The Bridge On the River Kwai

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Fucking sweet. My K2K has yet again lead me to a great movie.

What I loved about The Bridge On the River Kwai was that while it is superficially a big, war epic type film, at it's heart it is really a quirky study of some surprising human qualities and moral complexity.

It's really only maybe 1 1/2 parts war-epic to the 3 parts character study, with an appreciated 1 part obsession-on-the-brink-of-madness tale. So basically right up my alley.

And all the shifting of moral viewpoints is great... a lot of big, epic, adventurous movies I think try to put a definitive right/wrong stamp on the story, but what works so well here is that there are at least four major character with varying, conflicting viewpoints, but some empathy is achieved for all of them. It all comes to a head during the (fucking awesome, suspenseful, bridge-exploding) climax, most of the characters end up dead, and the movie leaves you not exactly sure how to feel. This isn't deliberately unsatisfying like the end of Zodiac, but I love coming to the end of a 2hr 40 min movie and not being sure what the message was. It means I have to actually think about the movie, and determine for myself what's right/wrong, etc.

I'm largely ignorant of the films of Alec Guinness, save for Star Wars (duh), but he was so amazing here that I really must delve further into his filmography. I already knew that William Holden was great, but this still reinforced my love.

Also this David Lean fellow, the director. He knows his business, and I'm going to have to somewhere down the line check him out.

Oh, and the exploding bridge I mentioned? A fucking train goes flying off of it. You don't see shit this awesome in movies very often, even in straight up action flicks. Hawt.