predecessor for this aesthetic is Leni Riefenstahl's 'Olympia', a film under whose shadow he clearly operates: like Riefenstahl, he breaks up the narrative by disjoining the soundtracks and image, by freeze-frames or sudden jump-cuts; the amazing gymnastics sequence, a sport which can be most readily appropriated for abstraction, is a case in point, colour, form and movement turning athletics into a kind of live action painting.

Of course, 'Olympia' was created to glorify the Third Reich; the Tokyo Olympics were specifically a celebration of Japanese pacificism and post-war economic recovery, as the opening shots of a blinding dawn sun and the ruined buildings of Hiroshima suggests. These Olympics were fraught with political significance - East and West Germany competing as one team, for example, or the debut of many newly independent African states - but Ichikawa films everything with relative, unportentous calm and detachment, especially compared to the over-determined, bludgeoning fascist aesthetic of Riefenstahl. Ichikawa had to negotiate similarly formidable logistics (over 100 cameramen etc.), but the resultant film seems effortless, whereas 'Olympia' flaunts its technical impossibility.

for the non-sports afficanado, the marathon is always the most fascinating event - its gruelling length seems to expose and reveal human nature more starkly, the struggles, the waiting, the glimpses of agonising failure after superhuman effort. Ichikawa creates a supreme mini-epic out of the marathon here, with the refreshment stalls acting as a strange opportunity, like a hidden Candid Camera, to see how individual, unwitting athletes behave. The montage of bodily decay and exhaustion is somewhat at odds with the ennobling, 'official' sentiments of peace and brotherly harmony. By the end of the film, though, you're as exhausted as the athletes.

Athletics as powerful art
Having seen version dubbed in English (I believe David Wolper was involved in some way) I beg to differ with Leonard Maltin's assessment that the English text was "insipid." In fairness to his review, I haven't yet seen this version, but I will remember forever the power, the grace, the photographic artistry . . . and the beautifully-written English text for the film. I am not a sports "fan," but if any film made the case for organized athletics, this one did! ... Read more

Description

Worthy to stand beside Kon Ichikawa's antiwar masterpiece The Burmese Harp, this chilling film focuses intensely on the brutality of war and man's unwavering passion for life.Separated from his unit at the close of World War II, a Japanese soldier encounters death, starvation, and cannibalism in a Philippine jungle. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Descending
This is a film about man in extremis. Retreating, defeated batallions of Japanese soldiers in WWII on the island of Leyte in the Phillipines find themselves sinking ineluctably toward barbarism. The wounded, the desperate, the starving--all are paraded before us in Ichikawa's pitiless, sometimes bitterly ironic pageant of man's descent toward his basest impulses. The fires of the plain of the title refer to distant smoke from fires on the horizon that the soldiers see from time to time. The fires are symbols of hope of release from the carnage and despair surrounding the soldiers. The final irony is how fraudulent too this hope turns out to be. All are caught in the web of deceit, of trickery, of brutality that man in his primitive state so easily reverts to. Just about every sacred cow--brotherhood, respect, honor--is refuted. Man is both a figurative and literal cannibal, preying on his fellow soldiers, his friends. The film is harshly realistic yet surreal and nightmarish--barren landscapes of corpses, dung-eating madmen, men crawling like beasts over a trench. Ichikawa's images have a barbaric splendor and dreamlike aura, reinforced by the dissonant, percussive soundtrack with its echoes of Bartok. Not a film for those unwilling to face the extent of man's capacity for monstrosity head on; for others, it's a harrowing, deeply unsettling experience. ... Read more

