War is insane

Rating: 9/10 (29 April 2009)

It's 1944 and the World War II.The reluctant bombardier, Capt. John Yossarian gets a permission to leave the war, but he gets stabbed.Now we see all the crazy phases of this crazy war.We see men in the air wanting to be anywhere else but there.Mike Nichols is the director of Catch-22 (1970).It's based on the novel by Joseph Heller.I haven't read the book.I probably should.The movie is a real good satirical look on the war topic.Catch-22 makes a statement that war is not good.But it can make a good movie.This movie is filled with loony characters.And those actors and fine comedians portraying those characters are just priceless.Alan Arkin plays Yossarian, who tries to prove that he's lunatic so he doesn't have to go flying and bombing.Martin Balsam is the lousy Colonel Cathcart, who wants to increase the number of flights.Bob Newhart's entrance into the movie is memorable.He plays this nervous and stuttering Mr. Major, who becomes a Major.That's Major Major.Very easy to remember.The legendary Jack Gilford is terrific as Doc Daneeka.Art Garfunkel, who we know also from his singing career, does his movie debut playing Captain Nately.Gina Rovere plays Nately's whore.Bob Balaban is great as Capt. Orr, who was in Sweden when we last heard of him.Charles Grodin does another great role as the pipe smoking Aardvark.The legendary big man Orson Welles plays Brigadier General Dreedle, who would execute the soldiers if he could.Austin Pendleton is wonderful playing Lt.Col. Moodus, his son-in-law.Susanne Benton is Dreedle's WAC.Norman Fell is First Sgt. Towser.Peter Bonerz plays Capt.J.S. McWatt who slices one soldier in half with his plane and then crashes himself to the mountain.Bruce Kirby, father of the late Bruno Kirby, is Doctor.Collin Wilcox plays the part of Nurse Cramer.The movie is full of funny and zany stuff.It's hilarious when Arkin's Yossarian and Grodin's Aardvark are in the cockpit together without any parachutes and Yossarian is panicking while Aarfy stays calm smoking his pipe.And we see Yossarian getting a medal from Dreedle without any clothes on.And of course the bunch of horny soldiers staring at Dreedle's WAC.Or when Chaplain Tappman goes to see Cathcart and he's sitting on a toilet.Mike Nichols told Steven Soderbergh on the DVD commentary that it was inspired by something the young Elizabeth Taylor experienced with the MGM chief Louis B. Mayer.It's often also very serious, like when Yossarian tries to help the dying soldier Snowden.The movie moves somewhere around surrealism and dreamlike state.You see in flashbacks all the events that have taken place.Except that those flashbacks seem more like a dream that Yossarian is having.Places can change quickly, or the screen can be filled with whiteness and Yossarian finds himself in the plane and hears through the intercom said by Dobbs: "Help him! Help him! Yossarian: Help who? Dobbs: Help the bombardier! Yossarian: I'm the bombardier,I'm all right.Dobbs: Then help HIM, help HIM! And there lies Snowden covered with blood and you also see the guts falling out of his body. It reminds me of Franz Kafka and his character K from The Trial, when Yossarian walks in the dark streets of Rome and he sees dead girl killed by Aarfy.Then in Aarfy's room he says they're coming to arrest Aarfy but they arrest him instead of going AWOL.The movie bombed both critically and commercially, which is a shame.Catch-22 makes a clear point that there is no point in war.And it does it brilliantly.