M*A*S*H (1970) **1/2 You can't even think about considering this movie without debating its place in the entire M*A*S*H canon. There was, of course, the Richard Hooker novel, the brilliant television series, another Hooker novel, an entire series of novels in which William E. Butterworth "assisted" Hooker, t-shirts, M*A*S*H beer....the beer wasn't really very good, but it was cheap and it did have alcohol in it. Perfect for students. The books were all (actually I didn't read quite all of them, but after five or so you get the idea) entertaining, with the exception of "M*A*S*H goes to New Orleans," which was sublime, at times nearly Thompsonesque in its freewheelling spirit....(Hawkeye's wife is having a baby and he's driving her nuts, so she gets Trapper to kidnap him and take him to a VD convention in New Orleans where Major Burns is pretending to have been General MacArthur's private physician)... Anyway, the movie. Donald Sutherland is a finestkind Hawkeye, philosophical but not forlorn. He's more understated than Alan Alda's interpretation of the character, it might have been difficult to get more than a season or two out of him. Elliott Gould establishes a darker, fiercer Trapper John in a sort of Derek Sanderson vein, but as the film entirely loses momentum about halfway through Robert Altman can't figure out what to do with him. It's fine that Gould lacks Wayne Rogers gentilities in the same role, or Mike Farrell's gentle resonance as replacement sidekick, but Gould is terrifically developed and then just left out on the vine. Rene Auberjonois never gets Dago Red going at all, but maybe because they don't give him any poker scenes where he can win medicine for the orphanage. I know that it's easier to get more characters going in 128 hours or screen than 2, but you just can't help missing Harry Morgan, McLean Stevenson, Larry Linville, Jamie Farr...at least Gary Burghoff is there to give some semblance of the glory that would come later on the small screen. Tom Skerritt is credible but it's difficult, and not even very interesting, to determine how his compatriots must have felt about his humping on Sally Kellerman's leg. As Hot Lips she's a bit more fun than Loretta Swit, which isn't saying much and I know that they're not supposed to be fun, but partly because they got Burns out of the picture so quickly. Robert Duvall has far too much personal depth to represent what we all think of Burns, but why couldn't Altman have used that depth to weave an entirely different character bound by religion to establish the only hinted at philosophical counterpoint? War is awful, and the military way of doing things is stupid. Easy enough points to make, and well made here though better elsewhere. The most striking thing, all these years later, is that this film...once considered so liberal and free...is painfully sexist. It was obviously a very important film at the time, with the Vietnam policing project killing people on a daily basis, but its liberal credentials are elusive in the absence of the immediacy of that abomination. Gould, Sutherland, and Skerritt all do great jobs of establishing interesting characters quickly. The problem is that nothing much is done with them, ok now they'll go to Tokyo, now they'll play football, now they'll go to a whorehouse. Another problem is that, I admit, you show me M*A*S*H and I don't see Alan Alda, you got a problem. Also, I like the theme song better without the words, though that reminds me that I did thoroughly enjoy the "Last Supper" scene, replete with the John the Baptist symbolism á la da Vinci.
back to Brilliant Observations on 1776 Films home
go back home, or send me email
no more reviews! I want to buy your novel!