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How else can one explain
Elliot Gould's
groovy moustache? The free-wheeling and
uninhibited attitude about sex-squares be damned? Pot-smoking football players
and guiltless anti-clericalism? Its heroes' golf clubs notwithstanding, M*A*S*H is
clearly a reflection of late 60's counterculture. There's an innocence, a moral
confidence to its rebellious spirit that was not in evidence during the early 50's,
when the Korean War took place, and was thoroughly trounced by the late 70's.
Remarkably, though, that's about the only thing that dates the movie. For an
essentially commercial Hollywood product, M*A*S*H is revolutionary in style
and substance. It's no coincidence that the screen play was written by the
once blacklisted
Ring Lardner, Jr.
But the movie's biggest coup was introducing to the public at large to one of
America's greatest directors. Robert Altman's signature is everywhere in the
picture. First of all, there's the soundtrack. Dialogue comes in and out of
earshot, overlaps scenes, overlaps itself. The MASH unit's public address
system - with its nonesensical announcements, Asian pop music, interloped
moments of passion - is the glue that holds together both the community
and the narrative. Older audiences were confused; younger ones loved the
hip documentary feel. And then there's the camera, swooping and zooming
from character to character, scene to scene. The freedom of movement and
lack of elegance - along with the flat, gritty color photography - reminds us of...TV
war footage (Vietnam again!). But Altman was looking beyond the "reality" of
war. His MASH unit and movie set were one and the same: a self-contained
world peopled by a flamboyant ensemble of characters. An instant microcosm.
Altman's black, black sense of humor and his nonchalant attitude toward sex and
mortality remain almost as shocking today as it was in 1970. What you see, however,
is never meant to turn you on. The surgeons and nurses of M*A*S*H live surrounded
by blood and viscera, but they're as devoted to their professional skills during work
as they are to their hedonism on their time off. It's all a part of the futile
game of war. Feminists complained bitterly about the film's misogyny at the time
of its release and it is undeniable that the female characters seem inordinately
willing to be pawns of male fantasy (by the end of movie, even
Sally Kellerman's
officious Hot Lips turns into a cheerleader). But then again, Altman has always
been better at observing human foibles than judging them.
M*A*S*H was an inexpensive movie to make and an enormous hit, making major
stars out of Gould and
Donald Sutherland
who played Hawkeye. The heartwarming
television series it spawned ran for fourteen seasons. But the movie's real success
is timeless. When Robert Altman looked at Korea filtered through the lens of
Vietnam, he changed our way of seeing - both on the big screen and in the big,
bad world.
In 1970, the United States forces in Vietnam invaded Cambodia. Back home four
student protesters were shot dead at Kent State University. And the Acadamy Award
for Best Picture went to
"Patton",
a reverent portrait of the World War II general
and military zealot. Also nominated that year was M*A*S*H™, a black comedy
about a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital set during the Korean War. It had less to do
with the Korean War, of course, than it did with the generation that was born
during the years it was fought.