What a cracking movie! Profundity WITHOUT coercion...!!!

Rating: 9/10 (6 February 2002)

What with all the hoo-haw about Gosford Park and Aldrich being 'back to his best', I decided to sit through a re-run of MASH to see what all the fuss was about. I'd seen it years ago and - to tell you the truth - I just didn't get it. But now I'm older, wiser and - to certain myopic women - sexier: and I do get it... I think!
MASH is a 'simple' story of an American medical unit doing their utmost to survive their displacement to the Far East during the Korean War: And it is excellent.
Aldrich creates an anarchic environment based around two maverick, irreverent surgeons (Gould and Sutherland - both outstanding) in which war is viewed as an aberration not just because of the fatal cost to human life; but also (and equally) the prescient cost to everyday life! That people have to forego natural pleasures and passions in order to extricate innocent people from political malaise. As a satire it works wonderfully and almost appears apolitical. It regards war as a pain in the posterior and in doing so profoundly highlights it's pathetic nature. To say MASH is an anti-war film though is to totally miss the point. MASH is an anti-authority movie and the blame for war is clearly placed (with constant doses of undiluted ridicule) at the feet of those in the various seats of power.
To aid this 'apolitical' appeal, Aldrich utilizes a hilarious, ingenious and surreptitiously powerful script in harmony with a host of novel, enlightening and liberating cinematic devices (cross-over dialogue; distancing camera work; off-beat points-of view perspectives and an inspired end-credits device) which enable the actors to 'be' and not so much 'perform'. This elicits an ensemble display of faultless believability in which there is ne'er a false note.
Of the films many highlights along it's episodic narrative, mention must go to the collection of operating scenes (a quarter of a century before ER!) shot in perfectly believable detail and in which is anchored the 'horror of war' note; and the hilarious gridiron game which, despite it's potential (and surely many lesser director's temptation) to 'slapstick' out, remains firmly rooted in the land of truth and (perhaps because of this honesty) still manages to provoke uproarious laughter.
MASH is a film that doesn't take it's subject too seriously. What it does take seriously is the art of film-making (in all its composite forms) and because of this integrity, it never fails to be anything less than a courageous servant to the subject it espouses. Oh that more films (especially about subjects like war and politics) could see the Hollywood for the trees!