COME SEE THE PARADISE (1992)
A film review by Vince Deehan
Copyright 1996 Vince Deehan
Written and Directed by Alan Parker Cast: Dennis Quaid, Tamlyn Tomita, Sab Shimono, Shizuko Hoshi, Stan Egi, Ronald Yamamoto.
I only recently discovered the existence of this great Alan Parker film, having somehow missed all mention of this film when it was released six years ago in 1990. I can't think how I haven't heard about this film before, and I can only guess that it must have met with little commercial and, possibly, little critical success.
COME SEE THE PARADISE begins with a young woman, Lily Kawamura (Tamlyn Tomita), walking with her daughter to an imminent reunion with her newly demobbed husband, Jack McGurn (Dennis Quaid). It is just after the end of World War II, and as they walk Lily tells her daughter how she met her husband and how they became separated by circumstances beyond their control.
We see Jack in New York in 1936, where he is working as a sweat shop lawyer, an unqualified one as he explains, for a film projectionist union. Our first sight of Jack is in a cinema where he and his friend Augie Farrell (Pruitt Taylor Vince) set light to a smoke bomb as part of a tactic to get some attention for their union grievances, but another pair of union men set light to a fire bomb which Jack wasn't warned about. Jack expresses his anger to his union bosses who hadn't told him that fire bombs were going to be used. In the end his boss pays him off and tells him to leave as he has become too much of a liability to the union who have become concerned with Jack's superior knowledge of the law and his hot-headedness.
Jack moves out to Los Angeles and gets a job as a projectionist at a Japanese cinema in Little Tokyo. There he meets and falls in love with the beautiful Lily, who happens to be the daughter of the cinema boss. Lily's father (Sab Shimono) strongly objects when Jack, a white Irish-American, starts seeing Lily, his Japanese daughter. Lily and Jack eventually escape to Seattle where they get married on their own, and without Lily's parents blessing.
As world War II begins and the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbour, a wave of anti-Japanese feeling sweeps America which results in the Presidential order for all Japanese people to be evacuated and sent out into a huge camp in the desert. Thus, Jack and Lily and their daughter become separated. Jack gets drafted but manages to visit Lily and her family, who are also imprisoned with her.
When we first meet Lily's brother Charlie (Stan Egi), he is working in the cinema with Jack, and is clearly thrilled to be an American. He loves baseball and is full of life and always smiling and joking. Although he isn't by law allowed to become a US citizen, he seems to love America while obviously having great affection and pride in his Japanese roots. He reacts bitterly to his imprisonment and becomes very cynical and tough, losing his friendly demeanour. Stan Egi gives an outstanding performance as Charlie, who changes so much under the duress of his situation that he becomes almost unrecognisable from the light-hearted man we see earlier in the film.
In the part of Lily's husband Jack, Dennis Quaid shines in a hugely charismatic performance. The only slight misgiving I have about the film, is the frequent references to Jack being Irish. When Jack meets his brother, played by Colm Meaney, a reference is made to the fact that both brothers hail from Donegal, Ireland. So why do neither actors play their parts with Irish accents ? Strange. But this hardly detracts from the magnificence of the film.
The film is as much a love story as it is a vivid historical account of the appalling treatment of many innocent people, whose only crime was being Japanese, during World War II. This was a part of American history that I knew nothing about, and the film certainly proved very educational from that point, as well as being a great piece of cinema.
Review written on Mon 4 March 1996 by Vince Deehan (vince@deehan.demon.co.uk)
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