War made him a soldier…
Another Bowie film finally reaches the Blu-ray format in September, via the safe hands of
Nagisa Oshima‘s harrowing Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence is due on September 28th on both DVD and Blu-ray with the following features…
Disc Features
~ New, restored high-definition master (with DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray edition)
~ The Oshima Gang, an original making-of featurette
~ New video interviews with producer Jeremy Thomas, screenwriter Paul Mayersberg, actor Tom Conti, and actor-composer Ryuichi Sakamoto
~ Hasten Slowly, an hour-long documentary about author and adventurer Laurens van der Post, whose autobiographical novel is the basis for the film
~ Original theatrical trailer
~ PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film writer Chuck Stephens and a 1983 interview with director Nagisa Oshima by Japanese film writer Tadao Sato
For those of you that have never seen the film for one reason or another since its 1983 release, here’s a brief synopsis from the Criterion site…
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In this captivating, exhilaratingly skewed World War II drama from Nagisa Oshima, David Bowie regally embodies the character Celliers, a high-ranking British officer interned by the Japanese as a POW. Music star Ryuichi Sakamoto (who also composed this film?s hypnotic score) plays the camp commander, who becomes obsessed with the mysterious blond major, while Tom Conti is British lieutenant colonel Mr. Lawrence, who tries to bridge the emotional and language divides between his captors and fellow prisoners. Also featuring actor-director Takeshi Kitano in his first dramatic role, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence is a multilayered, brutal, at times erotic tale of culture clash that was one of Oshima?s greatest successes.
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I’m presuming that the Blu-ray is Region A, as with Criterion’s TMWFTE Blu-ray, which you should bear in mind if