After growing up watching reruns of MASH on television, I had no intentions of seeing the original movie it was based upon. The show was a hit and the characters were zany, but it had the feel of any other kind of television sitcom; majority of the humor is centered on the witty punch lines. However, once I was introduced to the great American filmmaker, Robert Altman, my curiosity for MASH (1970) increased. After my first viewing, I was blown away by the improvised dialogue, the sheer irreverence, the anti-war message, the dark humor, and the daring visual style.
Even though the film takes place at a dreary medical unit, and soldiers are dying left and right, Altman still creates an attractive environment, as if being on the front-lines is as chic as an exclusive after-party. His way of getting the cast together, studying the actors’ personal mannerisms, and utilizing their individual behaviors in an improvised technique is a tour-de-force for a director. The characters and the dialogue are constantly overlapping; from screen right to screen left, Altman depicts sort of a panorama of separate actions and conversations. His most experimental and daring use of overlapping sound is in Nashville (1975), but watch all of his movies, and the same technique is evident.
The film opens with the pop-like melody of “Suicide is Painless”—the disturbing lyrics heavily contrast with the catchy tone of the song. The lyrics suggest that going to war and patriotism in the Vietnam era was like signing your own death wish. Now, even though MASH takes place during the Korean War, Robert Altman subtly refers to the Vietnam War, the current international crisis at the time. Like filmmakers during the McCarthy era, Altman knew he had to be a smuggler of important political messages, despite the censorship. The studio demanded that the film take place during the Korean War and Altman was infuriated. Why make a film in which the time and place has no relevance to what was really going on in the late 1960s? Throughout the film, Altman makes some of the locations look like Vietnam, rather than Korea. When the doctors go into town, a lot of the citizens are wearing those triangular, peasant-looking Vietnamese hats. In addition, the film refers to the “draft,” which didn’t occur during the Korean War.
I absolutely love the murky look of the film. The camera is inertly panning across and constantly zooming in from a distance. It seems simplistic and a bit messy, as far as camerawork goes, but it truly brings out the actor’s dialogue and has the feel of a voyeur catching something he didn’t see before the cameras rolled. Robert Altman uses a lot of smoky-like filters in his camera, decreasing the brilliance in his colors. The gloomy cinematography looks like an old picture that has been handed down for over a century. It has a rustic look, but very authentic.
The majority of the humor is dead-pan, dry, sarcastic, and subtle. Not every character has to be stuck in an embarrassing dilemma to make the audience laugh. The way Donald Sutherland and Elliot Gould casually interact with one another or purposely humiliate another comrade feels very natural. I guess this is the best comedy ever made because I’ve rarely seen rudeness seem so elegant. When the men make a bet to see if Hot Lips (Sally Kellerman) is really a blonde and pull the shower tent on her, it’s not the public humiliation of a woman that’s hysterical, it’s how all the men are sitting like a group of serious judges to see the real color of her pubic hair. It’s the non-nonchalant attitude towards everything that I find hysterical. Hence, lays the critical meaning behind the film. These doctors had to live in a sort of hysteria and craziness to deal with the constant bloodshed. MASH is one of the most beloved comedies of our time. To this day, the humor, the mischievousness, and the irreverence is still fresh as ever.
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