Work as Madness in “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957)

In the beginning, Colonel Nicholson seems to be a stickler for principle, willing to die rather than have his officers do menial labor in a Japanese prison camp. In the end, his principles seem to be a cover for personal vanity. He is willing to put his officers to work building a bridge for his enemies, as long as it leaves him with a legacy. “The Bridge on the River Kwai” is a reflection on the meaning of work, and whether the ravages of time, if not war, imply that being happy in one’s work—to use a phrase repeated several times in the film—is nothing more than futility and madness. Is work the key to freedom, or is it inevitably a form of bondage? How do we distinguish the desire to be creative from the desire for prestige? When is destroying something more creative than building it? Thanks to our sponsors for this episode, Buck Mason and Athletic Greens AG1. To get a free t-shirt with your first Buck Mason order, head over to buckmason.com/subtext. To get a free one-year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 and free travel packs with your first purchase of AG1, visit athleticgreens.com/subtext. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:11 Wes: In the beginning, Colonel Nicholson seems to be a stickler for principle, willing to die rather than have his officers do menial labor in a Japanese prison camp. In the end, his principles seem to be a cover for personal vanity. He's willing to put his officers to work building a bridge for his enemies as long as it leaves him with a legacy. The Bridge on the River Kwai is a reflection on the meaning of work and whether the ravages of time, if not war, imply that being happy in one's work, to use a phrase repeated several times in the film, is nothing more than futility and madness. Is work the key to freedom, or is it inevitably a form of bondage? How do we distinguish desire to be creative from the desire for prestige? When is destroying something more creative than building it? This is Wes Alwan. This is Erin O'Luanaigh, and you're listening to Subtext. So, Erin, have you been happy in your work? 1:14 Erin: Yeah. 1:17 Wes: What does that mean? I think that's the standout phrase for me in the movie. 1:21 Erin: You know, I'm so delighted that that's what. I've seen this movie several times, and this last time I was like, I think this might be about work and the nature of all work. And then I was like, no, that's crazy. So I think it's funny that you picked up on that. 1:38 Wes: All right, I think we're on the same page about that. 1:40 Erin: Am I happy in my work? I don't know. Is anyone? 1:43 Wes: Well, isn't work all madness in the end? 1:46 Erin: Well, for sure. 1:47 Wes: We'll find out in this episode. So it's interesting because there are four places in which the phrase be happy in your work or some variation of that occurs. And it starts with Saito talking to the newly arrived British soldiers and telling them, let me remind you of General Yamashita's motto, be happy in your work. And then he dismisses the soldiers. And of course, they don't flinch until Colonel Nicholson tells them to stand at ease. And then the next time, again, it's Saito when he is upset with the lack of progress on the bridge. And then he gives a kind of theory about it, a theory about why it's not progressing. And he explains that to all the soldiers. And he basically says, the officers are lazy and they think they're too good to share your burdens. And that is not just. Therefore, you are not happy in your work. Therefore, the bridge does not progress. So he makes this connection between being happy in your work and the justice of whether the officers are gonna share in that. And then the third time, he basically bribes them with Red Cross, you know, he calls them. Presents a token of regards for your efforts in the future. So let us be happy in our work. And then the final time, it's not Saito, it's Shears who says it. And he says it while they're cutting through the underbrush to go on their project to blow up the bridge. But they're walking with the female bearers and basically Joyce is hitting on one of them, calling her lovely. And Shears kind of walks by and says, be happy in your work. As you pointed out, I think this is about work. And there are different conceptions of work at work, including different conceptions in those instances. I think in the beginning, this idea, General Yamashita's motto, the idea is that they're going to keep busy. And that's one form of happiness. You're a slave, you've lost your honor. You're no longer a soldier. That's Saito's point of view. But you're gonna keep busy. And that's the beginning point. But then this concept of work evolves over or there are conflicting candidates for what it is to work over the course of the film. Right. 4:18 Erin: And one of them is the idea to sort of keep busy by being lazy or. 4:22 Wes: Exactly. 