Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch The Burmese Harp
1956 · Kon Ichikawa · The Burmese Harp on Sightlines
4 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 4 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch how small the soldiers look against open land. (camera)
Ichikawa and cinematographer Minoru Yokoyama repeatedly set a single soldier or monk against wide stretches of sky, hillside, and open ground, dwarfing the human figure.
Payoff: The scale makes each person look both dignified and completely exposed.
Listen for the company singing together, often. (sound)
The soldiers sing as a group throughout the film, sometimes for morale, once even to signal danger, and the song 'Home Sweet Home' keeps returning.
Payoff: The singing holds this unit together before anything else does.
Watch the image harden into stark black and white. (light)
Yokoyama's photography turns high contrast during scenes of combat and death, then relaxes into softer, more lyrical light whenever the men are singing or at ease.
Payoff: The lighting itself tells you which register of the film you are in.
Track the harp Mizushima carries and plays. (setting)
The arched Burmese harp travels with him everywhere. Kon makes it the thing his comrades know him by, and the sound that answers for him.
Payoff: The instrument marks him as himself, wherever the story takes him.
The 4 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the small figure against the landscape. Ichikawa is measuring one man against a devastated country.