"Army Field Hospital (MASH)": Sao men and cheap women (AFI100 TOP 056)

Darius 2022-03-23 09:02:10

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MASH (1970)

This is AFI100 in the 2007 edition list, the rest The penultimate movie that I haven't written yet, if I stick to it, I will be complete. I have still seen this film, probably in 2009, so I still remember some of the plot of the film very clearly.

The film's story is fragmented, chronicling the events of the two male doctors as they join the Army Field Hospital, and the stories are fragmentary and rarely connected. An army field hospital dispatched two recruited male doctors because of a lack of manpower, and a series of stories happened: crowding out roommates who believed in God, laughing at the new female head nurse, cheating with female nurses, exposing roommates who believed in God and Cheating between female head nurses, helping homosexuals to become heterosexuals, making the female head nurse make a fool of herself when she was taking a bath, going to Japan to help patients and clashing with Japanese superiors, playing in Japan and helping children, organizing a football team and leaders led by superiors. Team games bet money, etc. After going through everything, the two male doctors received the order to go home and left happily. The above is the content of the film's 116 minutes.

It's a Robert Altman movie, and it's not surprising that it has such a plot. The film has the typical labels of Robert Altman: rambling dialogue, irrelevant dialogue, and chaotic scenes. The whole movie is carried out in a noisy environment, and there are very few normal two-person dialogues, which gives me a headache. Objectively speaking, in the 1970s when the film was released, the style of this film was unique, and the way of performing this group drama will definitely make the audience and judges shine. Therefore, the film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and made Robert Altman a famous director. This is probably the reason why this film was selected for the AFI100. However, if you look at this film again today with the variety of film styles, you will find that the way of group play is very rough, and the scenes are particularly chaotic, even if not compared with the group drama films of recent years, compared with the works of Robert Altman himself. Also much worse. Therefore, from the current point of view, this aspect of the group drama is not outstanding, that is, rough and simple.

Another feature of the film is its playful depiction of the life of the US military in the Korean War. The film selects the army field hospital as a group to describe, depicting a military hospital that should be formal and serious as a paradise for a group of sassy boys and girls to flirt with each other, and depicts the various related personnel in the hospital in a comedy way. A happy life completely ridiculed the absurdity of the US military in the Korean War. The banter of the movie starts from the first scene—the male protagonist reports—to the end of the film. The whole process has not stopped, and there are many funny and amusing scenes. For example, taking down the curtains in the women's bathroom, sneaking blood on the supervisor while he slept, playing golf on the helipad, playing the head nurse and roommates' bed calls, and so on. These settings make the audience feel like they are not in the military, but in a ridiculous world with no morals and no principles. And these are exactly the themes that the film wants to express, that is, the anarchism of the 1970s in the United States and the absurdity of the US military. This participation in the war refers to two aspects, one is the Korean War in the film, and the other is the Vietnam War it implies. In a word, this film expresses the injustice of the war that the US military has participated in and the chaos of the army in a comic way, and sets off this theme with a series of absurd events. From another point of view, this film is also an anti-war film, but it uses a comedy way to tell.

In addition to the above two characteristics, the film is quite satisfactory in other aspects, even if the football game at the end is very exciting. In the movie, the costumes, props, sets, etc. are relatively simple, in line with the plot of the movie. Only the scene in Japan in the film seems to be eye-catching. The music of the movie was also mediocre and didn't impress me.

Because it is a group play, the actors in this film are very good. The actor Donald Sutherland is very familiar, he once starred in Feng Xiaogang's "Big Shot". Looking at him when he was young now, I find that he was also a handsome guy when he was young. His performance in this film is very good, and his life-like interpretation is very suitable for this film. Elliott Gould plays the other male lead, who was familiar when he first appeared, and who, in retrospect, is Ross's dad in Friends. After seeing his image in this film, I know that he was more handsome when he was young. And after checking the information, I found out that he was also a man of influence in the United States when he was young. Robert Duvall has a supporting role in the film, playing the obnoxious roommate. I guess he wasn't even red at the time. Sally Kellerman plays the heroine, she's not pretty, but she has really sexy lips and lives up to her name. Several of the other actors in the film are very familiar, and they are probably all familiar faces in American dramas, so I won't say much about them.

Overall, this is a film that reflects the current state of the United States at the time, which is out of date, and because it deals with American social life, it's hard for me to get interested. So I don't like this movie. For such a movie, it is enough to watch it once, and I don't want to watch it a second time.

Sally Kellerman

Sally Kellerman

Sequence: 0632

[Merry Doctor Pretty Nurse].MASH.1970.Blu-ray.720p.DTS.x264-CHD

2011-11-22

View more about MASH reviews

Extended Reading
  • Jewell 2022-04-22 07:01:32

    Suicide is painless, people with no anti-war and black humor background should not watch it, because the plot is messy

  • Tyler 2022-04-21 09:02:30

    OST: Suicide is Painless

MASH quotes

  • Painless: [lining up during football game] All right, Bub, your fuckin' head is coming right off.

    [the first use of the word "fuck" in a major motion picture]

  • Hawkeye Pierce: Duke?

    Duke Forrest: [in the middle of a brain operation with Spearchucker] Uh... what is it?

    Hawkeye Pierce: Henry's got our orders. We can go home.

    Duke Forrest: Right now?

    Spearchucker: Anytime! Whenever we want.

    Spearchucker: [to Duke] You mind if we get out of this guy's brain first?