Amazon.com Essentials:
Director David Lean's masterful 1957 realization of Pierre
Boulle's novel remains a benchmark for war films, and a deeply
absorbing movie by any standard--like most of Lean's canon, The
Bridge on the River Kwai achieves a richness in theme, narrative,
and characterization that transcends genre.
The story centers on a Japanese prison camp isolated deep in the
jungles of Southeast Asia, where the remorseless Colonel Saito (Sessue
Hayakawa) has been charged with building a vitally important railway
bridge. His clash of wills with a British prisoner, the charismatic
Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness), escalates into a duel of honor,
Nicholson defying his captor's demands to win concessions for his
troops. How the two officers reach a compromise, and Nicholson
becomes obsessed with building that bridge, provides the story's
thematic spine; the parallel movement of a team of commandos
dispatched to stop the project, led by a British major (Jack Hawkins)
and guided by an American escapee (William Holden), supplies the
story's suspense and forward momentum.
Shot on location in Sri Lanka, Kwai moves with a careful, even
deliberate pace that survivors of latter-day, high-concept
blockbusters might find lulling--Lean doesn't pander to attention
deficit disorders with an explosion every 15 minutes. Instead, he
guides us toward the intersection of the two plots, accruing
remarkable character details through extraordinary
performances. Hayakawa's cruel camp commander is gradually revealed as
a victim of his own sense of honor, Holden's callow opportunist proves
heroic without softening his nihilistic edge, and Guinness (who won a
Best Actor Oscar, one of the production's seven wins) disappears as
only he can into Nicholson's brittle, duty-driven, delusional
psychosis. His final glimpse of self-knowledge remains an astonishing
moment--story, character, and image coalescing with explosive
impact.
Like Lean's Lawrence of
Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai has been
beautifully restored and released in a highly recommended letterbox
version that preserves its original widescreen aspect ratio. --Sam
Sutherland
