The
early comment in To End All Wars
by a Scottish soldier characterizing World War II as
the second "war to end all wars" somehow tells
us that we are to view a film that will make us think.
Based on the book The Miracle on the River Kwai
(1962) by Ernest Gordon, the film is part-biopic and
part-docudrama, with some fabricated details to tell
the story more dramatically. Yet, one can hardly imagine
a more dramatic plot. The story is about members of
the 69th Scottish Regiment, the Argyle and Sutherland
Highlanders, who served in the Pacific theater but were
captured by the Japanese with the fall of Singapore
in early 1942 and placed in the Chungkai camp in Thailand;
some 61,000 POWs were interned at various camps in Thailand
during the war. Lt. Jim Reardon (played by Kiefer Sutherland),
an American attached to the 69th, is also a POW. Although
there is a lot of brutality and harsh treatment, even
scenes of torture of the prisoners, the plot principally
deals with the clash of cultures between the British
and the Japanese, more specifically between Christian
values and the Bushido code. In the first part of the
film, Japanese inflict punishment on prisoners who violate
the Bushido code before they know what that is, so we
see the Scottish overreacting to their mistreatment
and then being disciplined. For example, when the Scottish
regimental commander, Lt. Col. Stuart McLean (played
by James Cosmo), is summoned to the office of the Japanese
POW commandant, he erupts with such intemperate anger
about Geneva Convention violations that he is summarily
executed for failure to show respect. The principal
officer in charge of camp discipline, Ito (played by
Sakae Kimura), uses a stick, a shovel, and a pistol
as means to enforce the requirement that everyone must
show respect to the Japanese, especially the Emperor,
though later he is excluded from a session with the
"comfort women," local women forced to service
the Japanese sexually. From a Japanese point of view,
the very existence of POWs is a violation of the Bushido
code, as any captured Japanese soldier would be expected
to commit suicide. Nevertheless, the camps exist, so
a purpose has to be found. Accordingly, a decision is
made at a higher level to have the prisoners build a
railroad through the Burmese jungle so that Japanese
troops will have a supply route for attacking India.
Work commences on October 28, 1942, and is completed
on October 16, 1943, six months ahead of the time originally
allotted for construction. Why, one might ask, are underfed,
demoralized POWs so helpful to the Japanese? The answer
is a spiritual transformation among the prisoners, similar
to the story in The Bridge on the River
Kwai (1957), but far more profound. Captain
Gordon (played by Ciarán McMenamin) decides to
launch a Jungle University and "church without
walls," using books that were among the personal
effects of the POWs, including the Bible. Gordon realizes
that the early angry British response to savage treatment
is not working. Instead, the prisoners should utilize
Christian principles to order their conduct. The result
is to show respect to one another as well as forgiveness
toward their captors. Major Ian Campbell (played by
Robert Carlyle), the ranking officer when McLean dies,
dissents from Gordon's approach, but he eventually finds
redemption. The film's tagline is "In a jungle
war of survival, they learned sacrifice. In a prison
of brutal confinement, they found true freedom."
The heart of the film is the transformation while construction
of the Railway of Death of more than 400 kilometers
is underway and afterward, when there might otherwise
have been no use for the POWs. The high point comes
in 1945, when Gordon insists on showing compassion toward
wounded Japanese soldiers whom Ito at first refuses
to accept into the camp after an Allied bombing raid;
indeed, tears run down Ito's cheeks as he sees the moral
leadership of the British in wanting to care for humans,
regardless of race, when they are in distress. Most
notable in the transformation is the friendship between
Gordon and Takashi Nagase (played by Yugo Saso), a young
Cambridge-educated Japanese soldier who serves as translator
and admits that he is in the POW camp because he was
considered physically unfit. He admits as well that
all the Japanese in the camp are, in effect, being punished
for misdeeds, thus perhaps explaining that their brutality
serves to sublimate their sense of unworthiness. When
the film ends, a title indicates that Gordon and Takashi
met fifty-five years after the end of the war, and a
video of their meeting flashes across the screen as
they visit the war memorial and graves for those who
died in the POW camp. Both ended up in religious roles
after the war, Gordon as Chaplain at Princeton, Takashi
as a Shinto priest. Another closing video shows the
regiment's survivors march in a recent parade. Cinema
patrons at a Hollywood screening stayed glued to their
seats as credits rolled; the emotional power of the
film was so intense that the credits and the music were
needed for filmviewers to decelerate emotionally so
that they could leave the theater without breaking out
into tears. Directed by David L. Cunningham, To
End All Wars has been nominated by the
Political Film Society for three awards--as an exposé
on how the Burma Railroad was built and how prisoners
survived transformed, as an eloquent plea to have human
rights respected in wartime, and as a peace editorial
to remember World War II as the war to end all world
wars. MH
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The Miracle on the River Kwai
by Ernest Gordon
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