4:23 Erin: To actively work against the idea of work that someone is imposing upon you. Preferably by a way, to make it look like you're doing their form of meaning while you're also undermining it at the same time. So the wires get crossed there, you know? And then there's also the idea of sabotage as carried out by Shears and that little commando troupe and the commando mentality. Similarity to, like, play. I think there are a lot of parallels made between, like, oh, this is just a game to you, and so be happy in your work. Makes me think of work as being fulfilling, meaningful, fun. Making work enjoyable, maybe making it like a game, which is itself, I think, a parallel for war in the film too. Like the lack of seriousness involved in war or the play acting involved in war. So I think there are a lot of threads there. Like, one of the most interesting moments for me was when Shears is first going to the commando school. He's first been invited there. And there's that moment that I always kind of thought was silly where he gets attacked by that commando in training. And, of course, something similar to him had just happened to him in the jungle as he had escaped from the POW camp. And So I think for a long time I read that moment just as being indicative of Shears mental state that he's this tough guy on the outside. But obviously his recent experiences have had more effect on him than maybe he had realized or that the audience had realized. But, you know, looking at it again, I realized it was really clever for showing the extent to which so much of war is training for war and so much of training is this play acting among your fellow men. So you're casting them, like, in the role of the enemy and then sort of trying to sneak attack them, whatever. You know, I'm carrying out all these war games, right. And so those particularly slippery boundaries between, like, who is your enemy and who's your friend or who's your comrade, I think is related to this idea of work because they're joined by this play acting that's also inherent in this idea of sabotage and working against, like, appearing to be busy. I don't know how to tie those two things together, but I think they seem to be related somehow. 6:43 Wes: Yeah, it's interesting. A bit is made of who people were in peacetime, like what they did. So, for instance, Warden was a professor at Oxford, right. And Joyce, the Canadian kid, was an accountant. And something is made of the fact that it was really boring and repetitious. He checked figures that had been checked several times before and would be checked several times after him. There's a lot in this movie that's evocative of the potential futility of work or whether it's meaningful. This is one of the things that Nicholson wonders. Is there anything I done had an effect? Will it be remembered? And so the way Joyce's participation. Because they're not Warden and his commanding officer. Not sure that Joyce is the right candidate, but the idea is that, well, he's going to be engaged in something which is much more interesting than accounting by going on this trip to blow up the bridge. But I wanted to bring that back to your idea about how sabotage fits into all of this. Right. And destruction. Because we have, you know, nominally, the creative work that's done in the film is done by Nicholson to create the bridge. And then, you know, at the end of it, he is very proud of what he's done and seemingly. Right. That's the constructive thing to do. But it works against the larger project of the organization in which he's participating, the British army and the Allies and the war effort. So it's madness in another sense, as the medical officer Clipton puts it. So you have someone like Warden who's been a professor, and he has this kind of interesting relationship to his plastic explosives. Right. It's like he's transferred his professorial curiosity into playing with explosives. So I was trying to make a connection. I think you were making a connection between sabotage and play. So there's an element of kind of delight and absorption that you see in Warden's relationship to this work, which is ultimately going to be destructive. And he's done it several times before, so he's taken down a few bridges. It turns out you have to know something about engineering to do that, too. Just like in the same way that you have to know something about engineering to put the bridge up. You have to know where to place the explosives to take it down. 9:12 Erin: Yeah. I'm thinking about the moment with the plastic explosive where doesn't he sort of like, pretend to throw it or. No, he throws it up in the air and then Holden, or Shears, rather catches it and is really nervous about it. Right. So like. 9:25 Wes: And then he. And then he says, you know, yeah, it doesn't explode unless it's been ignited. 9:29 Erin: Yeah. And again, there's this idea of play acting or mime. And I'm thinking of this maybe in relation to. I'm wondering if it's useful in relation to your point about these soldiers former lives to think about play acting and war, even, like, in relation to, say, the draft. Like, this is a situation in which most of the men, maybe not most, but many of the men that find themselves in this war have been cast in this role through no initiative of their own. And so I think there's something here, maybe about the fact that any soldier is miming at being a soldier, sort of play acting. Like, I think of the moment with Joyce in the jungle when he has that moment to kill that soldier and they look at each other and that soldier looks like he's about 15 years old or something. And then, of course, there's the moment where you see the pictures and the necklace that he's carrying with him after he's been killed. You know, that he's just this little kid, basically, or just this normal, sweet boy. Well, I don't know if he's sweet. Maybe he's not. 10:29 Wes: But anyway, he's the enemy, Erin. He's the enemy. 