Too Literal and Not Anarchic Enough

Rating: 5/10 (12 March 2007)

Mike Nichols tries for a literal interpretation of Joseph Heller's amazing epic comedy, and the results crash and burn.
"Catch-22" the book is, of course, unfilmable as it is. A movie version would have to be 12 hours long just to fit in all the characters and plots, but there would still remain the daunting task of finding a visual language that approximates Heller's surrealist, hilarious, nightmarish authorial voice. The best any movie could shoot for with a screen adaptation would be to capture the tone of Heller's novel, and that's where Nichols fails most. His "Catch-22" tries to impose a linear, logical structure on a novel whose very point is the utter insanity of war. Therefore, the movie feels like a series of underdeveloped episodes that don't relate to one another, and characters that live on the page in almost three-dimensional detail are relegated to a mere minute or so of screen time each in the movie.
I can't stand it when people rip movies apart by saying that they're not as good as the books on which they're based. Movies and books are completely different mediums and require completely different kinds of artistry. And I think it's possible to do a screen version of "Catch-22" that would retain everything that is wonderful about the book while bringing to it the unique additions of cinema. But Nichols' film isn't that version. I wonder what Robert Altman could have done with "Catch-22" if he'd ever taken a crack at it. His goofball, anarchic and cynical directorial voice would have been perfectly suited to Heller's novel. I've always thought that "MASH," the Altman film released the same year as "Catch-22," was more like the Joseph Heller novel than the film actually based on it.
Grade: C