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Vietnam War was a watershed event for all of America, and rarely has something as serious as that was made to look so utterly farcical as in Joseph Heller’s brilliant book Catch-22. M*A*S*H, the pointed satire that catapulted Robert Altman to the highest echelons of critical acclaim and popularity, could perhaps be qualified as the cinematic counterpart of the groundbreaking novel. Controversial, anti-establishmentarian and unapologetically in-your-face, this superb black comedy gleefully mocked at the utter ludicrosity of not just the Vietnam War but all wars in general. The irreverent and iconoclastic movie chronicles the acts of blasphemous defiance by the doctors and nurses of a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War, led by the brazenly rebellious duo of Hawkeye Pierce (Donald Sutherland) and Trapper John McIntyre (Elliott Gould). The film is filled with loads of jokes and innuendoes that might seem crass, offensive, politically incorrect and sexist to many; but to think of it, the total dismissal of anything to do with morality, religion, bureaucracy and authority with such impudence and nonchalance was perhaps Altman’s intent to begin with – and in turn one of the principal reasons for its seamless entry into the collective consciousness of its age. And, at the end of the day, all the socio-political ramifications aside, the movie sure was hilarious. Each of the series of eccentric characters were incredibly sketched and superbly performed by the ensemble cast, with improvisation playing a key role in the film’s success.
Director: Robert Altman
Genre: Black Comedy/Political Satire/Social Satire/Ensemble Film/War Film
Language: English
Country: US
In To Have and Have Not, Howard Hawks has mixed elements of the espionage, romantic comedy, film noir et al, to create a film that is a crackling viewing experience and that managed to capture a sizzling pair out of Hollywood heartthrobs Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. In fact this was the movie that introduced Bogart to newcomer Bacall, and they immediately hit it off, and this is evident in their interactions onscreen. Bogart plays the owner of a boat at a small politically-charged, French speaking island in the Caribbean. He gets to meet a pretty drifter played by Bacall, and to help her get home to America, he grudgingly agrees to help a group of underground political dissidents, much against the explicit wishes of the Captain of the island. Based on a book by Ernest Hemingway, and adapted for screen by William Faulker, Bogart did a memorable personification of the kind of characters that he made archetypal – sardonic, cynical, chain-smoking loner who sticks out his neck for nobody. The film has a reasonably capturing story, and made more so by the interactions onscreen, with the topping for the cake served by Bogart’s cynical one-liners. Okay, it does have a Casablanca hangover about it, but its entertaining nature, among others, ensured it’ll always be remembered as a great American film.
p.s. To Have and Have Not is part of Humphrey Bogart: The Essential Collection, a wonderful boxset release by Warner Bros.
Director: Howard Hawks
Genre: Romantic Drama/War
Language: English
Country: US
Bridge on the River Kwai is an epic action/adventure movie based during World War II, and is a magnificent viewing experience. A classic American film without a doubt, the film comprises of lavish set pieces and packs quite a punch through its thrill-quotient. Based mostly in a Japanese POW camp, the film has on one hand a group of captured British army, led by the disciplined, principled and stoic Col. Nicholson (played brilliantly by Alec Guinness), building a magnificent bridge across River Kwai, while on the other it has a smooth-talking but tough escaped American convict (played with élan by William Holden) having to volunteer a small team of British Soldiers based in Ceylon back to the treacherous island to blow up the bridge. Though the film can be divided into separate acts, David Lean’s masterful direction has fused them into an intense, thrilling and captivating whole that combined visual splendor and terrific conversations with implosive action. The movie was also extremely well-paced, so that despite its long length, none of the scenes seemed out of the place. The film also happens to be a terrific study of disparate and complex characters. The music too forms an integral part of the movie’s rousing package.
p.s. I'm very thankful to Clumbia Classics for contacting me and sending across this classic in a collector's edition box-set. Apart from exemplary picture and sound quality, the blue ray discs also boast of a host of extra features. And the box-set, with its booklet, pictures and postcards, is worth ogling at.
Director: David LeanGenre: Epic/War Drama/Adventure/Ensemble Film
Language: English
Country: UK
Passage to Marseille was Michael Curtiz’s follow-up to what is considered his legendary work, Casablanca. Consequently, it has always had to live up to the hype surrounding it. And with the start of the previous movie, Humphrey Bogart in it too, the hype couldn’t have been any stronger. Judging the film purely on its merit is one thing, but with the context too coming into play, it has suffered a lot over the years. However, in my opinion, this is a pretty good movie alright. Okay, it has its share of flaws, but it is important to give the movie the credit that is due to it. Employing a complex series of flashbacks, the movie tells the story of how Bogart’s character, a former journalist wrongly accused of a crime he never committed, has escaped from the hell-hole of Devil’s Island along with a group of fellow convicts, with the desire to be part France’s underground fight during World War II. Bogart’s brooding presence and the combination of world weariness and romanticism that into the role was certainly noteworthy, and the performance of his co-stars in this ensemble adventure/war film, too, goes without saying. And the letter read out during the climax might seem too tear-jerking to some, but there’s no denying its soul-stirring stuff that is bound to make one reflective.
p.s. Passage to Marseille is part of Humphrey Bogart: The Essential Collection, a wonderful boxset release by Warner Bros.
