Those Conformist Fifties: "The Bridge on the River Kwai"

My little literary magpie's nest here occasionally offers a feature I call "Those Conformist Fifties," where I rail against the idea that the 1950s were boring and nothing worthwhile happened. I like to point out all the cool stuff, the artistic and culturally interesting, the things that demonstrate tons of nuance, ambiguity, all that. It seems I'm not alone in feeling this way. Yay!

At any rate, I was watching The Bridge on the River Kwai the other day, and it struck me that we have some more "Conformist Fifties" fodder. It's 1957 and David Lean is making a movie about a British lieutenant colonel, captured with his men in the fall of Singapore, obsessed with keeping their morale up. And he's obsessed with building the Japanese enemy a better bridge than they could have done themselves, to prove the superiority of British methods. This isn't how things really happened in the war—according to Wikipedia, a commander who did this would be quietly killed by his fellow prisoners for aiding the enemy's war efforts. But it's an interesting character study, and I thought so especially at one particular passage.

The night before the bridge is to be formally opened, this Colonel Nicholson takes a slow, contemplative stroll along it. He leans on a railing, his swagger stick in his hand, and gazes about him, seemingly at peace with himself. The prison camp commander, Colonel Saito, walks up toward him, gazes out at the sunset, and says, "Beautiful."

Saito seems to have no particular thought at the moment for the bridge—hardly a surprise, since he was sidelined in its construction. He's a much less focused, effective person than Nicholson—he's the kind of person who simply wants to get through life without getting in trouble with his bosses.

Nicholson, by now unable to clearly distinguish between himself and the building project he pushed forward so obsessively, assumes that Saito is talking about the bridge. Saito politely switches gears and agrees that the bridge is, indeed, a "beautiful creation."

But for all of Nicholson's characteristic focus, tonight he's in a strange mood—where before he was driven, he now seems deeply pensive.

"I've been thinking," he says slowly. "Tomorrow it will be 28 years to the day that I've been in the service. 28 years in peace and war. I don't suppose I've been at home more than 10 months in all that time. Still, it's been a good life. I love India. I wouldn't have had it any other way. But there are times when suddenly you realize you're nearer the end than the beginning, and you wonder, you ask yourself, what the sum total of your life represents, what difference your being there at any time made to anything—or if it made any difference at all, really, particularly in comparison with other men's careers. I don't know whether that kind of thinking is very healthy, but I must admit I've had some thoughts on those lines from time to time. But tonight—tonight—"

And here, gazing at the horizon and the setting sun, he opens his hands to gesture, as if he can't quite put the feeling into words—satisfaction, contentment, happiness, peace—and the swagger stick falls to the river in a moment and disappears. Nicholson looks at the greenish water in mild dismay.

"Blast," he murmurs.

Then he straightens up, the contemplative moment passed. "I must be off," he says. "The men are preparing some sort of entertainment."

I just couldn't help being very, very struck by this scene. From what I've read, Alec Guinness gave the character more depth than Lean meant to. Yes, he's obsessed, and lost sight of what his real duty was in the larger scheme. But he kept his men's morale up, defying Saito in the beginning with great personal fortitude—he's an embodiment of a person who unswervingly upholds his or her morals and ideals even in circumstances where a bit of swerving might be appropriate.

But he's intelligent and strong enough to question the value of his entire life. And he's sensitive enough to know when he's experiencing a moment that makes all the effort worthwhile and obscures the uncertainty. Faith and doubt, meaning and absurdity, emptiness and fulfillment—for a moment, it all balances on a knife edge—and then the swagger stick splashes into the water. And I think people who believe that entertainment in the 1950s lacked subtlety ought to see this scene. This was no art film—it was meant to entertain, and it was hugely popular. But if you want nuance, ambiguity, questions that aren't resolved and may not be resolvable—it's all there, with a bag of popcorn too. Just sayin' folks.