Paradise Road [DVD] [1997] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

I loved Paradise Road when I saw it on the big screen, but was incredibly disappointed to find that key scenes had been cut for the video. Scenes such as the funeral of Pauline Collins' character, where the mourners beat out the tune of Chopin's funeral march with pepples in an act of defiance to the cruel Japanese guards. Also, a scene where Jennifer Ehle escapes to secretly meet her lover, then subsequently discovers that he is dead is vital to explain why this character suddenly gives up hope and dies. All in all, this is an excellent production, like a big screen Tenko, but which has been spoiled by atrocious editing.

I have this on vhs and would love to get it on dvd, it is the amazing story of a group of women from all different walks of life thrown together in terrible circumstances. From this comes the fasinating true story of a vocal choir that was formed during the 2 world war. I confess its not as good as Tenko, but that has the advantage of being a long running series. Certainly worth the while of buying.

Bruce Beresford's tender hymn to the women imprisoned by the Japanese following the fall of Singapore in 1942 is an expertly marshalled ensemble piece based on fact and blessed with fine performances from an excellent cast and an economical script from director Beresford.

There are so many other Japanese PoW movies from "A Town Like Alice" A Town Like Alice: Special Edition - Special Edition [1956] [DVD]onwards - "Bridge on the River Kwai", "Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence" Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence [DVD] [1983] - that the genre is in danger of becoming a cliché, and "Paradise Road" could have been seen as derivative. It avoids this by a clear-eyed moral honesty which conveys the reality of the situation, the choices available, and challenges the audience to say that they would have done differently.

Firstly, Beresford is quite clear that the British are a colonial occupying power, and the opening set-up is merciless about British complacency, snobbery and racism towards the Chinese servant class. The nurses flirt with the available men - if there's a boyfriend in the picture, well, he's away at the front and what the eye doesn't see..... The atmosphere is frivolous but febrile. Later the Japanese use revenge on colonialism as a justification for what they do.

Into this, the shock of Japanese planes strafing women and children aboard an escaping liner is a kind of wake-up call to face reality and pull together. But it still doesn't happen. Once in camp, there is suspicion between groups - the British and the Dutch, between classes, between races. The movie pulls no punches in suggesting resistance to change. Or the shifts women will go to in order to survive. Some accept the offer to become prostitutes to Japanese officers. ("Is there hot water?" "And soap." This is enough to tip the decision.) The solitary woman doctor in the camp (Frances McDormand, extraordinary) pulls the teeth of the dead women, for the gold in their fillings. The nurse is horrified, but the doctor explains she barters it with the guards for quinine and whisky for the sick. What would you do in the circumstances?

The Japanese barbarism is unsparing, arbitrary and terrifyingly sudden. A Chinese woman is set fire to for trading with the natives for quinine. There is very little room for the "Good Jap/Bad Jap" dynamic of other PoW movies. Women are tortured for even writing on paper. And within this bleak ambience two women, former music students, have the crazy idea of forming a vocal orchestra, writing out the instrumental lines pieces such as Ravel's "Bolero" and Dvorak's "New World Symphony" from memory and in secret. When they finally perform for the first time, it is overwhelmingly moving, thanks to expert timing and editing. It is the more moving for not being smoothly professional, but clearly untrained amateur women's voices, singing a shade roughly, but with great feeling.

This could have been the cue for some misty-eyed romanticism about the redemptive power of music, but Beresford is too much of a realist for "Choristes"-style mush. In the single most haunting scene of the movie, the psychopathic Sgt Tomiashi (Clyde Kusatsu) drags Glenn Close alone into the jungle, not to rape her as you expect, but to sing to her, a simple Japanese folk melody. But this is only a solitary moment of communication, of treatment as equals. It doesn't change anything in the long run; the Sergeant goes back to treating the women like animals, they continue to die of disease and starvation, and the orchestra has to be abandoned because of lack of numbers, and a sense of pointlessness about it all.

The last twenty minutes of the film are bleak indeed, with a move to another, even more bare camp deeper inland in Sumatra, and dramatically the despair of these scenes bogs the movie down at a point when it should be moving forward towards the denouement. This is one of those situations where life and plot pull in one direction, until the point where the Japanese announce the end of the war and walk away from the weeping, hugging, traumatised women. This is a deeply feminist movie, and not just in the sense of nuns repairing truck engines - though this happens too. It is a film which focuses purely on women and the dynamics of flawed relationships under great stress.

Though Glenn Close is nominally the star, half a dozen women hold equal prominence and the acting is uniformly fine. Perhaps Pauline Collins as the missionary Miss Drummond has the most difficult task to pull off as the only unequivocally "good" character; she is radiant.

But it is ultimately Beresford's movie and a worthy addition to that roster which deals with culture clash and the heritage of Empire without a trace of sentimentality - "Breaker Morant" Breaker Morant [1980] [DVD] and "Black Robe" Black Robe [DVD] [1991] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC] most notably. It's not quite in the class of either of those, being more shapeless, but it is not far off.