The Burmese Harp Confronts What To Do When A War Is Finished

In World War II, a time of expansive violent conflict spanning multiple continents, Private Mizushima (Shoji Yasui) opts for a harp rather than a gun. He's the designated harp player for his troop of Japanese soldiers and he uses this instrument to send signals to his fellow comrades as well as deliver beautiful pieces of soothing music in between struggles on the battlefield. Eventually, World War II ends just as Mizushima and his fellow men are stationed in Burma. With the war over, they are transported to a prisoner of war camp looked over by British and Indian soldiers. Under orders from a British commander, Mizushima is sent to go tell a separate rogue faction of Japanese soldiers to surrender, otherwise they will be slaughtered.


While trying his best to get these soldiers to give up, the British soldiers unleash fire on the soldiers, seemingly killing Mizushima in the process, much to the sorrow of his fellow soldiers. Turns out, though, Mizushima is not dead, he's surely alive. From here, The Burmese Harp, written by Natto Wado and directed by Kon Ichikawa, follows Mizushima as he grapples with the idea of what exactly one's path in life is once they're done fighting a war. It's an idea that's been explored to thoughtful results in plenty of other pieces of cinema, including in that quietly gut-wrenching ending to Zero Dark Thirty (reminder: that was the best movie of 2012) that Jessica Chastain executed so masterfully.

One can easily add The Burmese Harp to the pile of high-quality movie exploring this introspective notion. The Burmese Harp's specific depiction of Mizushima coming to terms with his purpose in a post-World War II world places the character not back in normal society but right into the middle of the battlefield. Or, at least, a number of locales that have been recently utilized as battlefields. Through these locations, our protagonist is constantly reminded of the deadly toll this war has taken on people. Just because the war is done doesn't mean all the ripple effects of the war have gone away. As Mizushima makes his way back to society, he keeps coming across the bodies of deceased Japanese soldiers just strewn across the landscape like snow on a snow bank.

Heck, when Mizushima first awakens from his mission gone awry, he must make his way through a pile of corpses in a shot that's at once gorgeous in its framing and lighting (it's an image that wouldn't look out of place framed in a museum) but also conveys the mammoth amount of death Mizushima is confronted on his journey. Shots such as this one communicate how and why Mizushima's encounters with death through Burma would be so emotionally impactful on him. The viewer certainly isn't the same after seeing how cinematographer Minoru Yokoyama chooses to visually depict dead Japanese soldiers just as Mizushima is permanently altered by his voyage across this land of omnipresent death.

Back in the POW camp Mizushima's comrades are being held in, tighter close-up shots are heavily utilized to instill a sense of unease into the viewer as well as to reinforce the vastly different predicaments these two storylines represent. Mizushima is trapped in a ceaseless wilderness of death while his fellow soldiers are being confined in a small space of land, unable to go out and search for the possibly still alive Mizushima. In order to properly reflect the latter domain, close-up shot's are a must and both Yokoyama's cinematography and Ichikiwa's direction make the POW camp as confining a space as Mizushima's trek across Burma hauntingly vast.

Such sharply constructed filmmaking, when combined with a whole assortment of engaging performances (Shoji Yasui especially impresses in portraying the various ways Mizushima morphs over the course of the story), makes it impossible not to be fully enthralled in the journey of these characters. This makes the final few poignant sequences extremely moving to watch. A climactic meeting between Mizushima, accompanied by a young boy playing the harp, and his trapped brethren has a powerfully bittersweet quality to it. Somehow even more emotional is the final scene depicting Captain Inouye (Rentaro Mikuni) reading aloud a letter from Mizushima that exemplifies the core trait of The Burmese Harp.

This movie and its lead character do not have an exact how-to guide for recovering from the experiences of war. However, both agree that a key way of going forward from the horrors of combat is to try and make this world a better place however we can.

Sometimes that comes from dedicating yourself to burying the dead.

Sometimes that comes from helping a friend.

And sometimes that can come from playing a tune on your harp.
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