A Movie As Schizophrenic As Its Antagonist

Rating: 6/10 (15 September 2006)

This movie is about the ravages of war and what it can do to a man under the strain of combat.
But much more than that it is an indictment of an armed service that remained in denial when it had a problem until forced to deal with it, and then treated the ones who brought the problem to light as the enemy. In other words, the old "Shoot the Messenger" mentality.
The details: A ship's captain snaps and has a nervous breakdown at a crucial time. A junior officer relieves him of command in order to save the ship and the lives of all aboard. A company of three of the captain's junior officers had previously gone to speak to the admiral about the captain's bizarre behavior and then one of them backed out. He was made to look gutless and yellow for doing so, but he was really just being practical. He recognized the futility of trying to tell a system that operates in denial -- where covering things up when they portray the system in a bad light is SOP -- that they have a problem.
The attorney for the accused put on a competent defense and then spat venom at his client after he got him declared not guilty of mutiny. How dare he shame the nice war-hero captain who had done so much for his country! See? If they had just let the captain sink his own ship then he and they would have been dead war heroes and everybody involved would have been properly mourned and remembered. This way they had to deal with the reality of one of their heroes having lost it because he couldn't take the pressure.
I sat there at the end of this movie and wondered if this movie was as schizoid as its antagonist. The subordinate officer followed the rules according to Article 1088, was later vindicated, and the movie called his actions "Mutiny". What was the message? Follow the rule book and relieve a senior officer when he shows mental incompetence and you deserve to be judged a rat fink later? Hardly a recruiting technique designed to attract the finest to the service of their country, is it?
In the end this movie deals -- whether consciously or unconsciously -- with the age-old conflict in the mindset of the military armed services: Do they put the country first, or the service itself? It's a balancing act that will always go on in a free society, where a country's domestic enemies are the most dangerous and insidious of all.
We need our finest at the helm -- the ones who aspire to high command for the most noble and unselfish of motives. And we need armed services that deserve such a class of men and women. Insofar as The Caine Mutiny depicts reality in the armed services, we have a ways to go.