Now that is a proper piece of work. To quote David Simon:
http://www.baltimoremagazine.net/allthepiecesmatter/2008/09/life-changing-art-david-simon
Wow. Now that I look at it from that perspective, yeah, I have misread the scene all along. There are two POV shots clearly showing Guinness’ character looking at the detonator as he deliberately walks towards & falls on it! One minor thing that’s still a little clunky: The Japanese soldier who comes at Holden. Holden just kind of knocks him away into the water. I guess he’s supposed to then get hit with mortar fire, but he’s clearly just swimming around in the background, then he’s unaccounted for.
Check out the Wiki article. Like I said it’s a fictionalized story set in a semi-real setting (the building of the Burma railway by allied & civilian slave labor). The actual Bridge on the River Kwai exists (it’s actually pronounced “kway” by the way) and was built with POW slave labor, but it was steel not wood, and it was never blow up (still stands today). According to Wiki the Japanese were made to strengthen it after the war as part of reparations.
As stated above Pierre Boulle wrote the original French novel but not the screenplay (he also went on to write the novel Planet of the Apes which the Heston movie was based on). He actually was a POW of the Japanese and did work on the Burma railway. He said that the Alec Guinness character was an amalgam of several ***French ***officers that he witnessed collaborating with the Japanese. Given general Anglo-Franco animosity that has to piss off a lot of Brits, even today… 
And I agree about the realism & grittiness of Kubrick’s Paths of Glory. That film could have been made word for word, shot for shot today!
Well, again, it was, but by aerial bombing. In the photo in my link above and in that Wikipedia article, the rounded truss spans are the originals and the others were the sections that were taken out and which the Japanese replaced after the war.
The PBS series “Secrets of the Dead” had an episode on the BotRK:
Brian
I’m a big fan of that PBS show and I had forgotten about that episode. Probably because the film is only barely mentioned at the beginning as being a Hollywood fairy tale compared to the actual events. I also remember again thinking while watching it how kind of ‘wrong’ the whole premise of the movie seems today. Be like making a big-budget, grandiose, Hollywood epic set in a concentration camp. And glossing over things to the point of near enemy collaboration. That’s not something that would have even been attempted in the 50s or 60s and the Japanese’s Pacific ‘holocaust’ wasn’t really any more appropriate a setting either.
Without David Lean BotRK could have turned into The Day the Clown Cried…
There an interesting exchange between the doctor and the English colonel where the doctor questions building such a fine bridge. Nicholson replies that you know full well, that if no work existed,
that they would invent something to maintain discipline and morale. That is true about military organization.
David Lean (and Akira Kurosawa) were enormously talented directors who could make three hour movies that did not drag.
Being at a bit of a loose end – doing something of a “zombie” job on this thread (it’s only been about a year – hope I may be forgiven).
Perhaps my weird “take”, with my being a railway enthusiast: but my feeling is that those who suffered and often died building the railway; would be pleased, rather than otherwise, for their efforts ultimately to be made worthwhile, serving positive and peaceable purposes (the imaginable Bangkok – Yanggon express traversing their line several times per week…). One has the picture that things might have worked out otherwise, with the rail route giving valuable commercial service; had it not been that Burma, on attaining independence in 1948, chose mostly to cut itself off from the rest of the world.
The film was in fact made in Sri Lanka; using for the railway element, redundant locos / rolling stock from the Sri Lankan railways’ 2ft. 6in. gauge secondary lines – the bridge and its approach lines, if I have things rightly, completely new-built. I first saw the film as a fairly young kid (a railway-nut almost from birth, but knowing then, very little about the Allies-versus-Japan part of World War II). My sentiment on then seeing the film, was that any country which had such a sweet little railway as part of its war effort, couldn’t have been all bad; and I was upset at the bridge being blown up, and the train crossing it, destroyed. The film’s whole “conflicting loyalties” business, went right over my eleven-year-old head…
I was there too, and saw the Japanese memorial for their fallen soldiers on the opposite bank. That’s messed up.
I was glad to have gone but it was funny to learn about all the innacuracies from the movie.
