EPEOLATRY

MOVIE 4.5

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

Dir: David Lean

An Anti-War Film honoured with 7 Oscar wins! Well, let’s keep those Oscars asides for a while coz here I’m going to talk mostly about the plot, characters and what it represents in microcosm.

This movie was far ahead of its time due to two reasons mainly a) the story is stacked in two major plots and each plot has its own three-act structure - the first being the conflict of Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) and Colonel Saito, once that conflict is resolved, the second being the turning point for Major Shears (William Holden) and his pursuit of blowing up the bridge. b) It describes the pointlessness of war rather than choosing sides - the Japs weren’t represented totally brutal like films did - I mean Colonel Saito was quite moral enough even in following up the orders from the Imperial.

What I found so great about this film is the characters of Colonel Nicholson and Major Sears - I mean they can represent two different factions of a society. At the start we see, Col. Nicholson is damn adamant for the officers in his division in refusing their part on labouring (but not the part of management) for the construction of the bridge in a Japanese Prisoner Camp, he has this ideology that people have ranks and should follow that position - I mean he isn’t haughty towards all low-class soldiers but he believes that things work for the best and in perfect coordination if members understand their status in it - he even mentions this from ‘The Geneva Convention’ (which was a joint multi-national protocol in WWII to be followed by nations in war for the sake of army prisoners in foreign lands) but Japanese have totally rejected that for it doesn’t level up to their Samurai beliefs that a true warrior must take his own life on the face of defeat and never surrender to enemies. Still, Col. Nicholson maintains his code of ethics and he had this different belief of zeitgeist: he believed Col. Saito that there is no escape from the camp as it’s an isolated island and even advices his fellow mates to give up devising escape plans and instead to work on the bridge for time being, he stands over as a great leader and successfully builds the bridge in time despite all odds for he believed that the bridge will serve as a milestone for the British prisoners’ immense achievement in foreign land and would serve for the benefit of indigenous people, for transportation. On the other side, Maj. Sears is American and in the first scene we see him digging graves for his dead fellows who seemed to have died for no great reasons, he believed that the time in the camp was worthless and plans for escape as he thought that working for the bridge was an exercise in futility. On returning home, he cons the navy by changing his name and post of some dead officer with no family ties so that he can get much retirement benefits and fixes a date saying ‘All you need is love’ even before the time of Beatles! XD. But then he’s trapped to go again with a team to maintain that identity back on the island, this time to blow up the bridge. At that stage, he is reluctant and the bridge doesn’t mean much to him all he hustle is to protect his fellow soldiers and to not let anyone die, he even befriends a Japanese girl. So Col. Nicholson represents the set of sanguine people in the society, ‘the karma people’ who are ambitious for a cause and completes the task if it causes certain benefits for the society and doesn’t worry much about the impacts that it will bring or are not wary of what’s coming to them (a boomerang). On the other hand, Maj. Sears represent a set of people who have accepted the nihilism of their lives and have lost a sense of morality (not completely) for a certain place and hustles to escape, disguise and deceive from higher people (the rulers) and have a certain affections with the normal people.

Now, a funny thing about this film. In the soundtrack, there’s a military tune - which the prisoners whistle on a march - it was actually a song written by a British soldier in WWII called ‘The Colonel Bogey March’ and the battalions improvised it much, following are the actual lyrics, sing along with me:

‘Hilter Has Only Got One Ball

Goring Has Two But Very Small

Himmler Has Something Sim’ler

But Poor Old Goebbels Has No Balls At All.’

LOL!!!