Unforgettable



Even after having been an IMDB member for five years, I still cannot understand why there are no discussions about this gem...











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Is there some aspect in particular that you wanted to discuss?

I'm willing.

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Sorry I didn't notice your reply earlier!

I am willing to discuss whatever YOU are willing. ;)

It has many interesting facets: like, was this perhaps based on a real story?
What got me the most, of course, was how she had to give up Taro, her son. And the final scene with her son is... ah, unforgettable.


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Sorry I didn't notice your reply earlier!


Well, I'd forgotten that I'd written it, so we're even.

As far as I know, Oswald Wynd's novel was not based on a real person or incident.

I agree about Taro, of course--it is indeed heartbreaking, all the more so because there are two sides to that story. For Mary, it's a heinous betrayal and loss, but for Kurihama, it's an act of love, and he does it with the knowledge that he's almost certainly going to lose Mary over it. In the published version of the screenplay, there's a lengthy essay by Christopher Hampton in which he tells the story of the time he spent in Japan working with people from NHK, the Japanese network that commissioned the miniseries. At one point he learns that the executives at NHK have issues with the idea of someone with non-Japanese heritage achieving such a high ranking in the military as Taro holds, so Hampton knocks him down to a captain. And this was in the late 1980s! The bias and unfairness that Taro would have experienced as the 'half-breed' son of his father's Western mistress during that era would have been massive. And Kurihama doesn't even try to explain this to Mary because he knows she won't understand, that she will think that all he'll need is his mother's love, and maybe that would have been true. What a choice!

Here's a question: what do you think it is about Mary that draws Kurihama to her? It seems as though he had been civil but remote from his fellow diplomats and the community in Mukden before she came, and from various clues that he gives, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that he's contemptuous of many of them. Why not her? She's awkward and not very worldly-wise when he meets her, to say the least--do you think he was charmed by those things?

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I just saw this movie & ad to check the board. I must say I find your post very insightful! thank you so much!


OPEN YOUR EYES! dailymotion.com/video/xbi2hi_1993-chandler-molestation-extortion_news

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Apparently this was one of the British productions made for High definition.

Just wish it was more entertaining!

Its that man again!!

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Maybe because hardly anyone has seen it. It was only shown once in the UK as I recall.

"Black and white cat . . . black and white cake." - Charles Chazen.

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It was shown here in the USA several years ago, perhaps sometime between 2001-2005 if I remember correctly.

I loved the film and wish it would be re-aired.



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[deleted]

It was shown in 1989 or 1990. I remember watching it as a preteen on PBS. I loved it! Is is on DVD somewhere?

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When will someone at Acorn or wherever get this DVD out?

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It was on Masterpiece Theater and I cried harder at the end of it than I have ever cried watching anything.

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