M*A*S*H
US, 1970, 113 minutes, Colour.
Donald Sutherland, Elliot Gould, Tom Skerritt, Sally Kellerman, Robert Duvall, Rene Auberjonois, Bud Cort. Directed by Robert Altman.
M*A*S*H turned out to be one of the major successes of 1970, winning a prize at Cannes and being nominated for several Oscars (Ring Lardner Jr.'s screenplay winning one). M*A*S*H along with Catch 22, also released in 1970, brings the anti-war satire to some kind of climax. Perhaps the Americans themselves were surprised to find that they were so able to laugh at their own foibles. Certainly, critics from other countries were.
And yet M*A*S*H, for an audience not so directly involved in its daily living in the Vietnam war as the Americans were, is not a film masterpiece. It is more like a series of funny sketches which vary in quality and hilarity. The madness of war comes through clearly and the need for some kind of zany madness to keep sane in a front-line position, coping with horrible casualties and death, people thrown together and expected to work successfully. Their work is successful, but their relationships with one another less so.
The heroes are professionally successful but give anyone who takes himself seriously his come-uppance. They are never overcome - many find this a real imbalance in the film. Authority is mocked, traditional religious forms are criticised as irrelevant (the Last Supper sequence is in doubtful taste and its point not clear), hypocrisy is exposed. And all the time, the camp P.A. system monologues its notices and chorus to the whole proceedings. The film makes its comment not so much on war itself but on what happens to people in war situations. Elliot Gould and Donald Sutherland are naturals for their roles. Sally Kellerman and Bud Cort appear here and in Robert Altman's next film, Brewster Mc Cloud.
During the 1970s Alan Alda starred in the very long-running television series based on the film.
1. What is the point of this film?
2. What is anti-war about this film? Do you think that the anti-war theme is the principal theme?
3. Why is the film funny? Is it consistently funny?
4. Is the loose assemblage of army skits too loose for the structure of the film so that some of the impact is dissipated, e.g. the long football match?
5. Many see this film as an examination of humanity under impossible, artificial conditions imposed on people, mad situations where the only way to keep some kind of sanity is to act madly? Why?
6. Did you like the heroes of the film? Did their personalities some across - or were they meant to? What were their values?
7. While the surgeons may have been so-so as men at times, they were always available surgeons trying to do their best by the wounded. Did this give a sense of priority to their values?
8. Why were Frank Burns and Nurse Houlihan hypocrites? Did they deserve the ridiculing they got?
9. Why were the heroes so ready to cast the first stones? Were they innocent? Why didn't they get some "come-uppance" themselves?
10. Did the fact that the film was goonery and the situations want to be taken as overstatements, mean that poetic justice did not have to be meted out all round?
11. How was the P.A,, system a kind of chorus to the film - the crates of prayer books, the urine samples, the weekly war-movie ads, (the last of which is M*A*S*H)?
12. How did the song 'Suicide is painless' set the tone of the film?
13. Was there too much blood, stitching and sewing?
14. Which parts did you think were the funniest? Why? What about the football match, the amplification of Frank and Hot Lips, the shower scene, golf, the Japanese expedition?
15. Was there any point in the Last Supper parody? Was it tasteful or not?
16. Why was the commander so funny in his casual, bumbling manner?
17. How was the chaplain satirised? His ministrations to the dead and his nervous inefficiency? The blessing of the jeep?
18. Was religion overlooked - e.g., Frank Burns' fervour? The chaplain, confession, the Painless episode?
19. Do you think the film made a significant contribution to the consciousness of war and humanity in 1970?
