This film may perhaps muddy the waters (excuse my “bridgy” pun) regarding right and wrong more than any other film we’ve seen so far. The plot of The Bridge On The River Kwai revolves around two military commanders, one British and one Japanese, who are puffed up with pride and obsessed with following “the rules of war.” I find the rules of war to be a ludicrous idea, but back in the mid-to-late 1800s as weapons technology advanced, the powers that be made an effort to regulate both how warfare is conducted and how combatants and non-combatants (including prisoners of war) are treated by their enemies. I think these rules make for fascinating reading, and you can check out the text of the 1907 Hague Convention here: http://www.opbw.org/int_inst/sec_docs/1907HC-TEXT.pdf, and the 1929 Geneva Convention here: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/geneva02.asp (the latter of which is referred to several times in The Bridge on the River Kwai). It sounds like a nice idea that both Colonel Nicholson (the British guy) and Colonel Saito (the Japanese guy) want to follow the rules, but the problem is that they each believe in following different sets of rules. Nicholson elevates the Geneva Convention nearly to the same infallible preeminence as the Bible, and Saito promotes a more ancient code of bushido, “the way of the warrior.” The extent of the conflict between the two colonels’ rules becomes evident immediately in the film when Nicholson almost triumphantly parades his troops into Saito’s POW camp and Saito rails at them all for being cowards since they surrendered to their enemies and did not commit “honorable” suicide.

Saito about to swat Nicholson with the British officer’s copy of the Geneva Conventions.

But then the conflict gets even more, um, conflicting. After a pretty long stalemate between the two commanders regarding whether or not officers can be forced to do manual labor like common soldiers (you see, the Geneva Convention says no, but Saito’s superiors say yes), a rather strange bargain is struck between the British and the Japanese: the British will design and construct the bridge as long as their officers don’t have to work; and the Japanese will, well, support them in an overseeing role that seems very inferior to that of the British, who see themselves as God’s gift to engineering. Nicholson, who insists that rank and order must be maintained at all times in the British army, views the bridge project as a way to boost his men’s morale, to bolster their pride, and to convince them that they are still “soldiers and not slaves.” But as the film continues, Nicholson’s obsession with the bridge and its possible longevity increases to the point that when the bridge is finished, he ceremoniously places a plaque on it so its future travelers will know just who exactly built this wonder: the practically almighty British.

Nicholson proudly places his plaque.

Imagine Nicholson’s shock and horror, then, when he realizes at the close of the film that (spoiler alert!) a small contingent of Allied soldiers intends to blow up his masterpiece! Major Warden (a somewhat eccentric but clever British officer), Commander Shears (a common soldier who has stolen an officer’s identity in order to receive better treatment when he was a prisoner in Saito’s camp), and young Lieutenant Joyce (a Canadian who struggles with killing the enemy) have trekked through the steamy jungle for days to reach the bridge in time to destroy it when the first train (one carrying Japanese VIPs) ventures across. Warden, like Nicholson and Saito, is also a rule-follower. He warns Shears before their mission that death is preferable to capture by the enemy, a belief that smacks of the same values held by Saito. Shears scoffs at such a notion, most notably when Warden is seriously wounded before reaching the bridge. When Warden orders Shears to continue without him, Shears retorts: “You make me sick with your heroics. There’s a stench of death about ya…And with you, it’s just one thing or the other: ‘Destroy a bridge or destroy yourself.’ This is just a game, this war. You and that Colonel Nicholson, you’re two of a kind. Crazy with courage. For what? How to die like a gentleman. How to die by the rules when the only important thing is how to live like a human being. I’m not going to leave you here to die, Warden, because I don’t care about your bridge and I don’t care about your rules. If we go on, we go on together.”