10:32 Erin: I know, I know. And so this idea that you have this former life that you really are, and then you put on the guise of the soldier, and some people fill that role better. Better than others. Shears, of course, has also been play acting within the play. Acting, Right. Because he's also given himself a higher rank in the power vacuum of the POW camp when he realized that it was to his benefit to do that. And so I wonder if what Nicholson doesn't understand about war is that the element of play acting inherent in all of it and the element of sabotage, miming, of acting like you're doing something and really doing something else. Nicholson, it seems to me, sees everything in such black and white terms or in such serious terms that he's not capable of understanding the sort of idea of play or flexibility that seems to be inherent in the job itself, in the job of this play acting and also in the idea of being successful at war. You have to kind of be able to adapt play with new circumstances, not just read the script as written, but sort of improv your way out of situations. And so his lack of ability to act or to take things less seriously maybe is what makes him mad, but also sane. You know, according to. Obviously, war is madness. So it's a strange bind he's supposed 12:04 Wes: to be acting on rigidly, on principle. And, you know, there's these scenes with Clipton where he says to Clipton, you have much to learn about the army in response to Major Clipton, the medical officer. Again, you know, to his kind of shock or surprise that Nicholson wants to build the bridge for the Japanese and to do it well. The way Clipton responds to him early on is. Or actually, no, this is a little bit later on when I think Clipton questions him for a second time after the bridge has already gotten going and it's going well. And Clipton asks Nicholson, what's going on with Saito? How's he doing with all of this? And Nicholson says, he's been most reasonable since we took over. And then Clipton says, well, I wonder what he's thinking. And Nicholson says, I haven't the foggiest, and sort of brushes that off. And then Clipton asks, are you convinced building this bridge is a good idea? And Nicholson gives this speech about. He says, don't you agree the men's morale is high, that discipline has been restored, that their condition has been improved, and so on. So he switches back and forth between this position of being rigidly principled and then worried about his men. So early on, it's just about the officers are not going to do any work. We're going to follow the Geneva Conventions, the letter of the law. His rationale for building the bridge is initially, there's this idea that because he was ordered to surrender, he would be disobeying orders not to Build the bridge for the Japanese, which is absurd. Completely absurd. 13:41 Erin: I don't think that's about the bridge. I think that was just about the idea of not escaping. 13:44 Wes: Yep, you're right. So that's about escaping. 13:46 Erin: But that plays into your point. 13:48 Wes: On the one hand, there's principle and following the letter of the law and on the other, which is something that Shears thinks is absurd and opposes. And on the other, there's this idea that he can prevent his men from becoming slaves. If they can work on the order of the officers they can avoid being slaves and take pride in what they're doing and prevent disorder in the camp. The reason I'm bringing all that up is that both of those, in a way, are undermined. Because in the end, it turns out that Nicholson does have his officers work when it's necessary because they can't get the bridge done without it. And then at the very end of the movie, he's willing to betray his own side. So what we learn there is that this hasn't really been about principle or about his men, exactly. It's just simply about all the other stuff which he talks about which is his desire to leave a legacy or to do something meaningful to make a difference. What I'm suggesting is that his focus on principles and all the rest of it seems to be a cover for vanity or for pride, let's say, for something personal, at least. I don't know if you agree on 14:58 Erin: that, but I do. I think, also, though, and maybe this chimes with what you're saying too I do think that there's something here about Nicholson's sense of hierarchy as being paramount. And I think that's tied up with personal pride but in terms of a larger civic pride. So I think that his desire for the men to be happy is also working in tandem with his idea of hierarchy. Because he wants everyone to be, I think, content in their station. And he feels as though he is being a good leader when his men are fulfilled, when they're being inspired and all those things. Right? Because that's part of his job as a colonel to keep this order to make sure that the men are industrious and feel happy in their work. And so the way that I see the turn is that he sees an opportunity. So he wants to keep these hierarchies very strictly enforced in this region of lawlessness as a way of, like, preserving his troops pride and understanding of their own positionality. I think that when he sees the opportunity for the bridge to be constructed by these good ideal Englishmen. His sense of hierarchy is then transposed into being something on a much larger scale, which is almost like a proselytizing move on his part. You know, like it's going to be a lesson to these Japanese people that we're better than you or that we're more disciplined, that we could build a better bridge. So the idea of hierarchy from colonel over the men or the officers over the men, the officers not working, it becomes the idea of them as Englishmen being superior to the rabble in the jungle as he thinks of them. And so I think that then the completion of the bridge becomes a project of preserving his very British and colonial idea of what hierarchy means. And so I think there's a lot of personal pride there, for sure. And there is that interesting idea about leaving a legacy. But I think it's also tied up in this, like I said, civic or national sense of false pride that has to be exerted. 