The Bridge on the River Kwai : The Struggle

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I really f*** with "The Bridge on the River Kwai". It's this small (by small I mean intimate, and lean in focus) movie with large scope, and its breathtakingly well directed, acted and shot, but it's also a sweeping ode to the cartoonish idea of white superiority and western conservatism. It’s always a fight watching this film, because my one brain is saying what a masterpiece, how epic! This ode to inevitability in the face of the struggle for survival, and will. This performance by Sir Alec Guinness! The movie has several arcs and almost double the acts of most films (if you get technical) and yet it converges them so seamlessly into one sure footed story about futility - its a wonder of cinema. The other brain though, struggles throughout the movie. Beleaguered, and at times almost completely put off by its blatant racism under the guise of a message of the nature of men’s drives. How it conjures up the dream of white superiority with such ease, such effortlessness it almost as if it's a spell, or a dream.



It is in scenes like this, and in its treatment of Japanese soldiers, and Colonel Saito, (an undignified role given such dignity by a blazing Sessue Hayakawa) that my love for the film becomes anchored in genuine disdain. A constant reminder of the way in which the perception of white as the absolute standard of civilization, humanity and excellence despite evidence to the almost the exact opposite, became a proverbial nail in the crucifixion of equality, and equity in storytelling and narrative in film . One of my goals in writing is to make a point to illuminate the difference in point of view from the perspective of someone who both actively loves these films , (and film in general) but also realizes the legacy and role of movies as a propaganda tool for the idealization of whiteness. To try and place in as much a proper context as I can the importance of how these kinds of narratives and their continued use in cinema and television helped to convince millions of their own imagined inferiority, and conversely the imagined superiority of whiteness is one of my two or so most important motivations to write about film. To shine a light on for instance in this film, the constant use of “these people”, and the underlying impotency of Saito’s character who only achieves some form of second hand admiration by way of defeat, and surrender. To make clear that if you watch this film from another angle its not a reach to say that Saito is a character who we are encouraged to find more pleasurable the more silent he becomes. That he is painted with a broad white brush as inept, that his men are inept, and that his intelligence, and abilities in command, and negotiation are suspect to begin with, and downright child-like in the presence of Guinness’s Nicholson. In short Saito is a paper tiger, and so too are the Japanese in this film.

The Bridge on the River Kwai movie clips: http://j.mp/1Jbb3Mk BUY THE MOVIE: http://amzn.to/vGi4iW Don't miss the HOTTEST NEW TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/1u2y6pr CLIP DESCRIPTION: Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) tries several bribery tactics to convince Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) to order his officers to work on the construction of the bridge, but Nicholson will have none of it.

When in film school I was forced to watch “Birth of a Nation” and when the final credits rolled and the lights sifted back on slowly shaking me up from that nightmare of a film that made me physically ill - the virulent and crushingly offensive racism in the film was passed off as if it was an insert in a pamphlet about the greatness and importance of its technical contributions to film. I see no world where the advent of close ups and tracking shots trump inciting racial violence, reinvigorating the clan to any extent, or reinforcing stereotypes about blackness that still stand to this day. If anything the discussion around Griffith’s landmark film should discuss its contributions to film as an aside to the damage it did, and it’s narrative wickedness. David Lean’s “Bridge on the River Kwai” as well as his other epic “Lawrence of Arabia” are much less vile, and horrific examples of white supremacy in narrative , but they are examples, and as such the reverence for them should always be tempered by admonishment and acknowledgement of their harm. It makes them no less a feat of cinema, but its benefits are much more far reaching in helping the history of cinema, and its future become much more inclusive, and representative of reality, as well as dream.