Bridge On The River Kwai Has A Major Lesson

Way back in the late 1950s, I first saw one of the great pictures of film history, "The Bridge On The River Kwai." The film won several Oscars. I was just a kid and my dad had taken us to what was a common place back then, a drive-in movie. The movie was only remotely connected to real history; that being, there had been a bridge built during the war in that part of southeast Asia by the Japanese, who used forced labor of POWs and local civilians, but the film story is otherwise purely fictional.

The film centers around a British engineer unit being held in a Japanese POW camp. The Japanese are building a bridge to help move supplies to their combat forces in Burma. The camp commandant (played by Sessue Hayakawa) has been ordered to have the bridge completed on a strict schedule, so he orders the British officers to help with the construction, an order the British senior officer (played by Alec Guinness) will not follow, as it violates the Geneva Convention, a point of little concern to the Japanese commander. You know how those regulations hamper people from being mean, ruthless, exploitative and nasty; after all, it's dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest, just ask Donald Trump or the Koch brothers. You can't have a bunch of regulations messing up that philosophy. Anyway, the refusal by the British officer to comply with the commandant's order brings harsh solitary confinement for the officer, but after a battle of wills, the commandant releases the British officer with the understanding that the British will help get the bridge built. The British officer turns into a collaborator, his feelings soothed by his belief that he is keeping his men's morale high, as well as getting his men far better treatment than before. Further, he sees the bridge as a chance to demonstrate that the British engineers are better than their Japanese counterparts, providing a boon to British pride. The fact that he is urging his men to build a bridge to aid and abet the enemy is lost on him, so blinded is he by fanaticism. He becomes so obsessed with building the best bridge possible, you'd think he were in charge of such a job in the heart of London.

Unknown to the British officer, a small group of Allied commandos are nearby as the bridge is about to open and allow passage for the first Japanese supply train. The group's assignment is to blow up the bridge. On the night before the train is to cross, the commandos set explosives in place at the base of the bridge and run the wire to the detonator. When daylight comes, the wire is exposed to view by a drop in the water level. This draws the British officer's attention and he points it out to the Japanese commandant. Together, they go down to the river to investigate. As they draw near to the plunger-type detonator, the commando designated to blow the bridge kills the approaching Japanese officer. This brings cries for help to the Japanese soldiers from the British officer, who still doesn't get it, and this results in the death of the commando by Japanese gunfire, just after he told the British officer he is there on orders to destroy the bridge. Another commando (played by William Holden) tries to get to the plunger, but he too is killed. Now the officer suddenly awakens to the reality of his collaboration as he asks, "What have I done?" If you haven't seen the movie before, you'll have to watch it to find out the ending.*

Fanaticism blinds people, even patriotic people who mean to do right. True nations have people with common goals, who make efforts to work together for the betterment of all, instead of paying heed to fanatical ideologies, with plenty of greed and egomania thrown in.   

* The film, while highly acclaimed, did get some knocks from people in Britain, who felt it disparaged them, as the officer in the movie did collaborate with the enemy. Remember, this movie originally came out not all that long after World War Two, when most war veterans were still very much alive, and when feelings about the war were still very raw. The main thing to remember is, the movie is fiction, and as some former British soldiers from those times noted, any such British officer in real life would have been "taken care of" by British soldiers in the camp themselves. I see the overall theme as being applied to far beyond war or a movie.

Photo is of the 2000 Sony Pictures Home Entertainment DVD release

WORD HISTORY:
Bridge-This noun goes back to Indo European "bhruw," which meant "(wooden) beam," and also "log;" and might actually have been the reverse originally; that is, "log" to "beam." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "brugjon," with the meaning "structure of wood built to allow passage over a gap or waterway." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "brycg," which meant "bridge." Later this became "brigge" before the modern version. Common throughout the other Germanic languages: standard German has "Brück," Low German Saxon has "Brügg(e)," Dutch has "brug," West Frisian has "brêge," Danish, Swedish and Norwegian have "bro," and Icelandic has "brú."