2.27.2007
MASH
It may be time for a new generation to discover Robert Altman's MASH, the 1970 movie about the Korean War that was really about the Vietnam War. But it's really about the absurdity of war in general and the joys of tweaking the nose of authority. Like most people my age (pushing 30 in 2006), I'm most familiar with the long-running television series starring Alan Alda, whose Hawkeye was always a bit smug and Groucho Marx-y for my taste. So, this turn with Donald Sutherland and Elliot Gould as Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John McIntyre.
The movie starts with Pierce and another newly drafted doctor, Duke Forrest, played by Tom Skerritt, starting their tour of duty at a field hospital during the Korean War. During the course of the movie, they encounter like-minded draftees (nearly all the other nurses and doctors) and regimented military types, like head nurse Maj. O'Houlihan, played by Sally Kellerman, and the hypocritical Maj. Frank Burns, played by Robert Duvall, and patch people blown up by grenades and torn apart by bullets in extremely gory hospital scenes. (Several real Korean War doctors who are featured in a documentary included in the DVD said the scenes weren't as bloody as it was in real life.)
The movie is not perfect. There really isn't a dramatic story arc and the story is told in a series of sketches. It's more like an essay about about war. Unfortunately, that causes the movie to drag a little bit in the middle, to the point where I was checking the clock. Then the movie gets sidelined by what seems to be a pointless football game that comes out of nowhere. I read someone justify the game by saying that it showed that the team of doctors could come together for a common cause (even if it involves cheating). But we already see them do that in almost every operating room scene, where McIntyre, Pierce, O'Houlihan and Lt. Col. Henry Blake end the snarking and focus on wounded.
Altman's style juxtaposes the toilet humor in the camp with the gruesome reality of people's bodies getting chewed up by war. For the most part, it works. The operating room scenes seem to get more and more graphic as the movie continues and the audience begins to see what's driving the intense anger behind Pierce and McIntyre's bad attitudes. Whatever their political beliefs (and reportedly, the writer of the novel on which MASH is based was politically conservative), they (and actually, most of the rest of the camp) are rebelling at the absurdity and the outcome of war. But their rebellion never distracts them from the job at hand. It's an interesting take on the idea of hating the war, but supporting the troops.
Date: 10/7/06, DVD
The movie starts with Pierce and another newly drafted doctor, Duke Forrest, played by Tom Skerritt, starting their tour of duty at a field hospital during the Korean War. During the course of the movie, they encounter like-minded draftees (nearly all the other nurses and doctors) and regimented military types, like head nurse Maj. O'Houlihan, played by Sally Kellerman, and the hypocritical Maj. Frank Burns, played by Robert Duvall, and patch people blown up by grenades and torn apart by bullets in extremely gory hospital scenes. (Several real Korean War doctors who are featured in a documentary included in the DVD said the scenes weren't as bloody as it was in real life.)
The movie is not perfect. There really isn't a dramatic story arc and the story is told in a series of sketches. It's more like an essay about about war. Unfortunately, that causes the movie to drag a little bit in the middle, to the point where I was checking the clock. Then the movie gets sidelined by what seems to be a pointless football game that comes out of nowhere. I read someone justify the game by saying that it showed that the team of doctors could come together for a common cause (even if it involves cheating). But we already see them do that in almost every operating room scene, where McIntyre, Pierce, O'Houlihan and Lt. Col. Henry Blake end the snarking and focus on wounded.
Altman's style juxtaposes the toilet humor in the camp with the gruesome reality of people's bodies getting chewed up by war. For the most part, it works. The operating room scenes seem to get more and more graphic as the movie continues and the audience begins to see what's driving the intense anger behind Pierce and McIntyre's bad attitudes. Whatever their political beliefs (and reportedly, the writer of the novel on which MASH is based was politically conservative), they (and actually, most of the rest of the camp) are rebelling at the absurdity and the outcome of war. But their rebellion never distracts them from the job at hand. It's an interesting take on the idea of hating the war, but supporting the troops.
Date: 10/7/06, DVD
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