Battle Circus

My main exposure to M*A*S*H* came from reruns watched at my grandmother's house. It wasn't until a few years ago that I discovered that a. there was a movie, and b. there was an Altman movie. Needless to say I was a little more interested - while the Alan Alda version was often syrupy and cute, I figured Altman would deliver something more vitriolic, something deeper...

Well, one out of two ain't bad. MASH is indeed more abrasive than any single episode of the (barely) related sitcom. And it's an excellent benchmark for tracking the aesthetic of 1970s filmmaking, with its much-hullaballooed tracking shots and overlapping dialogue. And it's bitterly hilarious.

But MASH isn't a movie. It's a 2-hour long pilot for a (probably much better) version of the subsequent TV show. The bittersweet introduction is there, and there are a few serious scenes in the expository minutes, but the film loses its bite early on - specifically, with the removal of the Robert Duvall character - and lapses into pure, admittedly sadistic slapstick.

There's no story structure and no real political references of any kind; the film is antiwar only in its tone and dialogue, without any narrative thrust or metaphor. It makes sense - Altman created an entirely different movie in postproduction, to Fox's Nixon-era chagrin, and I can only imagine how many of the gags were improvised on-set.

Make no mistake: Donald Sutherland and Elliot Gould make Alan Alda and Wayne Rogers look like choirboys. It's a seriously funny movie, but 35 years later, it lacks the urgency of something even as innocuous and silly as Stripes. It's true that I'm of a younger generation, and I wasn't around to see it in all its defiant glory when it first came out. (Shit, we live in a time when studios want to spend zillions of dollars to look caustic.)

But the reason MASH won't endure isn't because it's not funny anymore, but rather because it's pointless - which is even more unfortunate.