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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A woman's vocal orchestra in a Japanese internment camp, November 20, 2004
Right before the fall of Singapore in February 1942 a group of women, predominantly English but also including Dutch, Australian, and other Western nationalities, were evacuated on ship to Australia. However, when the ship is sunk they are captured by the Japanese and put in an internment camp. Over the rest of the war they suffer the attendant horrors of being the prisoners of the Japanese and they rise above their condition by creating a vocal orchestra, a chorus that performs hummed renditions of the works of Mozart, Dvorak, and Ravel.
There are certainly some memorable and harrowing moments in "Paradise Road" reflecting the brutality of life in a Japanese internment camp. Such horrors are supposed to stand in contrast to the beautiful music these women created in their prison camp by putting together a vocal orchestra. However, at the end of this 1999 film from director Bruce Beresford we learn that the vocal orchestra only performed for a couple of years before half its members had died, and we simply do not get the sense that things were that bad in this film, even though intellectually we know this must have been the case. As is pointed out, the Japanese do not like Europeans, prisoners, or women, and of course with these women we have all three. In contrast, one of the women refuses to hate her captors, explaining: "I just can't bring myself to hate people. The worse they behave, the sorrier I feel for them."
I suppose it is politically incorrect today to show the brutality the Japanese displayed in dealing with prisoners. The concept of surrender was an anathema to the Japanese and soldiers who surrendered rather than die in battle or kill themselves were seen as being without honor. With Holocaust stories there is a distinction to be made between the Nazis and the Germans, but the culture and political history of the Japanese do not allow for such a distinction. In the film the brutality is reduced to a couple of key figures, Sergeant Tomiashi (Clyde Kusatsu), called "The Snake" by the women, and Captain Tanaka (Stan Egi), who are portrayed as being basically sadistic, although "The Snake" becomes a symbol of the possibility of redemption in the film. Sab Shimono is Colonel Hirota, the camp commander, but he has little to say until the end of the film and simply symbolizes the power that must be obeyed. The focal character on the Japanese side becomes his interpreter (David Chung), who reminds me of the herald in Euripides' "Trojan Women": the man who must announce policies of which he does not approve.
It is important that the vocal orchestra be seen as an attempt to create grace and beauty in the depth of Hell, and not simply as a response to the long years of mind numbing prison labor. But I think that the extent to which that key connection is recognized in this film is up to the willingness of the audience to couch it that way. I also find myself wishing that there was more of the vocal orchestra performing (the music is performed using the original scores, which survived the war), and must admit I was survived there was not at least one montage contrasting the gloriously beautiful music with the indignities of life in that camp.
The one area where there is no room for complaint is in the stellar ensemble cast of actresses, most of whom appear for most of the film without makeup (in the everyday sense of the word). Glenn Close bring a strong sense of resolve and reserve to the role of the orchestra's conductor, Adrienne Pargiter, aided by Pauline Collins as Margaret Drummond, a missionary who is able to recreate the necessary sheet music from memory. Even without the makeup many of the faces are recognizable: Cate Blanchett plays Susan Macarthy, a nurse, Julianna Margulies is the American Topsy Merritt, who is tempted by the relative life of luxury offered to women who agree to be prostitutes for the Japanese, Jennifer Ehle is Rosemary Leighton-Jones, longing for her husband, Elizabeth Spriggs is Mrs. Roberts, who cares more about her status and dog than her daughters or anyone else, Wendy Hughes is the stoic Mrs. Dickson, Johanna ter Steege is Sister Wilhelminia, who wanted to be an engineer and not a nun, and Frances McDormand is Dr. Verstak, a German Jew who escaped the Nazis only to become the guest of their Eastern allies.
In the end "Paradise Road" is not as memorable as I might have hoped, but it is certainly worth watching and should not be dismissed as simply being a counterpart of sorts to the "Playing for Time," about the orchestra comprised of Jewish women at Auschwitz. Even if it is inadequate to the task of creating truly transcendent moments, we certainly can understand and appreciate that once upon a time, in the real world, a group of real women actually achieved such moments.
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27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Microcosm of Japanese Actions Across WW II Asia, August 23, 2002
By A Customer
A fascinating, moving film of European civilian women interned in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, *Paradise Road* tells a tale of courage and fortitude amidst the incredible barbarism of the war-period Japanese army. Kate Blanchett's character is especially moving. The film (and book) deal in microcosm with Japanese actions across Asia towards civilians - and not just Europeans of course (tragic as that was), but Asians, too. When I lived in Hong Kong and Singapore in the 90s, memories among locals were still very strong about Japanese behaviour - which across Asia resulted in the deaths of twenty million Asians: in Hong Kong Chinese villagers in the remoter New Territories at times still attacked Japanese tourist coach parties, while in Stanley, HK, I lived a few yards from the notorious site of the Stanley internment camp, where the Japanese brutally treated civilians, and had earlier, a few steps away at a nearby Stanley prep school, raped and bayonnetted the British nurses manning a make-shift hospital during the Battle of of Hong Kong. Camps for European civilian women existed across Asia, not just in "two" spots, as another reviewer suggests (these are simply all that are mentioned in the film) - in Sumatra, Java, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Borneo, etc, while the same reviwer's wondering if the Japanese raped anybody is simply lack of knowledge. Some fine books to read on the subject, as moving as *Paradise Road*, include Lavinia Warner's *Women Beyond the Wire*, Jean Gittins' *Stanley: Behind Barbed Wire* and George Wright-Nooth's *Prisoner of the Turnip Heads* ("Turnip Heads" is what the Cantonese of Hong Kong call the Japanese) - some are printed in Britain and available through Amazon's UK site. The film *Empire of the Sun* gives the view of a 12-year-old boy in a Japanese camp in China. The Lavinia Warner book gives a lot of details of Japanese war-time barbarism towards women in Singapore, Bangka island (an infamous massacre of twenty-odd Australian nurses) and the horrors of camps in Sumatra. Also, Dieuwke Wendelaar Bonga's *Eight Prison Camps* gives accounts of Dutch women imprisoned on Java, while Ernest Hillen's *The Way of a Boy* gives a view of Java internment camps and their horrors from the perspective of a young Dutch boy. The West may have enough to deal with remembering the atrocities of the Nazis in Europe, but really we have only ourselves to blame if we forget the other terrible atrocities commited in the Pacific by the Japanese. An investigation of the subject makes fascinating and moving reading, and a good place to start is *Paradise Road*.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Scenes Missing, July 13, 2004
By A Customer
I just watched Paradise Road on DVD and was very disappointed. I didn't see scenes I remember in the VHS version. I like the movie very much, but would not have purchased a version that was shortened. There are two scenes I remember from renting the movie previously. Those being where Jennifer Ehle meets her husband while he is attempting to escape the men's camp, and also the scene where Miss Drummond is buried and Glenn Close's character begins to hum and tap the Bolero piece the orchestra did. I have no idea why Fox would delete those scenes. The cover of the DVD indicates the movie is 132 minutes long, however my counter stopped at 110 or so. So please be forwarned, if you purchase the DVD you will not get the whole movie. Other than that, I would say the movie is worth having in a home collection.
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