Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Miracle on the River Kwai

Two sick days this week have allowed me to watch David Lean's WWII epic, "The Bridge on the River Kwai". Yes, I had to watch it in two sittings, mostly because I was too tired yesterday to sit through all nearly-three-hours of it. But it was worth the effort. Films like that are considered classics for good reason.

But, when I got to the end, and those stunning closing lines - "Madness! Madness!" - I couldn't help feeling that we were being told the wrong story. You see, I had already read another story of the River Kwai, the story of Ernest Gordon, another British officer imprisoned at Kwai, and a man who struck me as quite a bit more heroic than Colonel Nicholson (portrayed, with impressive restraint and gravitas, by Alec Guinness, above). Nicholson, while a fascinating character, seemed rather misguided in his efforts. Yes, he achieved a number of victories, but I'm not quite sure that they were worth fighting for. And, in the end (no spoilers), it's hard to say what he achieved overall, being quantified as it was in human efforts which were easily destroyed.

You'll know Gordon's story primarily because of one famous anecdote coming from it: the story of the British soldiers summoned by the Japanese because one of them had allegedly stolen a shovel. All would die if no-one confessed, so one stepped forward and took the blame. He was killed: brutally, according to Gordon's account. But that night it was discovered that no shovel was actually missing. The soldier had taken the blame to protect his friends.

This event apparently started a change in the prison camp, a change that you won't see in Lean's film, which is more concerned with the positive impact of the bridge-building project. It wasn't a change that will sell tickets to Hollywood movies, but it was a change, I like to think, that was less easily destroyed in the end. You see, according to Gordon's story, men in the prison camp started to value human life more, and started to ask ethical questions, about life and honouring the dead. They stopped living in a world of survival-of-the-fittest and started looking higher for meaning. Gordon, who had not really bothered with God since childhood, began to think much more about Him, to the point of becoming the prison camp's unofficial chaplain and philosophy professor. His experience at Kwai changed him so much that he even became a Presbyterian minister on returning from the war.

What grabs me most about that story is its eternal impact, an impact that goes beyond who is in power at any particular political moment. Nicholson was concerned with temporal victories, victories that had much more to do with British military spirit and dignity. Gordon was changed by a victory that was not his own, and helped others be swept up in the thrall of that victory.

That, I suspect, is a battle worth fighting. In the light of that battle, everything else seems madness. Madness.

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