Catch-22

Rating: 7/10 (7 January 2011)

Catch-22 is a movie I've wanted to watch for quite some time. In fact, I've owned the DVD for years, I found it in the $5.50 bin at Wal-Mart way back when. For one reason or another I've never gotten around to watching it until today. The film is a satire of the absurdity of war, it's commercialization, and of bureaucracy in general. The story, in a nutshell, involves a bombardier who doesn't want to fly anymore missions and desperately tries to get grounded on the grounds of insanity. But, this turns out to be easier said than done.
The cast is one of the most eclectic I've ever seen: Alan Arkin, Art Garfunkel, Bob Newhart, Martin Sheen, Jon Voight, Orson Welles, Bob Balaban, and Charles Grodin, to name a few (it's interesting seeing some of them in such early roles). They play characters with quirky names such as: Major Major, Chaplain Tappman, Milo Minderbinder, and General Dreedle, each with their varying degrees of insanity. The Major who is forced to take over as squadron leader (an unwanted job) refuses to let people in his office to see him while he is in. They can be sent in to see him after he's left, however (which barely scratches the surface of a great sequence of dialogue). The Lieutenant who trades much-needed supplies with other countries, including the enemy, believes they can come out of the war rich. The General who doesn't understand why he can't shoot an insubordinate officer. The Captain who has crash-landed into the sea four times but always manages to survive and fly right back out there, which has a great payoff in the end. With everyones' use of insanity to cope with the horrors of war, I couldn't help but to draw comparisons to M*A*S*H, the film more than the TV show.
Catch-22 was adapted by Buck Henry from a novel, of the same title, authored by Joseph Heller. The story is, effectively, told in a non linear fashion and with recurring flashbacks. As with other satires, many of the situations in the film are absurd, some brilliantly so. And I loved the "who's on first" nature of the dialogue, going in circles, never quite reaching a logical conclusion. However, I'm interested in reading the book sometime. A couple of the characters felt underused in the screenplay, especially Newhart as Major Major and Welles as General Dreedle.
It's director is Mike Nichols, who also did the classic film The Graduate. Though not his best work, it's certainly not his worst either. He opens the film with a beautiful sunrise slowly coming up over a mountainous horizon. All we hear initially is the occasional dog barking or bird chirping. Then, the sound of jet engines roaring. Much of the films opening dialogue is all but drowned out by these sounds of planes starting, taking off, landing, even crashing but the characters carry on, unphased, as if nothing is happening. Nichols' portrayal of humor and violence, often simultaneously, is quite jarring.
Though not quite as good as I was hoping, some of the hilariously insane situations and ingenious dialogue make it well worth a watch...
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