The Burmese Harp - Kon Ichikawa

Anti-war films are notoriously difficult to make. Action sequences, by their very nature, elicit excitement from the viewer and that reaction often undercuts the message a film is trying to impart. On rare occasions, the message is strong enough that it overcomes the sense of adventure and excitement borne of action sequences. Kon Ichikawa's The Burmese Harp is one such example.

The story of The Burmese Harp is relatively simple and straight forward. A group of Japanese soldiers is making their way through the mountains of Burma and stop to rest in a village. Quickly, they realize that they've stepped into a trap and that they're surrounded by British soldiers. Things are tense but ultimately neither side fires and the British reveal that Japan has surrendered. The Japanese soldiers surrender and become POWs but there remains another group fighting in the mountains, unaware that the war is effectively over. Private Mizushima (Shoji Yasuri), whose harp playing has helped keep up the morale of his comrades, is chosen to go into the mountains and convince the other soldiers to surrender.

When he gets to the Japanese stronghold the soldiers there refuse to give up fighting. Surrender is for cowards and they'd rather die, which eventually they do. Mizushima is presumed to be amongst the dead though he does in fact manage to survive and disguises himself as a monk as he journeys to rejoin his platoon at the POW camp. Along the way he sees many horrific things and is struck by the way that bodies have just been piled up along the terrain and left to decompose. The sight is too much for him and after reaching the POW camp he turns back around, determined to give all the bodies he has seen a proper burial. The members of his platoon eventually discover the truth about what has happened to him but he's determined to see his mission through and can't be persuaded to return with them to Japan.

The heart of the story is summed up in the film's final moments, through a letter Mizushima has written to his friends to explain his decision:

"Why must the world suffer such misery? Why must there be such inexplicable pain? As the days passed, I came to understand. I realized that, in the end, the answers were not for human beings to know, that our work is simply to ease the great suffering of the world. To have the courage to face suffering, senselessness and irrationality without fear, to find the strength to create peace by one's own example."

There is a universality to the questions asked in The Burmese Harp and Ichikawa articulates them marvellously. He does not simply show us suffering in various forms but goes the extra mile to question why human beings have created the circumstances that allow for such suffering in the first place. When Mizushima is sent to talk the other group of soldiers into surrendering, the scene centers very much on a concept of identity which escapes our hero. Japan has surrendered, therefore if these soldiers keep fighting and die, they would literally die for nothing. For Mizushima, it's that simple but not for these other soldiers. For them to surrender would mean that they lived for nothing, because their concept of who they are has become tied up in an idea that, the only honourable thing to do is win or die trying. Their sense of identity leaves no place for surrender just as the sense of identity that Mizushima will develop will leave no place for abandoning those who have fallen. The Burmese Harp focuses a lot on death – the needlessness of it, the culture surrounding it, etc. - but it uses death as a way to explore life and the way that we live it.

There is so much about this beautiful film that makes it worth recommending, though words can just barely touch at that special element that film so wonderfully expresses. The Burmese Harp is a deep, thoughtful meditation on life, war, and humanity; a masterpiece that more than holds up after nearly 60 years.

Watch a clip from the movie here: