Paradise Road

Paradise Road
by Bruce Beresford

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DVD Reviews of Paradise Road

DVD Review: Moving Film About A Little Known Part of WWII History
Summary: 3 Stars

This movie affected me quite powerfully because I had read the book that was used as source material. One of the female children who survived the prison camp lives here in New Jersey and administers a juvenile reform facility. In an interview in the local papers she described how she draws on her experience for perspective and how she tries to show her male, juvenile inmates how to adjust and succeed. I clipped out the article and keep it between pages of the book. My thoughts and feeling about the book and movie are too many and too complex for me to completely sort them out in a critical review. What I offer here is a very crude sample of my reaction. My focus here is more about the historical fact than about the art of the film. Whereas the book is terribly moving, the film is not quite, but it is worth seeing.

Few people know that during World War II, the Japanese had at least two prison camps where western, civilian women were kept. One camp was in Burma and another in China. The women were the wives of various businessmen, government employees, groups of nuns and Protestant missionaries. They had stayed behind or were stranded when the war broke out. Many of the women had their children with them in the camps. They were from America, England, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands and other places. There were a few Oriental and mixed race women and children also. They tended to be the wives of diplomats or otherwise well connected to the wrong side.

It happened that one of the women prisoners in the camp in Borneo, Agnes Newton Keith, was a professional author. In the camp she secretly kept a diary, and when the war was over, she published a memoir, Three Came Home, describing her experiences. It is a magnificent piece of writing, a minor classic in English literature. The book, some letters, and interviews with survivors were the source material for Paradise Road. There have been three previous movies from this material. A movie titled, Three Came Home was made in 1950, and movies titled A Town Like Alice in 1956 and a remake in1981.

In the film, the rivalry between the head of the camp and his subordinate are straight out of the book. As characterized in the book, a few of the Japanese are decent human beings, but on the whole, though, they come across as completely ignorant and amoral. They are young, dumb and don't want to be there. The head of the prison had studied in the United States for a few years. He had also read a book about Borneo that Ms. Keith had published before the war. This connection helped her to survive.

In the movie, as compared to the book, the individual acts of brutality and torture against the women are exaggerated. One of the women was reported for smuggling, and she is tied up and forced to kneel over a sword for 24 hours. In the book, Three Came Home nothing like this happened. Smuggling items back and forth with the locals was a regular, ongoing activity. Interestingly, some of the younger nuns became the best smugglers. I can just see some young nun having the time of her life doing this!

In the film, as you might expect, one of the Japanese guards tried to rape one of the women prisoners. That part of the story was inspired by an event in the book, but in the book it was actually an incompetent attempt at seduction on the part of the guard. The woman, Agnes Newton Keith herself, rebuffed him. It became a big deal because she reported the incident as a rape attempt to the Japanese head of the camp. The Japanese made a big stink about it; her accusation was considered an unthinkable affront to the honor of Japanese soldiers.

In the movie a number of women chose to become prostitutes rather than live in the camp. That never occurred in the book.
I don't have a problem with the film showing greatly exaggerated acts of brutality. The medium of film is very good at showing that sort of thing but not very good at showing the constant, day-after-day suffering from starvation for four years. So it balances out. Many died from malnutrition and disease. That is only alluded to in the movie. The one thing that stayed with me from the book was how much starvation Agnes Newton Keith was willing to suffer herself so that her son could eat a little more. That was not depicted. Her sacrifice was beyond heroic. The filmmakers focused on the adult woman only, which I think was wrong. With Agnes Newton Keith, probably the greatest amount of her mental energy and time was spent trying to acquire enough food for her son.

I don't mean to be kind to the Japanese. Close to the women's camp was a camp where the male civilians were kept, as well as some military prisoners. They were beaten and tortured often.
The center point and main symbol of the movie was choral singing that the women organized among themselves. The choral singing in the movie is not in the book.

In the book and the movie, there are a number of women with preposterous vanity. Most of these women were from well-off backgrounds. Many spent incredible amounts of time bemoaning the absence of men and the lack of cosmetics. Some spend hours upon hours thinking about what dress they would wear when they are liberated. In the camp cosmetics and dresses were bartered for various items.

The women were optimistic. They knew that some day the Americans would arrive, and they did.

Within six weeks of the Japanese surrender, just about every Japanese officer from every prison camp was dead. They committed suicide, were executed as war criminals, or just disappeared. Ms. Keith relates an incident where, upon liberation, some Americans soldiers killed their former captors on the spot, with their bare hands. If you read the book, you would have to pity for them.

Description of Paradise Road