War’s Quagmires and Structures: A Review of Bridge on The River Kwai (1957)

Bridge on the River Kwai is praised for good reason with great cinematography and a deeply moving drama at the core. Certainly is kin to Lawrence of Arabia, also by David Lean. A really rich irony to so much of the film being about building the bridge, moving it down the river downstream to a better location and building anew, and then blowing up the bridge. This reminds me of the futility of war -- that rules will break down, and communication will break down, but people will reason that the rules must be followed to the end.  In this case, the rules are the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit putting prisoners to manual labor – such an insistence, however, does not save them. Even the shared rules governing the British army do not prevent the tragic conflict that emerges within their ranks thanks to their leadership. In this sense, the film steps away from being British vs Japanese and becoming a story of the nature of war. The fall of the Bridge over Kwai therefore is a symbol not of mutual understanding but of the discord of trying to survive this prison camp.

The cast is peppered with interestingly diverse characters. I especially liked Clipton, the medical officer, a small player in this massive situation. He is recurring, amusing, and thoughtful like a sort of tertiary main character. Colonels Nicholson and Saito – the main military leaders for the British and Japanese respectively– get caught up in their support of "the rules", even if they argue it from different standpoints. By contrast, Commander Shears, the American, has spent time in Saito’s prisoner camp and has adopted a more pragmatic lust for life in opposition to the “rules”.  Because these characters are so distinct, despite their high number, you get a feeling for each of them individually, including often insightful and even hilarious dialogue.

However, the film does still rely on a British point of view -- even the British colonization and administration of India seems to be implicitly favored -- and does not seem to give us much insight into the Thai or the Sri Lankan perspectives of the wars they're forced into. The setting is essentially split between Ceylon (the colonial name for Sri Lanka) and Siam (the colonial name for Thailand). Sri Lankan people scarcely appear in this entire film, writing them off into oblivion. By contrast, Thai people do appear, and even speak in Thai, including figures like guide Yai and equipment-carrying women. For characters that spend significant amounts of time on screen, they aren't given much insight or time – even though at least a couple characters know or pick up Thai and a couple pick up English. Feels like an unfair shorthand – focusing just on the British and allies vs the Japanese – when could get to see the war from a third perspective. Furthermore, the soundtrack sometimes comes across as a little eager, which occasionally cements a colonial vibe.

 

Despite this description, Bridge on the River Kwai is a great film that is worthy of both viewing and study. Excellent sense of scope counteracts these challenges of story framing. With sweeping shots of the jungle, or far off distances of soldiers marching, Lean's direction captures the cast as small compared to their gaping surroundings. One such instance depicts bats flying overhead, disrupted by gunfire, dwarfing the scale of human action. By closing with a zoom out shot, Lean's film demonstrates that we humans are tiny, through Clipton's conflicted perspective, a simple dot against the machines of war. “Madness,” to pull from the medical officer’s closing words, is this whole affair.