Smart and breakaway anti-war film that bravely incorporates elements of a comedic nature on top of an already disorientating experience.

Rating: 7/10 (6 February 2009)

Let's just say Catch-22 is a lot less straight forward than director Mike Nicholls' previous film, The Graduate. In fact, whilst studying the rather simple premise of an individual sick of the war he's fighting in and desperately wanting to get home, Catch-22 moves off down a road that blurs the boundaries between reality and non-reality; incorporating dreams, fantasies, visions and other such things that I'm sure are mere hallucinations invoked by hapless soldiers wanting to escape from where they currently are. Yes, it's deluded and yes, it's muddled but it echoes its characters' predicament and the general mindset they seem to force themselves to resort to at times of great stress.
I'm assuming it's common knowledge but films to be Taxi Driver and Apocalypse Now may well have taken a mite of inspiration from Catch-22, two films that looked at the effects of war (one back home/one actually on the front line) and distilled those effects as well as the world around them that they gaze at through the lead character's sub- conscious. Catch-22 does this to a degree but what distinguishes it is its approach to this idea and how comedy as well as out and out farce can be incorporated into such a foundation.
Catch-22 works for the best part of its runtime, combining a feast of familiar names and actors with the idea that war is Hell and its lead just wanting to get out but additionally, the ideas of a comedic and avant-garde nature as we see things unravel from an already distorted perspective. It's worth mentioning here that the lead is a United States Air Force bombardier named Yossarian, played by Alan Arkin, and it's also worth mentioning he is stabbed very early on in the film and consequently, his already desperate perspective and desperate wish to just go home is further hampered by a teetering on death's door.
So point of view is an important ingredient to the film, explored on a large scale through its lead but there are glimpses or ideas of being toyed with on a smaller scale when a burning bomber crash lands on a runway as higher-ups, whom have already been established as perhaps having their heads in the clouds anyway, in the foreground walk on by casually. This is maybe some sort of statement on the propaganda behind warfare and how you enable yourself to 'see' only what you want to 'see' and that the gritty, realistic lead character 'sees' just about everything but those with blinders on that don't allow their best soldiers to leave fail to 'see' the bigger picture of what's going on.
The Catch 22 of the title is an inescapable clause, buried within the United States Air Force foundations. It goes something along the lines of only being able to quit and go home if it's deemed the war has made you go crazy but you cannot officially be deemed crazy if you file to be labelled crazy in the first place. It reminded me of the line in 2005 film 'Proof' during which Anthony Hopkins stated 'crazy people don't sit around all day debating whether they're still sane  they've got better things to do.' Yossarian has to balance this simple yet infuriating equation of a catch-22 nature as he copes with his being stabbed and sorting his way through a series of flashbacks-come-memories of previous bombing missions that feel real to him.
One of the reasons I think Catch-22 gets across its bizarre atmosphere is due to the number of times during which Yossairan hears someone tell him to 'help the bombardier'. 'But I'm the bombardier' he replies  'then help him!' says the voice. Such a contradictory and confusing exchange of words only echoes the regulations of catch-22 itself, an odd and contradictory set of words that do not amount to anything bar keeping you in your current situation. This echoes the exchange between the voice and Yossarian: I feel Yossarian hears these words whilst he lies on the slab, in a state of semi- consciousness as the medics talk around him. The exchange does not help Yossarian's situation but they do keep him in the fixed situation he's in: half dead and on an operating table.
There are flashes of white in the film. The idea that you 'step into the light' and enter the afterlife. This is a mere representation of Yossarian's near-death experience as he recovers from the ordeal but they act as a series of distracting transitions that add to the confusing nature of the film and Nicholls quite impressively toys with the use of colour and visual tricks to further distract us from the bigger picture and study of what's going on. There are other comic touches, simplistic but very effective, like one such soldier carrying the rank and name of 'Major' and additionally, the absurdity of having Vietnamese flags fluttering on the front of a military jeep. Orson Welles makes an appearance that gives the film yet another surreal kick. Catch-22 delivers on the grounds of a tale of one man wanting to escape his current situation and get back to some sort of normality; it's a funny, twisting and quite creepy film that healthily delivers on all those fronts.