Intro.
I'm breaking one of my blog rules today, but for good reason. I've seen The Bridge on the River Kwai many times already; there was a time when, as a teenager, I would watch it every day. I'm not sure what it was about the movie that had such drawing power for me. Maybe it was something about the utter futility of war that resonated with some of the usual teenage angst. But that's a story for a whole other blog. This weekend, after I realized that September had been turning into William Holden month, I decided to watch it again. As I curled up to watch, I thought about how funny it seems that some actors become identified with one specific role. Yul Brenner is a good example - for years he played The King in The King and I, and had a lot of trouble being cast outside of that role. William Shatner is the same way; I just watched his new sitcom and yup, the thought was first "Captain Kirk" not William Shatner. In much the same respect, watching from my generation's viewpoint, Alec Guiness was not known to myself or any of my friends as anyone but Obi-Won Kenobi. That must have been awful for him, especially since he was first in such amazing films as The Bridge on the River Kwai, and gave what could be argued as the performance of a lifetime.
Overview (with a possible spoiler - sorry!)
The Bridge on the River Kwai begins with a company of British soldiers surrendering to the Japanese during WWII, somewhere in the thick Burmese jungle. The men are marched into a prisoner-of-war camp, where the last two surviving members of the original camp are digging graves. One of these men is Commander Shears, US Navy (William Holden), cynical and certain that everyone in the camp will eventually die. Commanding the British troops is Lt. Col. Nicholson (Alec Guiness), and with him is medical officer Maj. Clipton (James Donald), who knows more about compassion than about the rules of war. The Japanese commander is Col. Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), who advises the men to "be happy in their work." He is much like Nicholson in that both men will stick to their principles and refuse to lose face. This stubborness leads to a difficult battle of wills when Saito orders that officers will do manual labor in his camp. Nicholson refuses on the grounds that it is against the Geneva convention. For that, he and all of his officers are shut up in small metal huts (called "the ovens") on the compound, right in the blazing heat. Meanwhile, Shears, his fellow gravedigger, and one of the young men from the British soldiers decide to escape. Only Shears makes it away from the guards alive, but he is hurt, lost and in the middle of nowhere. He barely makes it into a village alive, where he recovers and then makes his way to a hospital on the coast. Back at the camp, though, things do not bode well. Clipton acts as a go-between for Saito and Nicholson, only to find that the men are close to identical and neither one believes in compromise. In the end Nicholson prevails, and sets out not only to build a bridge in the allotted time-frame, but to build a better bridge that will stand the test of time. As they push towards the short deadline, Nicholson begins to employ some of the measures threatened by Saito, but under Nicholson's direction, they pass as reasonable means. So back to Shears in the hospital. It turns out that an Allied team is being assembled to go and blow up the bridge. Shears winds up volunteering (more like blackmailed into going). It's rather difficult traveling, with the leader, Major Warden (Jack Hawkins), getting shot in the foot and then Japanese patrols showing up and such. If you hadn't guessed it from the film's beginning, yes the bridge blows up. But who does it and what is destroyed in the process is what ends the film with an even bigger emotional blow.
Highlights
You really can't get any finer acting. Alec Guiness won an Oscar for Best Actor, and it was richly deserved. Likewise Holden and Hayakawa give strong performances too. However my favorite character, and one that really holds the heart of the film, is James Donald's Maj. Clipton. We see a great deal as he does, as he is the only one to have conferences with both Saito and Nicholson during the standoff. After seeing them both, stubborn and unwavering, he says "are they both mad? Or am I going mad? Or is it the sun?" He reminds me a bit of Horatio in Hamlet in that he is very close to all of the proceedings, but most importantly he is alone, on a hillside, watching the horror of the bridge's explosion. He is the only one left who can put words to it all - "Madness."The film's construction was remarkable too, especially the bridge itself. Filmed on location in Ceylon, some of the scenes with Shears and the Allied party are beautiful. It's so well written too; I loved how they paid attention to both what was said and what was left unsaid. In particular, Nicholson's speech at the end of the film about what a man leaves behind him when his life is through is both touching and yet still reserved, in keeping with his character. That speech alone and how Guiness delivered it earned those Oscars. On a side note about the Oscars, the film won for best Screenplay. The writers were Pierre Boulle, who wrote the original book, Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson. Foreman and Wilson had been blacklisted, so at the time of the film's release, only Boulle was listed as the writer, despite the fact that he didn't know much English.
Speaking of the book, I'd like to bring up what is often a debate between film scholars and literature scholars - book versus movie. Usually I'm on the side of the book, with some exceptions (I liked The Godfather film better than the book). In this case, I think it would be a tie. What really struck me about the novel was just how similar Nicholson and Saito were. They echo each other. In the scenes where Clipton first talks to Saito and then immediately afterward talks to Nicholson, I thought I was reading the same pages over again - that's how close these two men were. That parallelism comes across better on the page than on screen, though they do a very good job in the film. I also started to think about what war films were truly about - the lower layer, if you will. Specifically POW escape movies - is it something to do with bucking the system? An escape from not only a physical prison, but an emotional one too? The idea of an individual making it out to safety, the lone man against the world? (Think of Steve McQueen on that motorcycle in The Great Escape.) I don't know enough about war genre studies, but I still think it's an interesting idea to keep in mind while watching.
Review and Recommendation
The Bridge on the River Kwai may be my favorite war film. It's a classic by every standard. I know a common downside people seem to cite is that it feels a bit long, but all of the details in writing and acting make it worthwhile. All this time after I first saw the film and then picked up the book, I still recommend both the film and book very highly.
P.S. I forgot to mention that the theme song, "Colonel Bogey March" really is addictive. I'm whistling it now just writing about it.