17:07 Wes: Clipton has, you know, earlier on expresses again some reserves about all of this. And Nicholson says, honestly, Clipton, there are times when I don't understand you at all. It's a fun part of the film that Nicholson treats everyone else as if they're crazy for even questioning his idea about the bridge. So Clipton says, well, you know, it could be construed as collaboration with the enemy, perhaps even a treasonable activity. And then Nicholson again gives these two different sorts of explanation. One kind of rule or principle based or law based, and then the other utilitarian. So the first one is, we're prisoners of war. We haven't the right to refuse work. And then Clipton says, I understand that, but why do we have to work so well? And this is what Clipton says. Must we build them a better bridge than they could have built themselves? If you had to operate on Saito, would you do your best or let him die? And Nicholson responds, would you prefer to see this battalion disintegrate in idleness? Would you have it said that our chaps can't do a proper job? Don't you realize how important it is to show these people this is the point you were getting at? I think that they can't break us in body or in spirit. Take a good look. One day the war will be over. I hope the people who use this bridge in years to come will remember how it was built and who built it. Not a gang of slaves, but soldiers, British soldiers, even in captivity. And then Clipton says, yes, sir. And then Nicholson says, you're a fine doctor, but you've a lot to learn about the army. So the concepts of principle and law are tied up with the idea of keeping order among the troops and giving them something to live for even in captivity, and making sure that they're not slaves, which is tied in turn to showing these people the point you were getting at kind of larger civic pride. And I kind of chuckled at the one day the war will be over remark because I had a kind of flashback to apocalypse now where Lt. Col. Kilgore gives a speech, and it ends with that line, right? It's saying, one day this war is going to end, and that's it. And he gets up. This is the classic trope on which that kind of satirical comment, towards which that kind of satirical scene is directed, where the war will be over one day, and then what do we want to happen afterwards? What are we going to have to show for it then? All this destruction? Because the way the war is, it's inherently not a creative act, but a destructive act. And being a captive and a slave essentially seems to hamper one's potential for real work or for real creativity. And you see, in Apocalypse Now, Kilgore's solution is to try to bring home into the theater of war and to surf and to do all that stuff, to pretend it's not happening, pretend they're at home or in California or wherever. And Nicholson's solution is to see if he can have a little society within captivity and to do something that's genuinely creative within a larger context, that is inherently destructive, and leaves him thinking, what is it all for? Unless I do something like this. 20:19 Erin: Yeah, you're exposing my kind of sympathy for Nicholson. You know, I was thinking about Billy Budd, too. I know. I kind of, like, argued for the Captain. Billy Budd. 20:29 Wes: Yeah, I thought of that too, actually, but. Yeah, go ahead. 20:32 Erin: Yeah. No, but the idea of there is something inherently more fulfilling about the kind of creativity that is building something that you think will last. Again, to go back to this idea of play acting, like, that's a form of creativity, too. Right. But it just doesn't look like much. Performances are temporary, you know, and, you know, stage performances are not recorded. And so it doesn't end up feeling like much, even if it does kind of exercise that creative faculty. You know, I'm talking about the idea of, like, maybe the men banding together and trying to actively sabotage in cleverer ways, which they already are doing, I think, while Nicholson is in the oven. Right. They're sort of working against each other on the bridge. But anyway, I'm thinking, too, about the idea of creativity versus destruction and how it might be related to the idea of hara-kiri and the clashing sort of codes of honor between Saito and Nicholson. Because they run very, very close to each other, of course. I mean, they're basically the same person in a way. I think Saito is, like, far more sympathetic, actually. 21:31 Wes: They even repeat each other's lines at one point, like it's madness to escape. They both have that line right after 21:36 Erin: one after the other and they call each other crazy. 21:39 Wes: Yeah. 21:39 Erin: But I think Saito is actually a more like a Shears kind of character or like the Warden in terms of his background. You know, I think Nicholson being a professional military man makes him, by degrees, kind of more insane than Saito, who we see have a very touchingly vulnerable moment where he cries over the. The bridge being completed by the English, which is, by the. Just unrelated to anything. It's hilarious to me. And I looked it up and other people have pointed this out that the Japanese can't build just as good of a bridge as the English. What is going on here? They don't have good engineers. Give me a break. They probably have much better engineers than. 22:16 Wes: Well, this was one of the complaints about the film. 22:18 Erin: Oh, really? 22:19 Wes: People found it offensive, and, of course, it's untrue. A lot of this is fictionalized. There really is a real someone who corresponds to Nicholson and his wife. And that guy, of course, did try to sabotage the bridge. And they would have thought of it as treasonous collaboration to do anything other than try to do that. So, yeah, completely fictionalized by. I think it's the novelist. Right. That's based on a novel by Pierre Boulle, who wrote Planet of the Apes, another one of my favorites. 22:45 Erin: Oh, he did? Okay. I didn't realize he wrote both those. 