The Bridge on the River Kwai

I have now seen enough films (two) by David Lean to know that if you want a good but not amazing British war epic made in the middle of the twentieth century, he's your guy. Like the slightly-more-heralded Lawrence of Arabia, Bridge features strong work by Alec Guinness, soldiers of different nationalities setting aside their differences to achieve something, and won a ton of awards including Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director. Guinness plays the commander of a British unit that surrendered to the Japanese during World War II, and is being forced to build a bridge in Thailand. Guinness initially rebukes Colonel Saito for ignoring the rules of the Geneva Convention, but after compromises are made takes on the job as a personal mission, placing his pride in the ingenuity and workmanship of British soldiers over the possibility of sabotaging their captors. He works harder towards the bridge's completion than even the Japanese do, and his award winning performance is an impressive and impassioned one.

William Holden plays the flip side of the coin, an American captive who wants no part of the project and attempts to escape. The interplay between the two men is the most interesting thing about the film, and their last encounter at the end is part of a truly outstanding climax that overshadows the rest of what I thought was a solid but less than amazing film. The performances are good and it's a pretty nice looking movie for the time, helped by being in full wide-screen color when a lot of movies were still black and white. It does a good job of taking you to another place and giving you an idea of the toil of prison labor in war time, without ever letting it get too grueling. I just didn't find myself invested are actively interested as often as I'd like, which is similar to my minor issues with Arabia. These movies are so big, I don't see why they're stimulating my brain less than some much smaller dramas of the time. I mean, the goals aren't quite the same, it just seems like war as a subject should never veer anywhere close to boredom. Good movie though, especially the ending and Guinness' work.

Lawrence of Arabia

Lawrence of Arabia is certainly one of the most epic movies I've seen, in the true sense of the word. It's extremely long, and fully aware of its own importance. Over ten minutes of its nearly four hour running time are just the film's impressive score set against a black screen. It tells the mostly true story of T. E. Lawrence, a British military officer who became famous after helping to unite warring Arab tribes and lead them in revolt against the Turkish empire during World War I. The amount of area covered isn't exactly global in its scope, but you get a great feel for the tremendous size and danger of living in the desert, and the delicate politics of trying to keep natural enemies from killing each other in pursuit of a bigger goal.

Peter O'Toole plays Lawrence, and does a good job of it. He's the main character, and he did great things, but he's not exactly a good guy. He has compassion for others, but it's worn thin by constant fighting, and he eventually starts drinking his own Kool-Aid and believing himself to be invincible. He also has a sadistic streak that rears its head sometimes. An interesting way to handle a protagonist. The whole cast is good although it seems kind of odd to cast Europeans as Arabs nowadays, including Alec Guinness as a prince who gives him support early on.

But while the film tells an interesting story with a good cast, it wasn't as entertaining to actually watch as it could have been. It's not just the running time, I've seen plenty of films of similar length that haven't bored me to this extent at times. Scenes of Lawrence and others marching across the desert often seem endless and repetitive, and the plot never really seems to rev up or ever reach a true climax. There are moments of violence and significant drama, but no consistent rising action. The movie is broken into two acts, which confounds the typical narrative structure. It's well constructed and filmed by David Lean and his crew, it just wasn't as gripping as movies I find superior. There are a few scenes that are arresting in that sort of way, particularly the opening sequence which actually takes place at the end of the story, but not as many as there should have been. A Classic movie, but not exactly my cup of tea.

Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi

Return of the Jedi is what made me like Star Wars and will always be special to me, even if I can see how the predecessor was superior as a film. I like stories with good endings, and Jedi puts a nice bow on the series, with the destruction of the bad guys and redemption of the most important character. A lot of people hated the Ewoks, and I can see why, but at least they had the balls to show them getting killed. From the opening on Tatooine to the speeder bike chase to the final battle in three locations, Jedi is packed with some of the series' best action scenes, which are better than a lot of the vastly more technically complex and visually busy ones in the prequels. The emperor's also a much more effective villain when he's sitting in a chair and pressing every button the good guy has than when he's cackling and spinning around with a lightsaber. He really knows how to twist the knife.

