The simple truths, moments when reflection during a key event can spring a new way, a profound epiphany, and give birth to hidden wisdom can come when one least expects it. Consider the end of a war, and what happens to the soldiers who may still be fighting in a particular battle, during a specific campaign, neither knowing nor caring about war’s end.

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Well, that is exactly what happens in a film about the closing moments of World War II as a group of Japanese soldiers, during a campaign on Burma, fighting a group of British soldiers, face a basic fundamental dilemma, and one of the soldiers, sent to stop the others from fighting as, after all, the war IS over, finds his entire way of life questioned. Indeed, it is that simple truth which we explore for a brief moment in this week’s Hidden Flick, the ruminative masterpiece, directed by Kon Ichikawa, and adapted for the screen by Natto Wada from a novel by Michio Takeyama, called The Burmese Harp.

You Can’t Go Home Again was a 1940 novel by Thomas Wolfe, and published posthumously. In its pages, Wolfe wrote about the notion that one could not return to the basic ideals, concepts, and dreams of youth once experience, hardship and broken promises have shattered those illusions. When one’s grandiose hot air ballooned-fairy tale myths have been replaced by the dark realities of what appears to be wretched existence, one could never just head back into the safety and security that home once offered.

READ ON for more on this week’s Hidden Flick – The Burmese Harp…

But that is a strikingly depressing and difficult truth for one to learn, especially at an early age when the dreams and promise of what can be, are very often, and very soon, replaced with…well, no, things aren’t quite going to work out that way after all. In the end, the fact of the matter is that one is not shown HOW something cannot happen according to those metaphysical plans conjured up during the years spent in the youthful “home” of the soul. No, quite often, one is shown WHY this just can’t happen. It is up to each who learns this lesson, gain this pearl, this small bit of wisdom, to find new meaning within what can occasionally appear the lost and wandering pointless events of adult life.

Oh…again with the humble pie for lunch. What gives? Where’s the meaning in all of this doom and anti-bloom? In The Burmese Harp, a group of Japanese soldiers are sent to tell another group of Japanese soldiers that the war has ended. Instead, the soldiers fighting this final, and pointless (at least on the surface) battle refuse to surrender as it would tarnish their honor and besmirch their collective character.

Well…the war’s over, and sometimes YOU are the one who lost, and dealing with that hard fact isn’t an easy thing to do if you have been trained for nothing short of victory. Surrender or quitting, or, again, giving up those dreams of a Greater Glory, is not something that one can easily embrace. These Japanese soldiers, fighting that one last Burmese campaign don’t stop—because to stop means that they betray their original commitment, their original promise to themselves, a promise which is always kept, right?

And yet, this commitment, this promise to a youthful ideal no longer exists. Instead, it has been replaced with the reality that often how you deal with tragedy is far more important than understanding why the tragedy took place. This really difficult path towards wisdom, an almost microscopic, small and narrow path, is discovered by a Japanese solider who has been sent to make sure that the group of Japanese soldiers that are still fighting in Burma against the British stop. They don’t, of course. They can’t because that is how they have been trained, this is the life that they believe to be honest and true, and they know of no other way but The Way Towards Their Inevitable Fate.

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But one lone and courageous man, a soldier named Private Mizushima, sent to stop the Japanese soldiers from continuing their campaign, and played with subtle grace and expert craftsmanship by Shoji Yasui, does back away from the madness. Mizushima witnesses the horror that surrounds his every step, sinks below the surface of life to breathe in deeply, learning a new way, and a path towards understanding what to do next.

- Randy Ray