22:47 Wes: Yeah. So anyway. Yeah, but you were saying that. 22:51 Erin: Yeah, there are sort of conflicting ideas of honor which, as I say, you know, run really parallel but also conflict. So I think the mere fact that Nicholson and his men end up at this camp is the first place where that sense of honor, which usually runs parallel, clashes. So I think that for Saito, anyone who ends up in his camp is inherently without honor. Right. Because they haven't died. 23:14 Wes: To surrender means to have lost your honor and to no longer be a soldier is what he says. Yeah. 23:19 Erin: And then there's this idea of the fact that if you fail at your work, then the cost of that is your own life. That honor and life are dependent upon each other. And I think that's true for Nicholson. You know, the Ways in which Nicholson carries that out, I think look very different. And one can even make the argument perhaps that Nicholson himself has committed a kind of ritual suicide of his own humanity to military service, you might say. Right. He's mentioned that he's been in the service now for 28 years and he's been home for like 10 months of that time. You know, he's essentially put to death, if you will, any kind of outside reality or identity. Whereas Saito maintains, I think, a certain amount of humanity, outside interests. Like we learned that he was educated in England, that he wanted to study art. You know, he's a much more interesting figure and a more well rounded personality, I think. 24:17 Wes: I'm thinking he's got something in common with Mrs. Robinson, actually. 24:23 Erin: That's right. 24:25 Wes: I can see him sitting on the bed, rolling up his stockings, smoking his cigarette. 24:31 Erin: He was quite a good looking. 24:32 Wes: I wanted to be an artist. Well, yeah. There's so much that's interesting in what you said. They're so alike and they both seem to be so honor driven. And yet there are some differences and it's kind of complicated to untangle those differences. I still haven't. I didn't fully do that. So, for instance, do you lose your honor by surrendering or are you maintaining your honor by obeying an order? Which is what Nicholson seems to be, you know, suggested. Right. You follow the law. I was ordered to surrender. I did that so I can't escape. But for Saito, it's a loss of honor to actually surrender. You know, you could see those as both honor driven but in different directions. And then one of the things about Saito is it seems like his honor is more right. You mentioned the role of hierarchy and by implication obedience for Nicholson, but it's there for Saito in a different way. He has to get the bridge done because otherwise he's going to be in big trouble. What he says to Nicholson is, do you know what I'm going to have to do if I don't get this done on time? Nicholson says, what? And he says, I'll have to commit seppuku. You know, I have to kill myself. And then Saito says, what would you do if you were me? And Nicholson says, basically, I suppose I'd have to kill myself in a very nonchalant way. And then that kind of more obedient conception of honor shows up in his conception of work. Right. As being busy and being obedient. Something like that. So there's what it means to be happy and your work is different for Saito than it is for Nicholson. For Nicholson, it seems to have something to do with pride and one's creation. And then also the other stuff that you were mentioning, this kind of larger civic pride and the order of the community. And for Saito, it seems to have more to do strictly with obedience and following orders and fitting into a hierarchy. And then this shifts because my interpretation of why Saito cried, and I could well be wrong about this, but we'll see. You can let me know. My interpretation was that he had been humiliated by the way Nicholson took over. So basically he had to essentially give in to Nicholson. He was defeated by Nicholson because it was more important to get the bridge built than to win his battle of wills with Nicholson. So he gives in and says, okay, your officers don't have to work. And then you see at the first meeting, Nicholson basically runs that meeting and says, hey, you guys put the bridge in the wrong place. So we got to change that. And this runs the whole meeting. It's like he's in charge. And I saw Saito as being humiliated by that. And so it goes from being, I got to get the bridge built on time or I have to kill myself to once the bridge gets built, I have to kill myself because this is really humiliating. And so you see him preparing for that, right? He does his calligraphy, he cuts off his ponytail. I'm sure there's a proper name for that. He puts the knife in his vest, he takes it out at one point on the bridge. You know, he's preparing to kill himself once this is all over. Doesn't get the chance, of course, because he is killed. Ultimately, I think for Saito, the loss of honor involves the loss of command, which is something he simply can't avoid because the project of building the bridge overshadows whatever power he has in the hierarchy. Whereas for Nicholson, the project of building the bridge is his power and is supposed to be the thing that frees him and his men from being slaves. I don't think I've really done much work in untangling the two different conceptions of honor at work there. Or if they are two different conceptions, maybe they're just sort of expressing themselves differently at different times. So let's pause to talk about our sponsors for this episode, starting with AG1 by Athletic Greens. AG1 is a powder with 75 high quality vitamins, minerals, whole food sourced superfoods, probiotics and adaptogens to help you start your day right. 