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it’s not called the Kwai River, that is the next one over, the locals got so tired of explaining that to tourists they swapped the river names.
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the bridge was made of iron and was originally a Dutch bridge in Java, only the cement supports were new.
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the Japanese engineer in charge knew what he was doing and it was put up in good time with no fuss.
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building the bridge wasn’t the crap duty for prisoners, it was making The Devils Cut a few miles up the track.
What a dreadful movie. The only reason to watch it is to admire Holden running around shirtless the first 15 minutes, he’s just effen beautiful, what a man, only Mitchum shirtless in Thunder Road (now that’s a good movie) could ever outhot those scenes of the great William Holden. American actors today are so damned effeminate.
Lean trivializes war suffering and heroism, I guess that was his great contribution to film. Reading the true history of the slaves building for the Japanese in the Pacific will leave a part of you forever depressed.
Same goes for L of Arabia. Read Seven Pillars of Wisdom then try to sit through Lean’s work, how could he make such a long winded trivial movie out of such a fascinating and controversial book? Still, Peter O’toole is a mighty hot Lawrence…
Even movies like Private Ryan and Blackhawk Down underplay the viciousness, madness, and awesome destruction of modern combat, how can anyone watch an entire old war movie? Such neat little bullet holes, such clean noble deaths.
Alec Guinness whips my ass anyway…
I would agree, and, as time goes by, the generation that experienced the horrors directly is passing away. There are still no few veterans around who have not managed to let go of their anger, but there are far more who have come to cope with post-war Japan. I’ve actually met old WWII vets who condemned me for owning a Subaru…but I’ve talked to far more (social media like SDMB) who don’t find it any big deal.
Most Pacific theater WWII vets would probably agree. But there will be a hard core hard corps that wouldn’t.
By this time, hasn’t the jungle won the final battle? Or are there any cuttings and clearings and spur lines that would be of any use in a real regional railroad? My guess would be that any project of that kind would have to start from scratch.
Grin! I didn’t see it, myself, until much later in life. I most admired Guinness’s performance as a wide-eyed naïf, somewhat calf-brained, but heart in the right place. The “eyes open at last” scene at the end was excellent. The man was good!
(“Tunes of Glory” is another great film showcasing his ability to play people with vastly different mental states than what the rest of us would call “sanity.”)
I figured it was Stockholm syndrome.
A little of that. Also, I think the character was trapped into the “chivalrous” thinking of prior eras, and imagined that, if he and his men all behaved properly, then surely their captors would behave properly also.
Actually, this is the earworm that I got. Which, by the way, was featured in the “Spider” episode of HBO’s “From The Earth To The Moon”
Most poignant moment (IMHO, of course):
Nicholson (Obi-Wan) realizes (admits) he is “nearer the end than the beginning.” Oh yeah, and when he refuses to sacrifice his principles in face of torture.
[QUOTE=Trinopus]
Also, I think the character was trapped into the “chivalrous” thinking of prior eras, and imagined that, if he and his men all behaved properly, then surely their captors would behave properly also.
[/QUOTE]
No. Nicholson had no illusion, before, during, after, that the Japanese were chivalrous. A British officer does not attain such a position at those times without having an understanding of the enemies philosophy. He was sufficiently arrogant enough, though, to sustain his own idealism, regardless of cost, and protect his achievements regardless of the greater good. A hero with fault, is how I see it.
Colonel Nicholson was trying to prove the superiority of the British by building a better bridge than the Japanese could build themselves. Of course, his real duty was to impede the Japanese war effort in any way he could. Instead, his racist or imperial mindset took over, and he directed his men to build the best bridge possible in order to prove a point. That’s why he tried to prevent the destruction of the bridge until it was almost too late - his moment of triumph over Colonel Saito was being taken from him.
Stockholm syndrome is the tendency of captives to sympathize with their captors. I don’t think that’s what motivated Nicholson. He actually looked down on the Japanese.
The director (of BOtRK) was not interested in telling the story of man’s brutality. He was trying to tell a story of the psychology of people under stress.
FYI, there was a movie earlier this year called The Railway Man, about a British officer who was forced to work on the Burma Railway (the same one as in The Bridge on the River Kwai), who decades later returns to Asia to find and confront the man who tortured him. It stars Colin Firth and I liked it.
