Sayonara

This is a rather earnest anti-racist drama based on true events where American soldiers fostered romances with Japanese women in the post-WWII Japan. Of course, being the mid-1940s and coming out of an era of intense nationalistic aggression, it was only a matter of time before these soldiers would have their relationships quelled by the American military institution. Sayonara documents these events in serious and soporific fashion, laying out a grand tragedy of duty, death and forbidden love that really hasn't aged all that well in light of the many more intelligent (and entertaining) films to deal with similar subjects in the years since.

Brando plays an airforce Major (nicknamed 'Ace') in recovering post-war Japan who finds himself smitten (despite his own cultural beliefs) with a popular Japanese stage performer Hana-Ogi (Miiko Taka). His airforce buddy Joe (Red Buttons, in his Oscar-winning role) has already taken up with another Japanese woman, Katsumi (Miyoshi Umeki - see trivia below review). We follow Ace as he struggles with his own racist indoctrination and then tries to win Hana-Ogi's heart despite the cultural animosity that exists between them. Beyond this he will have to fight America itself if he is to keep her as his wife.

It's one of Brando's better performances, coming at the tail end of his initial golden era of acting. He adopts a southern accent, calling to mind the 'good old boy' network of the military and marking him out as at odds with the rest of the cast. His character starts out the film as an easygoing yet firm objector to interracial relationships, and alongside this character the audience comes to see the wrongness of this stance as we're taken inside a grand soap opera of tragedy and hope loosely based on the experiences of real life American military personnel.

Brando actually took on this film on the proviso that he could change the ending to a more hopeful one, marking the start of his trend towards films that reflect a positive social message. Unfortunately, the ending rings a little false and devalues the film's themes... it probably doesn't help that the film thoroughly undermines it's anti-racist message by hypocritically casting Ricardo Montalban in yellowface as the character of Nakamura. Montalban tries to remain as dignified as possible but he comes across as nothing short of ridiculous - and this in itself isn't neccessarily the worst thing about his presence. In a film that makes a big point of showing interracial relationships between white American males and Japanese women, it's incredibly cowardly to only allow a depiction of a white woman with a Japanese male if the male happens to be played by a white actor in yellowface makeup. It reeks of a double-standard that renders it's message as impotent and irrelevant.

With this in mind, Sayonara comes across as somewhat flawed and isn't one of the more well-remembered films of it's era as a result. It also doesn't help that the film in general is somewhat overblown and could do with some tightening up. A passable drama.

TRIVIA: Miyoshi Umeki won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as Katsumi, becoming the first asian to recieve an Oscar. To date she is only one of four asians to win an Oscar (the other three, all male, are Yul Brynner, Ben Kingsley and Haing S. Ngor).