This is a black comedy, based on the Korean War in the 1950s, alluding to the Vietnam War in the 1960s, satirizing the out-of-control military machine and the values that support it. The film is very successful both artistically and politically. In addition to the awards already won, director Altman became famous in one fell swoop and was nominated for the best director of the Academy Awards that year. Because the film's jokes and sarcasm against the current system resonated with the rebellious young generation, it became one of the best-selling films in the 1970s.
Altman is different from other new generation American film directors of the same period in the 1970s. He is not from an academy and does not like the Hollywood film system. His films have always been known to be anti-traditional, and often go the opposite way to Hollywood genre films. The film is an anti-traditional film from form to content. In the past, Hollywood classic war films promoted the United States to fight for survival or to liberate the people of other countries; the U.S. military appeared as liberators (protectors); and the U.S. soldiers were a group of brave and dedicated people. This film breaks the myth of American war. It looks at war from another point of view, exposing the aimlessness of military operations, the bureaucracy and hypocrisy in the military, and the cynicism and crisis of trust among military personnel. But this film is different from several anti-Vietnam War films in the 1980s, such as "Field Platoon", "Full Metal Shell", "Born on July 4th" and so on. In the 1980s, 20 years have passed since the Vietnam War. People can calmly review this history and directly analyze or criticize it. But this was not possible in 1970. Therefore, the film uses metaphors to attack the war in the form of comedy.
When the film is subtitled, the background is a helicopter transporting the wounded with the M*A*S*H (Army Field Hospital) logo, and the soundtrack is a chorus with funny lyrics "Suicide is no pain": "Suicide is no pain. , It brings a great opportunity... A great man asked me to make a statement and do not hesitate. This matter is related to life and death, why ask me this question. If I am a free man, I will choose not to die. If you all agree , You can follow suit.” Here, the pictures, lyrics, and music are extremely inharmonious. Then, he played MacArthur's words to encourage the American soldiers on the Korean battlefield and President Eisenhower declared that he was going to North Korea. This immediately reminds people of the "great men" mentioned in the previous lyrics, who induce people to die. In this way, the film showed its anti-war tendency from the very beginning, metaphorically saying that a war of aggression is tantamount to suicide.
Next, the film seems to be ridiculing MacArthur's phrase "They are excellent in everything." All characters in the film are non-heroes. Even if the three protagonists, Hawkeye, John, and Duke, pursue a new value—the heroes who have great respect for life, they are cynical and have no clear purpose in life. They all adopt a disrespectful attitude towards traditional values such as war, military, discipline, religion, honor, and chastity. The film even ends with "fuck army".
Deliberately creating discord is the characteristic of this film. In front of the bloody wounded, the military doctors joked and laughed amidst the creaking bones; the plasma boxes were used for cold beer; the corpses wrapped in white cloth were transported outside the tents, and the tents drank and gambled; military priests were suicides intolerable by religion. Pray; under the slogan of "organization, discipline, unity", the players cheated wantonly. The most discordant is music. In the camp of the Army Field Hospital, the central task is to rescue the wounded, the struggle between life and death. But the big speakers are always Japanese or Korean songs sung in English by the showgirl monster. When Burns walked in a jeep wearing a tights, the music was "Shan Yo Nara" sung in English; when a pretty girl was persuaded by eagle eyes to go to bed and have sex without pain, the music was a solemn hymn ; In that rugby game, which symbolized the brutal American aggression, when the players on both sides changed from playing to fighting, the music suddenly became a majestic march. As the players were lifted off the field, the pace of the march became faster and faster. In the end, everything from the players to the officer was crazy, and there were no rules of the game at all.
"Army Field Hospital" is the most popular one of Ultraman's films and the one with the most personal style. Like other Ultraman films, this film does not have a coherent plot. Ultraman, who was a TV director, made it like a TV series: the same characters, the same place, a short story that happened at a specific time-the protagonist struggles with the values they oppose, every time The short story ends with a gong. They are related to each other, but not so close. Ultraman's unique style-documentary form, numerous characters, overlapping dialogue, improvisation, jumping editing, the use of telescope lens, etc., are fully expressed in this film. In particular, the auditory expression of dialogue overlap is used for the first time in this film. When several characters are present, one person speaks, and others do not have to be silent. In life, we do not always live in a sound environment. When watching Ultraman's film, the audience must also concentrate and choose which person they intend to listen to in order to hear clearly. This natural sound is also one of the reasons that gives him the documentary style of his films. Another reason is the use of telephoto lenses. Sometimes the lens is shot from indoors to outdoors through a window, regardless of whether there is an obstacle between the camera and the subject, everything is natural and let it enter the picture.
Altman's films are always something unexpected. The film is set in the Korean War, but there is no battle scene in the whole film. Just like Altman's other film "Nashville", the center of the story is the campaign, but the presidential candidate does not appear in the whole film. The theme of this film is people, and it sings life. So it lashed out at the war that pushed people to death.
In the 1970s, due to the influence of the Vietnam War, the human rights movement, the feminist movement, and the drug culture, the idols of American youth were shattered and their rebellious mentality intensified. The values that were respected in the past, such as patriotism, heroism, and religion, have changed. They require the narrative media to truly reflect society. In order to cater to the tastes of the young people who make up the majority of the audience, Hollywood had to make some films that re-evaluated the reality of the United States. Therefore, in the 1970s, many works that reflected reality appeared. The more prominent in military films are this film and "Catch-22". Before that, Altman had always wanted to make a comedy about the Air Force of the First World War, titled "The Chicken and the Eagle". When 20th Century Fox showed him the script of Radner's "Army Field Hospital", he found that it was in line with his thinking. So he did his best to be acrimonious and made it into a film that satirizes the existing system of the military. He didn't shoot according to the book sent to Fox for review at all. Fortunately, Fox seldom intervenes with him, and only asks him to stay within his budget. In this way, this masterpiece with profound political and aesthetic concepts was produced in Hollywood's popular and commercialized media system.
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