I wonder how many YouTube hits this piece of music will receive on
computers around the world tonight:
It’s the theme music from the film Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, about an episode in a Japanese POW
camp during WWII, and is probably one of the most evocative of all pieces of
film music. And the reason why it might get a few hits tonight is that the
composer and performer, Ryuici Sakamoto, died five days ago aged 71. His death was announced today following his funeral.
What I didn’t know until I read the article was that Sakamoto also played the part of the camp commandant in the film – a man whose delicate and sensitive nature had to be locked behind a wall of cultural expectation and the pursuit of duty, and who was consequently tortured by the conflict thus engendered.
And that, for me, was the main point of the film. It had nothing to do with the politics behind the war, but about the clash of personal ideologies and conditioning contained within disparate cultures. The suffering experienced was not, therefore, wholly unilateral, but affected people on both sides in different ways. Sakamoto’s music and dramatic skill captured the pathos beautifully.
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