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So for Nicholson, perhaps if he could see maybe a troop under Saito's command sort of go out fighting rather than obeying a surrender order, he would see that probably as madness, but also as a kind of a waste. I'm thinking about this in terms of something that Nicholson says about the men who escaped. He says, oh, three men dead and for what? So he's kind of implying that death is a waste. Yet he's also like willing to be shot by machine guns over the idea of not wanting his officers to work. And of course, the justification that Saito gives, which is actually kind of a good one. And as far as Geneva Convention or Geneva Code's violations go, having your officers do manual labor is pretty. Exactly. But Saito's justification for it is also good, which is related to this idea of waste, which is why should I feed people who don't pull their own weight in a POW camp? Why should I feed a bunch of officers who are sitting around doing nothing? Which, I don't know, I feel like that's a reasonable. I mean, I. Far be it from me to, you know, criticize Geneva Code, but I'm just 33:42 Wes: saying, yeah, they're lazy. They're mooching off the Japanese army. 33:48 Erin: Well, I mean, there's something to that, that limited resources in the middle of the jungle that, you know, you're not going to have these officers just sit around. So Nicholson, and he has that Great moment where the guns come out and he says to Saito, I'm warning you. It's like you're about to die. And he's still so arrogant. Like, he's warning him, like, what's going to happen. You know, it's only because of a plot intervention that he doesn't get shot. But anyway, it's just hilariously prideful. 34:11 Wes: There's almost a smugness to it. It's just. Oh, yeah, he's, like, infuriatingly stubborn, and 34:17 Erin: he's willing to let his. To be killed himself and to let his officers die on principle. But the idea of trying to escape when Shears has made it very plain that the odds of survival staying in the camp are worse than escaping. 34:32 Wes: And he also says you at least have to have the fantasy of escape or you go insane. 34:36 Erin: That's right. Which is another really important thing, because, you know, Nicholson seems to think that duty and just pure pride of being an excellent British specimen is enough to keep people alive. And I think Shears is far more astute about psychology, which is that the Union Jack can't keep you warm at night. I guess I can if you wrap yourself in it. But anyway. But the idea is that you have to have a life outside of that. You have to dream of an escape outside of that and see it as a possibility. You can't just be a perfect little worker drone and take pride out of that, though apparently Nicholson can. 35:13 Wes: Yeah, wrapping yourself in the Union Jack, metaphorically, figuratively, won't keep you warm. You would have to do it literally. But, yeah, it's interesting. What Nicholson does say about escape is that normally it would be an obligation. He just. He has an absurd rationalization. Right. It's actually an obligation to try to escape. That would be following the letter of the law. But then he introduces that absurd idea about how he's ordered to surrender. And that's when Shears confronts him with the. You intend to uphold the letter of the law despite the cost. And then Nicholson says, without the law, there would be no civilization. And Shears says, there is no civilization here. And Nicholson says, well, we have the opportunity to introduce it, so drop the subject of escape. It really is crazy. It's madness. The one element of truth and sanity there is just that it's indisputable that he takes a bunch of guys who are undisciplined and behaving in more of the Shears way, the kind of cynical way, you know, at the beginning of the movie, Shears is basically robbing the dead of possessions and using them to bribe Japanese soldiers to pretend to be sick to get out of work. Right. Speaking of the whole problem of work, Shears whole project is to evade work. And he's so serious about it that not only does he escape, you know, where the chances of survival are almost nil, but he has to go on this whole journey where it seems like he almost dies several times and then just gets really, really lucky in his pursuit, ultimately of a life of leisure and getting women and all that stuff. And then of course, it backfires. But the one bit of method in Nicholson's madness is just that if he can get his soldiers to work, then he can give them a kind of freedom. He can allow them to transcend their captivity. And he looks to Shears at that point and says, are you with me there, Commander? And Shears says, I hope they can remain soldiers, Colonel. As for me, I'm just a slave, a living slave. And Nicholson's response is kind of funny because he's like queer bird, even for an American. And then he stops himself and says he's been in isolation too long. 37:25 Erin: So you think that Nicholson's idea of work is good to a point, like in terms of a kind of work a day model. Right. It's suitably distracting, but can maybe only carry you so far because you need a sort of more long term project or something to be hopeful about, like the idea of escape or what have you. 37:44 Wes: What makes it madness to do a project like the Bridge? Why is that mad? On the one hand, it's because it's helping the Japanese, but on the other, it's because ultimately it is meaningless. It's going to be wiped out in some way or another. You know, if it's not wiped out by the war, it'll be wiped out by the ravages of time. In a thousand years, it'll be a different bridge. Right? So our work is not preserved ever. That's the mad thing. We do all these things to make our lives meaningful. You know, we want to be creative, we