The Bridge
on the River Kwai, based on the novel by Pierre Boulle
10 out of
10
This is the
ultimate masterpiece and one of the best motion pictures ever made, if not in
the top ten, surely among the best twenty.
The story is
captivating, compelling, meaningful, and educational or simply put nec plus
ultra, it cannot be bettered.
About the
book, this cinephile has written three notes, one of them available here:
British
prisoners are forced to work on the Bridge on the River Kwai, during World War
II, by the Japanese forces, led in this particular camp by Colonel Saito aka
the excellent Sessue Hayakawa.
There is a
confrontation in the early stages, when the Japanese officer demands the British
officer to work along the soldiers and furthermore, he insults them by calling
them cowards.
By the way,
later on, during the Korean War, the captors used the same technique, probably
improved and thus the Americans suffered the most severe casualties as
prisoners of war.
The Koreans
managed to divide officers and regular men, the latter no longer obeying their former
superiors and thus breaking the morale a phenomenon explained further in the
classic book Influence, by Robert Cialdini.
Colonel Nicholson
commands the British soldiers and he is portrayed by the fabulous Alec Guiness,
who has won a very deserved Oscar for this challenging role – the motion
picture won seven Academy Awards in total, including some of the most important-
Best Film, Best Director, Best Writing…
He is appalled
by the request of the Japanese colonel and he rejects the idea, presenting the
book with the Geneva Convention rules, only to be hit by the very aggressive,
implacable colonel.
Saito threatens
to use a machine gun and kill those who oppose the order, but he recoils, faced
with the determination of the imprisoned officers, who are then made to sit in
the horrible heat, until they start collapsing.
Sent into
isolation, Colonel Nicholson would not budge and eventually win this psychological
and physical battle, with the Japanese commander, winning concessions and
avoiding the use of his officers for manual labor
That is until
later in the plot, the British commanding officer becomes too enthusiastic
about the project as to ask the officers and even the patients of the makeshift
hospital to work on the Bridge.
Indeed, he
sees this objective as the means for his troops to escape the depression, destitution
and find through a meaningful work a way out, demonstrating the prowess, the wonderful
qualities of the British.
Paradoxically,
he is absolutely right on many levels, perhaps all except one, pointed out by
the doctor of the unit, for the classic Will to Meaning by Viktor Frankl, a
genius that has been a prisoner in the Nazi death camps, demonstrates the
importance of having a meaning to live for.
In the
extermination camps, it was easy to identify those who would die in the next
few days, by looking at their absent attitude, the fact that they lost their
interest in living and would juts expire soon.
On the
other hand, the British would be supposed to oppose their enemy and the doctor
even says that this work on the Bride could be construed as some form of
treason, adding to the complexity of the motion picture.
It is not
all black and white and there is no definite separation between good and evil,
although the colonel becomes a loathsome figure at one point, as the one who
might compromise the efforts of the commando mission sent to destroy the very Bridge
that Nicholson had urged his men to finish.
Shears aka
the wonderful William Holden is an American who had been a prisoner of Saito,
who has managed to escape and just as he is about to enjoy life again, and the
beautiful women that live in liberty, he is enlisted to return to his former
Hades and help blow up the Bridge.
It is one
of the paradoxes of the film, which invites the viewers to meditate, that the
prisoners could have well left the Japanese to their own devices, for the
manner in which they were working initially, the organization and the place
established for the pillars were all wrong and every time they made some
progress, under enemy command, it would all collapse because of the sand or the
poor work.
Colonel Nicholson
thought about the legacy, talked to his soldiers about the fact that centuries
later – the wood could be there for six hundred years, being of the same
species as what was used for the London Bridge – users of this construction
would know who build it.
Nevertheless,
this is of use to the enemy, which is about to transport troops and materials
over it and that could help them kill allied and British troops and hence it is
necessary to destroy what the laborers have amazingly achieved.
Again, the
Bridge on the River Kwai is one of the best films ever made, probably in a
league with the best twenty or even ten.
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