Also earlier in this year, Top Gear’s big road trip was a trip through Burma, ending with the three guys building another bridge on the same river.
I’ve never been to the places concerned: my information is from the British quarterly Continental Railway Journal, dedicated to circulating info about railways everywhere in the world outside Britain. (Will use modern or less-modern names, “situationally”.)
Trivia item: there’s a similar, smaller museum at Thanbyuzayat in Myanmar: the one-time junction between the Japanese wartime railway route, and the rail system of Myanmar / Burma proper.
For sure, being a prisoner-of-war of the Japanese in World War II was no picnic; but as you say, Trinopus, many survivors in their various ways, earlier or later came to accord a degree of forgiveness and letting-go. The Australian writer Russell Braddon (1921 – 1995) was a POW of the Japanese 1942 – 45, including a year spent working on the Thai-Burma railway. His experiences – about which he wrote a bitter memoir, The Naked Island – caused him long to harbour a great hatred against the entire Japanese nation; which (as he movingly wrote about in a later book) he found himself, over the decades, shedding.
Dewey Finn – The Railway Man, as you cite: not being much of a film-goer, I have yet to see the film; but have read the autobiographical book of the same title, by the guy concerned – Eric Lomax (1919 – 2012). With my railway hobby, I long mused about a possible ultimate acid test of railway enthusiasm – a railfan being forced into slave labour building the Thai-Burma WWII line; and (while preferring that his suffering thereon, might have a lasting positive result) not being, for the rest of his life, utterly put off railways and everything to do with them. Per his book, Lomax – as well as feeling little resentment against the Japanese people as a whole – achieved that feat: his passion for railways lasted undiminished, for the rest of his long life.
The impression I get via CRJ, is that the above is indeed the case: the nearly-300km of the Japanese railway’s route which has not run since the end of World War II, has spent so long being reclaimed by nature – plus, some 40km obliterated by an artificial reservoir – that it would truly be a matter of starting from scratch. Track on the section in Burma – Thanbyuzayat to the international border – was torn up soon after the war. The section in Thailand, from the border to the junction with the main line southward from Bangkok, remained in situ but unused for about a decade, while the Thai authorities pondered on what to do with it: ultimately the line was refurbished and reopened in the mid-1950s, over its most south-easterly 125km from the main-line junction through Kanchanaburi, to Nam Tok: track was lifted between Nam Tok and the border.
Just popping in to confirm Nam Tok (Thai for “waterfall,” and the Sai Yok Noi waterfall is within walking distance) is the end of the line. I’ve ridden that section. Takes two hours from Kanchanaburi town, two hours back. The State Railway of Thailand (SRT) treats the entire route from Bangkok to Nam Tok (five hours, I believe – that’s three hours from Bangkok to Kanchanaburi town and another two hours to Nam Tok) as a historic route and charges foreigners 100 baht (US$3) for travel of any length of distance on that particular stretch on regular trains. (Thais pay much less.) For the journey from Bangkok, that’s not bad, but 100 baht from Kanchanaburi to Nam Tok is a little steep but worth it for the historical value if you’re only here once.
The SRT also runs a daily tourist train from Kanachanaburi town to Nam Tok for triple that amount, 300 baht one way. Not sure what you get with that.
If you simply want to cross the Bridge itself in Kanchanaburi town, a rainbow-colored mini trains does that every 15 minutes and costs 20 baht (roughly 60 cents). (You can walk across it too for free, of course.)
There’s also a train which operates regularly for tourists at weekends, making a return run between Kanchanaburi and Wang Pho (a little way short of Nam Tok), hauled by one or another preserved steam locomotive.
The SRT continued to use steam locos in regular service in some areas, until the mid-1970s. One of the last regularly steam-worked routes, was the River Kwai line: because of lightly-built bridges on the line, dieselisation had to wait until sufficiently light diesel locos were obtained. In steam-worked times, this line’s trains were usually hauled by Japanese-built 2-6-0 type locos of class C56 – a design developed in Japan specially for use on the Thai-Burma wartime route.