Please watch the damn movie



I was looking around for some documentation on the recent Japanese movie Lorelei, and I found this editorial from the British paper The Telegraph on the Japanese people's equivocal attitude towards their role in WWII. There are a couple of paragraphs on the movie:

A popular Japanese movie earlier this year said much about Japanese attitudes. In the dying days of the war, Japan takes delivery of a German secret weapon - a submarine that can "see" enemy ships and avoid torpedoes through the psychic powers of Lorelei, a survivor of the Nazi death camps.

The sub wreaks havoc among US navy ships and, to secure its surrender, the Americans threaten to use a third nuclear bomb against Tokyo. In the climax, a B-29 carrying a nuclear bomb inscribed with "Bye Bye Tokyo" is shot down by the submarine - a ship guided by a Holocaust survivor helping Tokyo survive a holocaust.

This is a good example of how you shouldn't let your preconceived notions get the best of you. I watched Lorelei today, and this description is completely backwards. (If you want to see this movie, the following could be spoilers.) In fact, the third atomic bomb is to be dropped as a condition of the submarine's surrender! As it turns out, the head of Japan's navy brokered this deal to guarantee that the civilian government would be destroyed and the military would lead Japan into the post-war era. (No, that doesn't really make sense... and it's not even the silliest thing in the movie.) Lorelei may have said something about Japanese attitudes towards the war, but clearly the author of this editorial didn't bother to actually watch it.

Posted: Sun - January 29, 2006 at      

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