Director: Michael Curtiz
Genre: War Drama/Adventure
Language: English
Country: US
Apocalypse Now, often called Francis Ford Coppola’s last great movie, almost never got made, because of shooting delays and overshoot of budget; fortunately for us, Coppola somehow managed pool in his money and got it done. The film’s dazzling and hallucinatory opening sequence – images of napalm bombing juxtaposed with Martin Sheen’s Capt. Willard suffering in a sweaty, sleazy hotel room, with The Door’s mesmerizing “The End” ironically playing in the background – has attained legendary status. The plot concerns Willard being sent on a clandestine mission to Cambodia to assassinate Kurtz, a brilliant renegade Colonel who, the army top brass feels, has gone insane. A harrowing portrait of the Vietnam War and a nightmarish vision of the characters’ psychoses and their collective descent into madness, the film is less about the actual assassination and more about Willard’s life-altering Odyssey and his growing obsession with Kurtz. Martin Sheen is amazing as the moody, laconic and emotionally detached Willard. The film also boasts of two terrific supporting roles in the form of Robert Duval’s psychotic, Wagner-loving Col. Kilgore, and Dennis Hopper’s crazy photojournalist who worships Kurtz as if he were god. Unfortunately, Marlon Brando doesn’t really manage to live up to the electric buildup that his character (Kurtz) is given in the first three-quarters of the film.
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Genre: War Epic/Adventure
Language: English
Country: US
If there’s one movie that has come to define the madness of war, it would have to be Stanley Kubrick’s Cold War-era masterpiece Dr. Strangelove. A brilliant political satire and a bitingly funny black comedy, the movie remains a fascinating caricature of the then frosty US-Soviet, and perhaps the closest that cinema came to Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. The film chronicles a nuclear catastrophe brought upon by a crazy US General (Sterling Hayden), who, convinced that the Americans’ “precious bodily fluids” are being polluted, has authorized nuclear attack on the Soviets, sending the Pentagon into frenzy. The US President, while trying to placate his “Ruskie” counterpart, comes to know of a “doomsday device” built by them to automatically destroy the planet if they are attacked. The movie painted with hilarious effect the insanity and paranoia surrounding the era, and forms a nightmarish vision of what might happen if “the wrong man presses the wrong button”; yet, in an odd way, it was also a moving testament of human stupidity. Shot in glorious black-and-whites, it boasts of a slew of stellar performances – at foremost lies the astounding Peter Sellers in three distinct roles (an uptight British Captain, the effeminate US President and ex-Nazi scientist Dr. Strangelove); George C. Scott too was simply superb as a Commie-hating General, and so too was Slim Pickens who, as a Bomber pilot, got to be part of one of the most iconic scenes in cinematic history.
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Genre: Comedy/Black Comedy/Political Satire/War
Language: English
Country: US
Adapted from the best-selling novel of the same name by Ian McEwan, Atonement will pull you in for being a tale of romance of the non-weepy kinds and with adult sensibilities in mind, and then push you out just a bit because of it’s attempt at being impressive without being memorable. The joyous gathering of friends and family to a wealthy English family with stiff upper lips turns haywire when a naïve and vengeful young girl accuses the guy (James McAvoy) her elder sister (Keira Knightley) is falling for of a crime he never committed; and with the World War II brewing in the backdrop, the lives of all involved get irreversibly altered one way or the other. In terms of technical achievement the movie is a thumping success. Audacious narrative styles coupled with fine camera work and a background score that is as ingenuous as it is unique, add to the wow factor of the movie. And this technical virtuosity reached jaw-dropping proportions in the Dunkirk scene brilliantly captured through an incredible long take. However that said, the adroitness shown in the movie’s construction and packaging does at times come in the way of capturing the story’s emotional depth, thus leaving me a bit cold at times – perhaps a more old-fashioned storytelling might have helped there.