want to do everything else that makes life meaningful, love and all that stuff. But it's time will destroy all of it. So I think in a larger sense, all you can do is what Nicholson is doing, which is to ignore the fact that you're a captive of time and circumstance and the necessities of life. Right? That's the larger captivity in which we are all stuck. I think his worries about legacy are complicated. Right, because he thinks the bridge is going to. He puts the plaque up on the bridge. He thinks the bridge is going to be something that he and the soldiers can be remembered for. Which of course, as I'm saying in the long run is not actually true. We're stuck in the temporariness than the temporality of our creative activities. There's a really good interaction between him and Saito on the bridge. Where Saito is walking on the bridge, sees Nicholson leaning over the railing and then looks at the sky and sees the sun and says, beautiful. And he's referring to the way the sky looks. And then Nicholson says, yes, beautiful. A first rate job. I had no idea it would turn out so well. And then Saito just runs with that and says, yes, a beautiful creation. And then Nicholson says, I've been thinking tomorrow will be years to the day that I've been in the service 28 years in peace and war. I don't suppose I've been at home more than 10 months in all that time. Still, it's been a good life. I love India. I wouldn't have had it any other way. But there are times when suddenly you realize you're nearer the end than the beginning. You wonder, you ask yourself what the sum total of your life represents. What differences your being there at any time made to anything or if it made any difference at all, really, particularly in comparison with other men's careers. I don't know whether that kind of thinking is very healthy. But I must admit I've had some thoughts along those lines from time to time. But tonight, and then before he can say the positive part of it he interrupts himself and says, I gotta be off. I gotta get to some entertainment that the men are making for me. I love that scene because it says so much right from Nicholson misinterpreting Saito and bringing it all back to himself, to his struggling with the idea of whether the bridge is fulfilling the function that he wants it to fulfill, of making a difference by existing again, whether it's gonna leave him a legacy. And then the very telling part at the end, you know, where he cuts himself off and doesn't try to articulate the positive part of it because I think he's having trouble convincing himself of that. 41:03 Erin: So I love that scene too. I think that the other element of the long term implications of work besides legacy is the much more practical consideration, but also maybe nobler consideration of the fact that work is about supporting your family and your community. And, you know, there's this tension, which I think I've heard you speak on this before too, about the idea that you're working to support your family, but it also takes you away from your family and the ways in which being a soldier, like, especially in a foreign war, makes this really plain. And I'm thinking about how Nicholson seems to me, like, of necessity to be a man without a family. You know, I can't imagine him as being married or having children or anything like that and acting the way that he does, whereas it's very easy for me to. To imagine. And maybe he even talks about it. I know he talks about his parents, Saito, but it's very easy for me to imagine Saito having a family. And I think it's related to this idea of an impoverished form of or understanding of work. Whereas with Shears, I mean, there seems to be endless opportunities for Shears to get it on with people in the middle of the jungle, because that's what he's looking for. But it seems like the preoccupations of the soldiers in the scene that immediately follows the one that we're talking about, where the soldiers put on the show, it's about returning home to their girlfriends and their wives. And they're obsessed, of course, as a bunch of soldiers are cut off from women with pinup kind of images and 42:34 Wes: obsession, dressing in drag. 42:38 Erin: Right. And there's also, I think, other elements of family that are kind of expressed by that little performance. I mean, I think that also highlights the idea that these are just little boys playing at war. You know, you have the young Canadian soldier who can't kill the young Japanese soldier. Both of them look like little kids. And you have the Thai women who accompany them caring for them almost like their mothers. You know, I could think of the moment where one of them is putting on. I mean, it's like kind of half sexy, half. I mean, it's stupid. But when she's putting the mud on Shears body, like, he's not capable of putting on his own body paint anyway. But the men in Nicholson's command, when they put on the show, the end of that show, has that romantic scene that's, like, comic because the big tall guy is comically playing the woman and the smaller guy is the man. Yeah. And then in the end, the little guy, like, jumps into the bigger guy's arms and she carries him off. And so there's this idea of, like, the mothering bond that's kind of tied. That's like a mother kind of gesture, like carrying a baby or something. And Nicholson can, like, laugh at this and thinks it's funny and everything, but you get the sense that, like, he doesn't have these desires or something. Like he doesn't have a mother or a wife or. It seems like all of his desire is directed towards these stopgaps you know, of the daily distraction and building towards that legacy. Yeah. 43:59 Wes: Yeah. That's really good. He's so obsessed with this that he gives another