OSCAR WILD DAY 11: THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (1957)

Though almost entirely fictional, save for the fact that Allied prisoners of war were forced to help in the construction of the Burma Railway for the Japanese, this film possesses an almost suffocating realism. Filmed on location in what is now Sri Lanka, the heat, humidity, sweat, and anguish are all palpable. This is not a war film in the traditional sense. Rather, it is more of a wartime psychological drama that showcases how delicate the walk can be between honor and madness.

A group of British soldiers are led into a prisoner of war camp by their de facto commanding officer, Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness). A learned and regimented officer, he clashes with Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), the prison camp’s overseer, who intends to break the will of all of his prisoners. Commander Shears (William Holden), an American POW in the camp, also fails to see eye to eye with Nicholson. While the British officers are being punished for holding their ground against being subjected to forced labor, Shears defies the odds and escapes. Nicholson emerges from solitary confinement haunted but ever more resolute to defy the Japanese by proving British superiority by building a first-class bridge for his captors. Meanwhile, Shears emerges from the jungle ready to lay low and recover, but gets recruited for a secret mission to return to the site he escaped to help the Allied Forces destroy the bridge before it can be used to support the Japanese war effort.

This film showcases examples of the brutality inflicted upon some POW’s during the war. Even the setting is harsh- thick southeast Asian jungles so treacherous that Saito himself boasts that there is no need for fences at his camp because the jungle will consume he who tries to escape. Much of the film was shot on location and that pays dividends throughout. Whether magnifying the isolation of being surrounded by the jungle, or the suffocating dread of scenes shot of soldiers trying to navigate the tropical landscape, there is an appreciable man vs nature element working under the surface of the main plot.

It seems to me that Colonel Nicholson loses himself during solitary confinement. It is then ironic that he seems to double down on his refined officer training as his chosen way of fighting back. He does what Saito wants, but on his own terms and in the most British way possible. I have read some arguments that there’s a bit of racist subtext to the way the film handles Nicholson’s gradual triumph over Saito, as if to impress upon audiences that Western culture is superior to Eastern culture. I can see that in retrospect, but it is not something that stood out to me while watching, nor is it a thought that takes away from what the film accomplishes.

War is hell, and each war presents its own unique kind of hell. Our cast finds themselves in a hell that could almost be paradise under different circumstances. The script is tight, the location choice is perfect, and the scope of the bridge set, built on location no less, gives this film a grand and almost epic quality to it. Add on top of it the superb acting of Guinness, Hayakawa, and Holden, and you have a recipe for the kind of big production that the Oscars used to gravitate toward. It is more than spectacle though. The Bridge on the River Kwai can be taken as a straight-up war-adjacent thriller, but audiences can go deeper with it and ponder the psychological toll these events have on each character and their respective motivations.

FINAL RATING: 4 out of 5