Director: Joe Wright
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/War/Romance
Language: English
Country: UK
With Katyn, octogenarian Polish master Andrzej Wajda, maker of such legendary movies as Ashes and Diamonds, Man of Marble and Man of Iron, has made a film on a subject that is not just extremely personal to his life, but also which he had to wait a lifetime to bring to light. During the summer of 1940, the Soviet secret police ruthlessly executed, at point blank range, over 15000 Polish army officers (one of whom was the director’s father), and then didn’t just bury their bodies, but also tried burying the event by laying the blame for the massacre on the Nazis. This dark and horrific event that forms an indelible part of Polish history is the subject of this powerful and harrowing war drama from Wajda. The movie begins with the tragic state of the Polish people where one half is fleeing from the Nazis while the other is fleeing from the Soviets, and they meet at halfway point at a state of utter confusion and helplessness. Thus, with the ominous foreboding of World War II as its backdrop, the Katyn massacre is slowly revealed through a few Polish characters directly affected by its occurrence and aftermath, culminating in one of the most terrifying and tragic climaxes that is sure to many viewers shuddering. The movie boasts of spectacular and atmospheric photography, and a moody soundtrack.
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Genre: Drama/War Drama/Docu-Fiction
Language: Polish
Country: Poland
The Hurt Locker starts with the iconic quote “War is drug”, and then goes about both backing and demystifying the statement. One of the best movies on that historical blunder of genocidal proportions by George W. Bush called the Iraq War, The Hurt Locker is a taut and riveting work that places the viewers right in the middle of the killing fields of Baghdad. At the heart of the movie lies an elite Explosive Ordnance Disposal squad tasked with the immensely perilous duty of diffusing live bombs ready to explode any given moment. And amidst the humid, dusty, fast crumbling and hostile Iraqi terrain we meet the cocky, arrogant, at times recklessly daring, but ultimately exceedingly competent Staff Sgt. William James, played with remarkable precision by Jeremy Renner. The movie, shot in cinema vérité style with documentary-like footages, and devoid of any preachiness or rose-tinted vision of the place, boasts of numerous moments of nail-biting tension that are bound to keep the viewers on the edge of their seats. Okay, the movie does have its moments of improbable scenarios, but Kathryn Bigelow has succeeded in keep a reasonably tight leash on the proceedings.
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Genre: War/Action/Cinema Vérité
Language: English
Country: US
Second World War was a bad time for children to grow up in Finland, as nearly 70,000 Finnish children were displaced and sent to neutral Sweden. Mother of Mine tells the story of Aero, one such Finnish child sent to Sweden and placed under the care of foster parents, against his wishes. Told in flashbacks by a much older Aero, this is a moving account of a child at complete odds with his otherwise idyllic environment, which to him is far more hostile than his war-torn homeland. Finding it exceedingly difficult to adapt and only begrudgingly accepted by his foster mother (who takes it upon herself to hide letters sent by his mother), Aero grows up to be a lonely man neither in touch with his foster mom nor able to rekindle the relationship with his real mother, and hence with a deep sense of abandonment, alienation and cynicism. Aero survives the war, yet for him his life is a great tragedy, and justifiably so. This is a fine, lyrical and an honestly made anti-war movie and a heartfelt tale told by a very sympathetic director of one of the many personal tragedies and disasters of life during the times of the war.
Director: Klaus Haro
Genre: Drama/War
Language: Finnish/Swedish
Country: Finland/Sweden
Quentin Tarantino’s seventh feature direction (sixth if you consider the two Kill Bill volumes as a single movie) is a riotous and rambunctious rampage; there isn’t an iota of exaggeration in that! Inglourious Basterds (the title has been deliberately misspelt) recounts parallel attempts to assassinate the top brass of the German leadership, including Adolf Hitler, during WWII, while they are watching a movie at a theatre in German-occupied France – on one hand by a group of hilariously comical American-Jews called the Basterds who love to kick Nazi-ass, and on the other by the owner of the theatre, a Jewish girl, whose parents were executed by the Nazis. The movie is at once, an audacious and a provocative chronicle of an alternate WWII history where the Nazis face a reversal of fate vis-à-vis the Holocaust, an effective genre-spoof (some have even called it a spaghetti war movie), and the kind of wildly entertaining ride that can best be called Tarantino-an. The acting is memorable throughout, especially that of Brad Pitt as the gleefully over-the-top leader of the Basterds, and Christopher Waltz as an unctuous, sinister and silver-tongued Nazi ‘Jew Hunter’. However, the only flaw, as I remarked to a wonderful analysis of the movie by a fellow blogger, is that, despite some brilliant individual episodes, sum of the parts somehow failed to add up to the intended whole.
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Genre: War Drama/Action/Comedy/Political Satire
Language: English
Country: US
