Col. Nicholson's Private War

Rating: 8/10 (11 September 2005)

Disguised in the garb of a boy's-own adventure film, "The Bridge On The River Kwai" succeeds in being one of the most cleverly subversive films ever to capture mainstream success. As adapted for the screen by two then-blacklisted writers, Michael G. Wilson and Carl Foreman, "Kwai" sends up Western notions of heroism and race identity and dares to question not only the needfulness of war but the very value of winning it when weighed against the cost of one peacelover's life.
It's a simplistic, perhaps off-putting message, but a unique one for an action-adventure film from the 1950s. As presented by director David Lean and four terrific lead actors, William Holden, Jack Hawkins, Sessue Hayakawa, and Alec Guinness, the film is not one you want to pass by.
The focal point, especially in the movie's first half, is Guinness's Col. Nicholson, who leads his ragged troops to a Japanese prison camp after being ordered to surrender in Singapore. Camp commandant Saito (Hayakawa) wants to break the morale of his charges through forced labor, turning them into either productive slaves or else cheap corpses. Nicholson of course wants his troops to be neither. So intent on keeping order he won't even allow his men to discuss escape, he rigidly follows a by-the-book code that winds up getting him shut up in a tin shack.
Nicholson may be admirable, but as Saito says, he is too proud. At one point, when told he is beyond the markers of civilization, Nicholson breezily replies: "Then we have the opportunity to introduce it." Later on, he talks up the idea of building a bridge for his captors. "We can teach these barbarians a lesson in Western methods of efficiency that will put them to shame." Saito's no barbarian, though, just another soldier trying to do his job by a code even more stringent than Nicholson's.
Pride is not a bad thing when it helps keep your men alive, and this Nicholson manages to do. But that same pride becomes all-consuming, to the point where he allows himself to forget his duties to his country and bends himself to a task designed to help his enemy win the war.
Another British soldier, completing a triangle with Nicholson and Saito, is Hawkins' Maj. Warden, a commando of almost casual heroism as he totes a sleeve full of plastic explosives around his neck. Seeking to blow up the bridge Nicholson is so intent on building, Warden presses into service an American (Holden) who only wants to go home and chase women. As Holden's character says, Warden would prefer to "die by the rules when the only important thing is to live like a human being." Yet Warden isn't only willing to risk his life, but the American's, too.
The movie's philosophy of disengaged pacifism and the "madness" of war gives it much of its strength, though for my money it goes on too long making the same points. The subplot with Holden feels tacked on and detracts too much from Nicholson and the rightful center of the story. Saito slinks to the background too quickly after his face-off with Nicholson, hardly mattering by the end despite the fact he is a critical player throughout the first half.
The point of Saito's character seems to be that he becomes disillusioned as Nicholson helps him accomplish his mission, his sense of honor offended by the prisoners' help it is his duty to accept. Here's another example of the limitations of a warrior's code, especially as we witness Saito's preparations for hari-kari and his admission he really wanted to be an artist.
"Kwai" may be one of the most visually perfect films ever made, every scene framed and set with a jeweler's care and taking full advantage of a lush Far Eastern landscape. Add to that the unusually complex storyline, and Lean's first epic proves a very good one, a classic to many. If it isn't everyone's cup of tea, well, neither is war.