Bridge on River Kwai - Movie Review Example

b. What was the best thing about the movie? What was the worst?  The best thing about the movie is how it portrayed dynamics of people in a prison camp. The interplay and complications of people with various cultural backgrounds negotiating, interacting was quite enlightening. But above all, the movie just depicted how one group of people can subjugate another group of people through war. The worst thing about the movie was that the racial bias was obvious. During the duration of watching the film, I told myself that the producer of this film must be British because the British character Nicholson was positively portrayed in the film.

Nicholson was a captive British officer but despite his situation, he held himself with dignity and poise in a proud bearing consistent with “Her Majesty” would like to portray. True enough, when I did some research about the producer David Lean, he was indeed a Brit which was already obvious in his film. c. What did you find to be the most interesting or surprising element of the film? Why?  The war itself was already interesting but what the film became more interesting is the angle that the movie would like to tackle which is the dynamics of the relationships of POWs and its captors.

The content of the film involves the relationship between the POWs (Prisoners of War) and its captors which is already unnerving. In the movie, the hard labor forced among POWs under the intense heat of the tropical sun was vividly portrayed that you can almost feel the heat especially with how the sun deteriorated the skin of the British and American POWs. But while in general the film depicted the reality of war, it was however unrealistic in portraying some dimensions of war especially in the negotiation aspect where Lt.

Colonel Nicholson refused to do hard labor when he was asked by Colonel Saito. That caught me by surprised especially when I already had some readings about World War II and how Japanese treats its prisoners. Nicholson acted as if he is not a prisoner of war and that they are in equal footing with their Japanese captors. In highlighting this, it is not to say that forced hard labor among POWs is okay but I just find the manner he negotiated with Col. Saito to be unrealistically surprising especially when he used the Geneva Convention ruling as leverage that officers are exempted from work.

Japanese as captors are brutal and I doubt that if Nicholson would still be alive in real life had he talked to a Japanese Colonel the way he did in the film. The same instance can be cited here with the American and Filipino POWs held captive by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II where thousands of both American and Filipino officers died in a merciless march in Bataan called the “death march” that no officers, both Americans and Filipinos were documented to even have the nerve to negotiate with their captors nor did the Geneva Convention made the Japanese spare their lives from the brutal march.

This reality was not depicted in the film and instead, the British through Nicholson are portrayed as brave soldiers who would assert against anybody proudly whatever their circumstances. This is far from the truth and this only tells that the movie was produced, directed and intended by western Hollywood intended for a western audience. In the same vein, it is quite perplexing why among the prisoners who attempted to escape and it was