Of the great masters of Japanese cinema, the work of Kon Ichikawa is probably the least well known in the West. His films have never achieved the public or critical attention they deserve and this is likely due to his vision as an auteur. With 75 films and counting, covering an eclectic and daunting range of subjects, it's difficult to get a grip on what is truly at the heart of this overlooked body of work. As the director said himself, "I don't have any unifying theme. I just make any picture I like...."

The Burmese Harp is one of Ichikawa's first widely acknowledged films, bolstered by success at The Venice Film Festival. A compassionate, anti-war film (yet refusing to enter into any cinematic discussion of where to lay blame), this is one of the first films to portray the decimating effects of the war from the point of view of the Japanese army.
		This is truly a magnificent epic on every level

Through the voice over of one soldier, we're told of the devastation and capture by the British of a Japanese troop in 1945. The battalion's harp player, Mizushima, is sent on a liaison mission to persuade another troop into surrender from a mountain in Burma. But Mizushima fails and after encountering the full carnage of war, bodies of his fellow countrymen piled high and left to rot, he refuses to return to his troop. Appropriating the Buddhist ethos, Mizushima devotes himself to burying each of his comrades, sparing them the ignominy suffered in wartime with the dignity of a humane burial.

Dramatic overhead shots of a solitary figure, the quest of one man's journey to find an inner sanctum, lilting melodies extending emotion where words seem futile, this is truly a magnificent epic on every level.

Clare Norton-Smith