Description

Told alternately from the vantage point of a two-year-old boy and his fretting first-time parents, this bright and simple story defines the joys of life in the way the lovable toddler endlessly investigates the world.Looking through little Taro's eyes, we understand the fascination with climbing stairs and the mysteries of the man on the moon.Only Taro's aged grandmother, whose doting ways come into conflict with her daughter-in-law's child-rearing rules, grasps life as zealously as the boy does.Ichikawa's sweet and funny family portrait touchingly illustrates both the impact of the generation gap and the strength of familial bonds. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Pleasant
Cute look at a young couple raising a toddler. Can they agree on how to parent him? Are they neglectful, over-anxious or just simply typical? What will moving in with grandma entail? How might the boy perceive the adults' actions and what might explain some of his? From renowned director Kon Ichikawa. Had to have had at least a minor influence on the Look Who's Talking trilogy, this, to my knowledge, the first film where a not-yet-talking child's "thoughts" are relayed. Pleasant, wholesome... ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Watch at least twice
This is a very good film Kon Ichikawa based on the famous novel in Japan. ("Kagi" by Jun-ichiro Tanizaki.) The story is about odd relationships with old connoisseur of classic arts, his faithful and attractive wife, his daughter and daughter's fiancé. Basically, Ichikawa's films are visually very artistic and enjoyable. (Another examples, Actor's revenge, Tokyo Olympiad) Combinations of beautiful cinema photography with very weird characters are so impressive. Since this film is so visually artistic, if you have to depend on subtitles you will miss a lot of great artistic atmosphere. (Probably, that's why critics did not give great reviews for Ichikawa's films.) To enjoy the film you have watch it at least twice. Don't try to understand at once. First time, read subtitles to understand the concept of the story. Second time, ignore subtitles as much as possible and enjoy the beautiful cinema photography and story. If you watch it more, it will be better. One critical point of this VIDEO (not film), subtitles are missing in very very important scene of the movie. But still enjoyable. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

"Camp"--the pursuit of style
If film is about the pursuit of style, Ichikawa Kon does the best. From one scene to another, Kon demonstrates that the pleasure of movie does not lie in "content," but the stylish movement.

Kon experiments this philosophy in his other films, such as "The Tokyo Olympiad" (a documentary of the Tokyo Olympics in 1964) and "The Makioka Sisters."

It's truly a shame that this VHS version is out of print. Someone MUST release this film on DVD.

Entertaining
The greatest difficulty for the viewer is in deciding how to take this film. The story at its most basic is this: a kabuki actor famed for playing women finds the three men who drove his father to madness and his mother to suicide. Bent on revenge he takes advantage of the love of the daughter of one of these men and turns the men against eachother until, in the end all three are dead as is the daughter. Having never wanted to have taken this revenge and grieved at the death of the daughter, the actor leaves and is never seen again. However we are not meant to be emotionally rapt through all of this. There is a backing cast of wacky and sometimes noble characters, mostly theives, that bring a great bit of light humour into the mix. As it is, we must take it as neither drama nor comedy, but something approximating both. It is no masterpiece of cinema, but it ends up being a very enjoyable film to watch. The lighting and cinematographical technique used throughout is very impressive. It creates a dramatic setting similar to the stage on kabuki company performs their fanciful dramas. This film too is another fanciful production. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Watch at least twice
This is a very good film Kon Ichikawa based on the famous novel in Japan. ("Kagi" by Jun-ichiro Tanizaki.) The story is about odd relationships with old connoisseur of classic arts, his faithful and attractive wife, his daughter and daughter's fiancé. Basically, Ichikawa's films are visually very artistic and enjoyable. (Another examples, Actor's revenge, Tokyo Olympiad) Combinations of beautiful cinema photography with very weird characters are so impressive. Since this film is so visually artistic, if you have to depend on subtitles you will miss a lot of great artistic atmosphere. (Probably, that's why critics did not give great reviews for Ichikawa's films.) To enjoy the film you have watch it at least twice. Don't try to understand at once. First time, read subtitles to understand the concept of the story. Second time, ignore subtitles as much as possible and enjoy the beautiful cinema photography and story. If you watch it more, it will be better. One critical point of this VIDEO (not film), subtitles are missing in very very important scene of the movie. But still enjoyable. ... Read more