Director Robert Altman was 45 when M*A*S*H was released. Prior to this film he had worked in television and directed a few small, unsuccessful, films. The critical and commercial success of M*A*S*H allowed him to become one of the most prolific and interesting filmmakers of the ’70′s. However, the film itself, despite its success at the time, does not entirely work.
The film is an odd amalgamation of Robert Altman’s cinema technique, which strives for verisimilitude, and the theatricality of the script. It is a constant tug-of-war between intimate moments seemingly caught by accident and an overarching construct that goes out of its way to remind you that it is a film; by nature artificial and false.
The Academy Award winning screenplay, written by Ring Lardner Jr., and based upon the novel by Richard Hooker, is episodic. One sequence follows another with little connective tissue or consequence. In fact, the filmmakers realised this problem when they began the edit and decided to amplify the use of the camp announcer’s broadcasts to tie the disparate elements together. With such an episodic nature it is not surprising that the film was adapted into a TV show. And, as a child of the late ’70′s, it is difficult to look at the film without the TV show casting a large shadow.
While the film holds the audience at a distance, the TV show invited the viewing audience into their lives each week. You got to enjoy the ups and downs of the characters through all of the hijinks and the emotional moments. The show was considerate of the audience’s viewing experience and would often pander to them. This resulted in a show that could often become sentimental and a bit too precious. Easy to enjoy but often a guilty pleasure.
On the other-hand, the film is as indifferent to its audience as the main characters are to the army and many of the characters around them. The film refuses to allow the audience into the minds of the characters; they are held at a distance by long lenses and an overlapping of, sometimes unintelligible, dialogue. We are given little by way of an emotional hook with which to participate in the action on-screen; instead we become voyeurs, watching the action through binoculars.
This approach does add gravity to a few fleeting moments of emotion that do occur. When Donald Sutherland, as Captain Hawkeye Pierce, talks directly into the camera of a reporter to his Dad emotion begins to register on his face. The editor refuses to linger on the moment but that spark of emotion is enough to create an emotional response within the audience. Another moment sees Radar, played, as in the TV show, by Gary Burghoff, is spat on by a football player on the opposing team. It is a small moment but the camera holds on Radar as he is forced to endure the indignity in silence. The scene is not forced and it allows the audience to project their own feelings and experiences into the moment.
In the end, M*A*S*H becomes a diverting but largely un-engaging affair. Another director may have sucked more from the dramatic marrow of the story but I doubt that the film would have been as interesting as it is with Altman at the helm.
Elliot Gould, Tom Skerritt, and Donald Sutherland star as the three lead doctors; Trapper John, Duke, and Hawkeye.