Jolly good show, chaps

Rating: Null/10 (16 November 2009)

"We can teach these barbarians a lesson in Western methods and efficiency that will put them to shame! We'll show them what the British soldier is capable of doing!" - Colonel Nicholson
"The Bridge on the River Kwai" stars Alec Guinness as Colonel Nicholson, a British officer who has been captured by the Japanese Army and placed in a prison camp somewhere in western Thailand. The Japanese camp commander, Colonel Saito, orders Nicholson and his men to build a bridge across the river Kwai (in order for a rail-link connecting Bangkok and Burma to be completed) but Nicholson refuses.
What follows is a battle of wills. The Japanese camp commander seeks to break Nicholson, turning him into a slave labourer. Nicholson, however, remains steadfast in his pride and dignity. A caricature of stiff-upper-lipped Brits, he's proud of the Empire, proud of British engineering, dutiful, cultured, and a stickler for rules, regulations and the Geneva Convention. If he is to be made a slave, then by God, he will do it with dignity! He will do it on his own terms!
"The Bridge on the River Kwai" was, of course, directed by David Lean, that master of location photography and beautiful compositions. In our CGI age, its refreshing to see a director who went to such extreme lengths to find great scenery. Lean, from this point onwards, would paint on an increasingly grand canvas.
Though "Bridge" works on an archetypal level, there are some nagging problems. Following WW2, the British and Americans suddenly needed to portray the Japanese as "our allies". After years of portraying them as screaming savages, Japan was now our new "friend" in the "war against communism". They were needed as a bulwark to prevent the Russians from moving further southward and so efforts were made to paint them in a more "friendly" manner. As a result, all Asians in "Bridge" are portrayed in a ridiculously cartoonish light. They are all teary base commanders, resourceful peasants or big breasted sexy women who fall head over heels for American boys. The film's titular bridge itself eventually becomes a hokey symbol for uneasy cultures working together to bridge their differences because, "someday, after this war, what we build here might help somebody."
Compare this to "Hei Tai Yang 731", a Chinese film which documented the atrocities that the Japense army regiment of Camp 731 carried out on innocent Chinese and Russian families. Of course that film is merely propaganda from another perspective, but in its extremities it nevertheless highlights how absurd "Bridge's" portrayals of camp life are; Lean's prison camps are far too homey.
Strange too is Nicholson's comment that he "refuses to work like a coolie". "Coolie" is a derogatory slang term used to describe Asian and Indian slaves or indentured workers. Today the term is still used in some Caribbean islands to describe West Indians brought over during the slave trade. The irony that Nicholson is condemning the Japanese for using the very same practises used by the British Empire is completely lost on Lean. Nicholson isn't a hero for "retaining his humanity" and "refusing to work like a coolie", he's a hypocrite.
But still, the film works on a primal level. Why does everyone love a good prison break movie ("Cool Hand Luke", "Shawshank", "Papillon", "Birdman of Alcatraz", "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", "The Great Escape" etc")? Probably because they're all thinly disguised existential tales centring on captured heroes who must break free, emancipating themselves from some phantom Order. Having escaped the constrictions of this immoral system, they achieve a kind of Nietzschean freedom or spiritual transcendence. It's all quite silly, but hits people on an archetypal, almost primal level.
What's unique about "The Bridge Over The River Kwai" is that there is no "literal" freedom. Nicholson and his men don't escape the constrictions of the camp, rather, they change the camp to adhere to their own standards, their own "British" way of life.
At the end of "Bridge", Nicholson and Saito stand on their bridge, and Nicholson remarks "isn't this beautiful?" Saito nods, the duo sharing their only moment of agreement, though Lean subtly implies that Saito is really referring to the rising sun in the distance. One man sees beauty in British engineering, pride, duty, strength and solidarity, whilst the other quite literally sees beauty in the "rising sun" of the Japanese Empire. With the bridge blowing up at the end of the film and Saito eventually dying, the film ends on what Lean has insisted is an "anti-war note", suggesting that it is the "madness of war" that keeps cultures apart. For Brit audiences, though, the film tends to fan the passions of patriotism.
8/10 – An attempt to rewrite history, yes, but the film is nevertheless iconic, its characters have gravity and Lean in many ways invented huge chunks of cinematic grammar. We take his influence for granted now, but there are numerous little shots, compositions and trends in this film that Lean is responsible for starting. Worth two viewings.