Year: 1957
Director: David Lean
Country: UK
Language: English
David Lean is the most loved British Director next to Alfred Hitchcock. Though his filmography is a bit low, having Directed only 13 pictures, each one of them can be considered a masterpiece. He started his career adapting Noel Coward plays like This Happy Breed, In Which We Serve, and Brief Encounter and ended his career with epics like Doctor Zhivago and A Passage to India. Bridge on the River Kwai is the first of his undeclared War Trilogy and it is considered one of his finest works.
The film deals with the situation of British prisoners of war during World War II who are ordered to build a bridge to accommodate the Burma-Siam railway. Their instinct is to sabotage the bridge but, under the leadership of Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guiness), they are persuaded that the bridge should be constructed as a symbol of British morale, spirit and dignity in adverse circumstances. At first the prisoners admire Nicholson, however they slowly realize that he is going mad.
It is important to watch this film with the realization that everything seen in the picture is fictional. Though loosely based on a true story, it caused the real Colonel Nicholson and the Kwai veterans a great deal of stress, because Nicholson wasn't a man who had gone mad. In-fact he was greatly respected after the war and became President of the National Federation of Far Eastern Prisoners of War. With that in mind Kwai is an incredibly sensational picture that changed the landscape of cinema, especially as far as War epics were concerned.
With his camera, David Lean submerses us into the world of the POW prisoner. We feel their pain and see their shattered remnants of life. The cinematography is breathtaking and powerful, perhaps even better than Lawrence of Arabia's. The jungle settings add a necessary tone of realism and suspense that keeps interest, despite the runtime being more that 3 hours long. The film's climax slowly builds, though we cannot predict what will happen we know it will be something big. The acting is superb, Alec Guiness truly deserved the "Best Actor" Oscar for his role as the complicated Colonel Nicholson.
In conclusion, The Bridge On the River Kwai is a film I have seen about a dozen times in my life. It is remarkable; no scene or screen pace is wasted in telling one of the most compelling stories you will ever watch. With this film Lean proved to the world that an epic could still make us weep and cheer for joy. Praise it! 5/5
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