Cracked Actor: David Bowie, Movie Star
Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983)
Bowie is again an ethereal object of illicit and historically fraught desire, here as the self-contained Allied POW with whom a Japanese camp commandant becomes obsessed, in Nagisa Oshima’s drama about war guilt, repression, and grace. Bowie’s basically blond, bisexual Jesus in this movie, which seems about right.