a seriously funny movie about insane reality

Rating: 9/10 (17 November 2008)

In 1970, MASH and Catch-22 were the main contenders in the unofficial bout of military satire movies, and while MASH ended up making far more at the box office and keeping its acclaim so high that Robert Altman had a sweet career in the 70s (and, arguably, made far greater films), I might be in that minority that prefers Mike Nichols' funny but dark and pretty frightening adaptation of Joseph Heller's novel. I can't say with certainty if it reaches up to the reputation of Heller's work (I would imagine it's probably better and with more detail and further wit), but director Nichols and screenwriter Buck Henry nail what is by now the obvious and continually horrifying fact that the nature of wartime brings on such an insane situation that the sanest one is the one who wants to prove to the nut-house that he's the loon. As in Dr. Strangelove, Catch-22 is populated by eccentrics and crackpots and just strange people, but there's a reality t it that keeps it from going too far into farce.
The difference for Nichols, I think, was Vietnam. There's that underlying current of that war being even more maddening and pointless than WW2, and there's many scenes where the humor just evaporates and we're left with Yosarrian (Alan Arkin) completely bewildered by a military command that is chaotic by design. When we see a character like Bob Newhart's "Captain" Major or Jon Voight's character's chocolate cotton (not cotton candy, cotton) or Perkins walking in on Martin Balsam on the toilet, it's funny or amusing or, as in Yosarrian's thing for acting 'weird' and going nude for a medal or just for the hell of it, hilarious in that deadpan manner one expects from the director of the Graduate. But the tone shifts, not suddenly but with a good jolt, when the pilot shops the guy in half and then flies into the mountainside. Not to mention the whole final third of the picture, which becomes darker and more troubling; the satire turns from nutty and sometimes dream-like (i.e. recurring vision of 'saving' the guy dying in the plane) to tragic and ugly. In fact, this is no less an important depiction of the macabre nature of the beast that is war than Apocalypse Now.
If it's not really a totally great film or a masterpiece, it's almost one. It starts a little shaky with its tone, I should note, as one has to adjust to some of the rhythm of the dialog like the first mess-hall scene with Martin Sheen and Art Garfunkel, or just the tone of the film-making which goes to creative lengths to make cinematic the tone of picture, sometimes in just one shot (the best being when Voight and Balsam walk and talk, and the plane crashes down without the characters flinching). There's touches of real brilliance to the direction and the writing and certain set pieces like the medal awarding or the ending. But at the same time Nichols is also best as an actor's director, and he's assembled a host of familiar faces to film buffs, or just casual moviegoers: Arkin gives a genuine pathos to the protagonist Yosarrian; Sheen and Voight and Charles Grodin and Bob Balaban and Anthony Perkins and Balsam fit great into their supporting roles, filling them with equal parts grounded reality and wackiness that verges on that line of serious and parody; Orson Welles, for his two scenes, almost steals the show from the large cast.
It's a mostly superb and underrated work by a director off and running early in his career, working from a highly regarded work of black comedy to as honest an extent as possible (or, rather, it doesn't feel cheating to what would be an adaptation), and it puts you into a whole other perspective of that "Great" war, with foreshadowing to contractor-profiteers and fake missions on civilians and power-hungry brass with total immunity. Maybe nothing very new, sure, but it's rarely so entertaining and powerful.