Jenn & I watched The Bridge on the River Kwai the other day. ’Twas a good movie.

Warning: this may spoil some plot points; don’t read more if you don’t want to.

Some stories lack a good, pure hero. Not that any hero is truly pure — any real hero is going to have his or her flaws and problems. But some stories lack a real "good guy" that you can feel good rooting for. In some cases, such as the Robert Redford film The Last Castle, this doesn’t work well. In other cases, notably The Godfather and Citizen Kane, it makes for an excellent story, showing well humanity in all its ugly glory.

The Bridge on the River Kwai falls into this latter category (although, in my opinion, it isn’t quite as good as the two mentioned previously). The Japanese commander (Col. Saito) is clearly a cruel tyrant of his domain. But the British colonel (Col. Nicholson) isn’t much better — he’s a slave to his ideology, unwilling to give in and allow the Japanese to put the officers to work, even when Saito threatens to put close the hospital and put the sick to work if the officers don’t. After Saito gives in, Nicholson, strangely, organizes his men to build a quality bridge for the Japanese, and winds up putting the sick to work, proving himself no better than the man he bested. He also gets wrapped up in the concept of what the British soldier should be doing, and how he can build an excellent bridge, that he forgets that he’s constructing a tool of the Japanese war machine and even goes so far as to try to stop its destruction.

The British commando captain also suffers from the same flaw. He’s utterly committed to his work to the neglect of humanity, so he blazes on with a bullet in his foot to get to the bridge before its inaugural train crosses it and launches a mortar at his own man. Even when he may still be getting the job done in time.

Commander Shears does have some heroism in him. But he also enjoys his lasciviousness and is of rather base motive, so it’s hard to really cheer for him.

So what of it? People are people, and that’s exactly what this film portrayed. We see Nicholson becoming who he hates, and in his obsession with the reputation of his country trying to aid its enemies. We see the commando captain blazing passionately, forgetting health, forgetting life, and not seeing clearly that perhaps it isn’t time to shoot yet. And we see the reluctant hero, who really wants to get a medical discharge and enjoy life, never really get in to the task. It’s real. And good art reflects reality.