To be honest, I'm about tapped out on things to say about the Star Wars movies. Marquand seems like an okay director, but he never really did much else. Seeing all the hanging threads get resolved was good. I really hope the children of the future don't watch all the movies in chronological order, because the prequels really just ruin all the great moments from the sequels, including one of the best twists ever. Will people even really want to show them to their kids, after so many claimed that the new ones raped their childhoods? Maybe not. That catfish guy who flies in the Millenium Falcon with Lando is pretty weird. I now find it weird that Mon Mothma and Admiral Ackbar just show up and act all important in this one. Why haven't we seen or heard of them before? Carrie Fisher used to look really good in a bikini. The redone musical number in Jabba's palace for the special edition is completely moronic. I checked out the original ending on Youtube, and I'm not bothered that they replaced the Yub Nub song. I think I did a pretty good job of padding this out. I'm done now.

Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

Is it a coincidence that what is generally regarded as the best Star Wars film was not directed by George Lucas, and that he doesn't even have a screenplay credit? It does make you think a bit. I'm not a huge fan of cliffhangers myself, but Empire is a good film that improves on the first one in a lot of ways. Without an obvious goal to shoot for, the movie is more about developing the characters than moving them all towards a big climax, and it really succeeds at doing that. Han and Leia's love story is not only 100 times better executed than Anakin and Amidala's, it's one of the best I've seen on film, period. Their bickering is comedy gold, and things like "I know" cement Han as the series' greatest personality. Harrison Ford's the quintessential hero, the perfect balance of blazing his own path and always managing to do what's right, and the sense of humor just adds to his likability. Carrie Fisher brings a respectability to the role that you might not expect from a princess, and holds her own against him quite well. They really have a great chemistry.

Luke's journey gets more interesting too as he begins training as a Jedi. In the first movie he was an idealistic, somewhat naive kid going on an adventure in space. The whole movie is somewhat a coming of age tale, with a nice, happy ending. Empire really shows the darker side of the war, and Luke facing his demons with Yoda, abandoning his training, facing off with Vader and finally learning the horrible truth is the best example of this. Yoda seems like a silly joke of a character at first like Jar Jar or something, but before long he's telling Luke how afraid he's going to be. It's all good stuff. It's not as action-packed as the sequel, but as a piece of film making it really is superior.

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

I'm not sure I ever saw Han shoot Greedo first before I looked it up on Youtube today. The decision to reverse that might be when fans realized that something had gone wrong since 1983, causing George Lucas to forget what made his world interesting in the first place. I didn't know any better, since the last one is the only one I'm sure I saw in its entirety before the Special Editions were released in 1997. But the fact remains that it encapsulates Lucas' weakness, the inability to let the series go. He has to keep tweaking and updating, and constant technological improvements are making it worse. And the fans are the ones paying for it. First the movies were released on video, then the special editions were. Then the DVD boxset, then "limited" edition DVDs with both versions of the movie. The problem with this was the original version really was original, with all of the errors and degradation intact, not even anamorphic widescreen. The best thing would have been to keep the cleaned up versions and remove the silly content changes, but instead, they decided to release another boxset with the only new feature being a box to hold the "limited" DVDs, and in the future you know they're going to rerelease in every new format and never stop adding new scenes and computer effects.

Beyond that business though, the original film is still a good, but not great adventure. The core cast is pretty darn good, even though only one of the main three went on to a big career. They rush through their lines once in a while ("Faster and more intense!"), but generally make the world feel believable. And Harrison Ford illustrates one of the many things the prequel trilogy lacks: a counterbalance to all the force mumbo jumbo. Han Solo is the series' best character, and they could have used him in the past to slap Anakin in the face and tell him to stop being such a wanker. Not everything has aged that well, but the final space battle remains one of the most thrilling sequences in film and it just feels like a genuine, entertaining movie. Its legacy has slipped, but it still brought joy to millions of kids.