Set during the final days of World War II, Kon Ichikawa's The Burmese Harp follows a group of exhausted, war-worn Japanese soldiers is Burma who have just learned of their countries surrender to the British. Private Mizushima, a well-liked member of his unit who is known to his comrades for his skills on the harp, finds himself sent on a solo mission to persuade another Japanese battalion to surrender as well. On his arrival, Mizushima has little luck persuading the company to surrender, which leads to the battalion being bombarded once again by the British, leaving all the soldiers, including Mizushima presumed dead. Surviving the bombardment, Mizushima decides to disguise himself as a buddist monk in order to venture across the countryside undetected, though he underestimates the power of the new role he has assumed in the process. On its release, Kon Ichikawa's The Burmese Harp was heralded as an essential anti-war film, being a seething statement of wartime mentality and lyrical examination of the death, chaos, and destruction it brings. While i'd argue that by today's standards The Burmese Harp is a bit didactic in approach, given the storyline that finds a soldier take up Buddhism, it is hard to deny the powerful, heartfelt message of Kon Ichikawa's The Burmese Harp, a film that is oozing with humanism. There have been many anti-war films, but not many deal with the aftermath quite like this film, where the surrender of Japan and ending of the war are merely a temporary reprieve from the great loss of life and destruction the war itself brought. The film highlights the troubling nature of wartime mentality even after peace is declared, where pride and nationalism blurs the perceptions of soldiers who want to continue fighting instead of focusing on rebuilding and reinvigorating their country and fellow man in the post-war landscape. Masculinity certainly plays a role in this dissection by Ichikawa as well, focusing on the desire to "be a man, not a coward" and how it more so than not, leads to more meaningless death. Ichikawa's camera becomes fixated on the hundreds, if not thousands, of abandoned and/or unburied soldiers, using Mizushima's decision to stay behind and tend to their remains as brutal condemnation of post-war mentality. While The Burmese Harp confronts the viewer head-on with the human cost of conflict, the film also finds hope within the great darkness of conflict, with Ichikawa showing optimism about humanities penchant for respecting life. While a little preachy or at least didactic at times, Kon Ichikawa's highly regarded The Burmese Harp is without question a powerful, humanistic look at the effect of war on the human condition.
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June 2023
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