Ironically, it is Warden’s adherence to the rules that kills both Shears and Joyce as they struggle to annihilate the bridge. Even after he fires fatal mortars onto the riverbed where his comrades are, Warden clings to his rules, pleading with the female pack-bearers who accompanied the mission, “I had to do it. I had to do it. They could have been captured alive. It was the only thing to do.” What is more than a little confusing is why Shears and Joyce couldn’t have been captured. What did they know that they couldn’t tell? Their secret mission would have been a bust already if they were captured; it wouldn’t matter if they told all about it. The only other thing they know about is Warden’s “military-game” unit, Force 316, headquartered in the botanical gardens (which seems a bit odd). Is his mission to blow up the bridge (too) personal? His “I had to do it” is pretty nauseating considering these are the men who earlier refused to leave him behind to certain death. They almost sacrifice the mission for his life—but he takes theirs for the mission. That’s pretty sick. And since the whole film is about keeping one’s dignity and honor even under duress and/or imprisonment, the idea that Shears and Joyce would have been disgraced failures who could compromise the British Army’s capacity to make war on its enemies is more in line with Saito’s “rules” than Nicholson’s “more civilized” ones.

Shears, Warden, and Joyce defending themselves from Japanese attack while on their bridge-destruction mission.

Speaking of Nicholson (continuing spoiler alert!), his demise also comes at the hands of Warden, his own countryman. However, as Major Clipton, the British camp doctor, admonishes Nicholson, constructing an immaculate and sturdy bridge (i.e. doing one’s best work) for the Japanese while their prisoners could be “construed as…collaboration with the enemy. Perhaps even as treasonable activity.” Although at first Nicholson dismisses this idea of aiding the enemy, his obsession with proving British superiority clouds his judgment about loyalty—and even his dedication to following the rules of war when he requests the officers under him to assist their men to finish the bridge on time. But by the end of the film, having betrayed the demolition plan of his fellow Allied soldiers, wrestled with them in an attempt to save the enemy’s bridge, and witnessed them dying around him, Nicholson—absolutely dumbfounded—utters his final words, “What have I done?” Perfectly ambiguous, we can only postulate what exactly the proud British colonel means. For me, this moment in The Bridge on the River Kwai reverberates in a line from The Hunger Games: Mockingjay when Haymitch tells Katniss to “remember who the real enemy is.” I think we see Nicholson remembering his real enemy in his shocked last words. Of course, he could also be expressing horror that his dedication to the rules has led him to participate in the killing of his own allies. But again, it’s not quite that simple. Nicholson seems to recognize his grievous error of fighting for the wrong side, but is he completely wrong to use the bridge to boost morale and keep his men going? Under his bridge project, it seems that less POWs die (kudos to my sister for pointing this out to me!). Yet, is it wrong for him to elevate his men’s welfare above the greater cause? And here’s the million dollar question: In the famous final sequence of the film, after his last words and before he is hit by the mortar shrapnel, does Nicholson really intend to detonate the explosives to destroy his bridge; or is it an accident that he falls on the detonator as he dies? I’ve always thought he would have deliberately pushed it had he lived, but this time I’m not so sure!

“What have I done?”

For Me Then…

Please forgive me as I pull in one more quote from another stellar film! Towards the beginning of The Patriot (2000), Benjamin Martin, a man who would like to stay out of the escalating conflict between the British and their American colonists, gives aid to the wounded on both sides of a skirmish that occurs in his fields. In recompense for his civilized actions, the shiveringly evil British Colonel Tavington orders the house and barns burned to the ground and a colonial messenger (who happens to be Martin’s son) shot as a traitor. When Martin insists that such conduct transgresses the rules of war, Tavington yanks out his pistol, directs it toward Martin’s face, and gruffly asks, “Would you like a lesson, sir, in the rules of war?” I think that pretty much sums up war exactly. In an activity that (almost always) requires pain and death in order to produce a victor, how on earth would any restrictions or regulations be enforceable or practical? To play devil’s advocate again, though, aren’t there atrocities that are never okay to commit even in war (hello, Holocaust)?

Honestly, The Bridge on the River Kwai, as noted in Thursday’s Weekday Warm-up, seems to project a very strong anti-war message. The film provides us with a ton of conflict and not a lot of concrete resolutions. In fact, the final words we hear belong to Major Clipton, the doctor (i.e. someone who heals instead of hurts). Clipton is sent away from the final skirmish to a vantage point where he observes all the carnage. After Nicholson’s fall on the detonator, Clipton furiously cries: “Madness!…Madness! Madness!” War is futile, says the film. People compromise their values and forget their loyalties. People kill each other–some even kill their comrades. People make other people build things that still other people blow up. At the end, they all lie dead in the same muddy water. For what? The river flows on like it did before the bridge existed.