the bridge on the river kwai

rage built in me bodily watching this movie. it's a celebration of colonialism, racism, and following orders. it's a soaring story of gentlemanliness and RULES in war. this movie takes place in world war two, by the way.

it's difficult for me to imagine anything more evil. the premise is that british POWs are put to work to build a bridge. the japs can't get them to do it properly, however. the movie succeeds outlandishly in making the ineffective administration of a POW camp, of failing to get people to work well on projects that would facilitate the murder of their compatriots, a mark of dishonor and failure.

i can't remember the last time something disgusted me so completely. the fundamental dishonesty of it, the lionization of british colonialism (think of all the bridges they built for india! what beautiful contributions!) makes me want to turn off my head. the british commander muses at one point, atop the beautiful bridge he's erected, "i love india." oh my god i need to go for a walk. this movie came out in 1957. maybe the world's different now. i don't think so.

in reading reviews of it people argue it's really about the lunacy of following orders, of the mania for discipline. but the fact is that the colonel comes within a hair of having everything go perfectly. in the end, it's really that he's gone more than a little bit crazy when he stops a fellow british soldier from doing his duty. if he did everything EXCEPT that, literally everything would've been perfect within the cinematic logic of colonialism and triumphant british power. hey, whether it's good for the fatherland or not, the brits just can't help saving the world. the contradictions ultimately dissolve themselves thanks to military might, anyway.

not like those japs every coulda won. the basis of the movie is japanese incompetence so outrageous that brits can't help getting into moral quandaries trying to help them out of their pathetic state, except it doesn't even matter because it's not like britain'd ever lose this war anyway—note the story at the beginning of how they became POWs: some obscure, bizarre insistence from their higher-ups  that they surrender, not their own failure. as if.

fuck, i mean, i thought a lot of these issues got resolved in La Grande Illusion like 20 years earlier. THERE'S a fucking war movie. there's your gentlemanliness in wartime.

at the beginning i was rooting desperately for the japanese to machine gun every last whistling white man.