speech. This is kind of the counterpart to the bridge speech that he gives to Saito. He takes another stab at those ideas right after that performance is over. I think I'll read some of this because I think this is another good one. You know, he says, I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say this has been an enjoyable evening. Most of you move on tomorrow to a new camp and new construction. It's a pity you won't be here to see the first practical use of the bridge. So that's a really interesting thing to say you know, since the practical use of the bridge will involve the enemy moving supplies in order to defeat the British and, you know, defeat the Allies, so. However, you'll be glad to know the completion of this link in the railway will enable us to transport the sick and the disabled to the new camp by train. Colonel Saito has kindly permitted me to stay behind with Major Clipton and the sick men and then we'll rejoin you in a few days time. Now that your work here is finished I suppose many of you feel somewhat let down. That is an amazing projection. Now, he's still wrestling with this idea of whether building the bridge has solved this problem. So I suppose many of you feel somewhat let down. That's quite understandable. It's a very natural reaction. But one day, in a week, a month, a year I wish I could do the Alec Guinness accent. I wish I could impersonate his voice here because it's so perfect for him. But one day, in a week, a month, a year or that day when, God willing, we all return to our homes again you're going to feel very proud of what you have achieved here in the face of great adversity. What you've done should be, and I think will be an example to all our countrymen, soldier and civilian alike. You have survived with honor, that and more. Here in the wilderness. You have turned defeat into victory. I congratulate you. Well done. You know, it's almost like Churchillian or something. A weird variation on that, of course, where they're gonna feel proud of the thing that's gonna help defeat the British. So it is, as I said before, I think it is madness but there's also. There's something to it. But then is there something to it that's sort of the letdown of having completed the project is the moment where you, you know, you go from being feeling proud to having a return to existential angst. That's what the show did for him, instead of making him think of love and family. Although he does mention that it leads him to ruminate, to further ruminate on whether the building of the bridge has helped him get over his career angst. 46:34 Erin: But it also maybe makes him uncomfortable and he has to return to the subject at hand because I think enjoyment is not something he's capable of. You know, he could laugh for a second, but then he has to get back to the. You know, he can't lose thread. Right? 46:48 Wes: His white whale. 46:50 Erin: That's right. 46:50 Wes: This pine bridge. You've spoken a bit about something that really didn't fully occur to me, which is the element of play and play acting and perhaps a connection to destructiveness. And I don't know that. I mean, we touched on it a little bit. Maybe there's more there to talk about. So there's Major Warden, the professor, and his love of explosives. 47:15 Erin: Once you work in a university, anyone would love explosives. Yeah. 47:19 Wes: Well, I was thinking. Yeah, there's something very academic about that. Right. It's like the. The critic. Right. Nicholson is the poet and he's the critic. So he's there to analyze the bridge and take it down. So very suitable to his position as professor. And also, it's something that's done and has to be done in the cover of night. Right. So he has to. It's like being down in the dusty cellar as a scholar poring over your 47:47 Erin: books or using a pseudonym in the paper when you destroy your enemy. 47:52 Wes: Exactly, exactly. So he's happy in his work in a way. I think I was trying to think about, well, who really is happy in their work in this movie? Is it Nicholson? Is it Warden? Warden, in a way, seems to be the most absorbed, kind of naturally, playfully absorbed. I was trying to make the connection to play here as well. So despite the comment about the critic, you could read this as there being something more flexible in true creativity, so tearing things down to start over or being willing to reorganize if something doesn't work. But anyway, that's just the kind of loose association I made to that. So I don't know if what he's doing is being the critic and the scholar or if what he's doing is inherent in its destructiveness. And inherently playful. But at the very least, that represents two more vectors for what it is that work means. 48:47 Erin: You know, being honest with myself, would I get more. Like, if I was in a situation in which I had no. No freedom to. To do anything else, would I take more interest in actually building something useful or in the work of sabotage? I think there's something that's, like, very difficult to sustain about destructive. Okay. The work of sabotage is, like, a destructive work, of course. Right. It's undermining. And, of course, like, you can't sustain that over a long period of time. Like, that's very, very difficult to do. I think that's why you need to have the active work of planning an escape to go along with the sabotaging of, like, the bridge construction, which one Nicholson is not willing to do. Therefore, he has to do something, like, active and creative, because otherwise the destructive element, the sabotage element, burns itself up and cancels itself out without that positive escape plan. So, like, thinking honestly about it, like, I would rather be involved in the work of, like, actually actively building a good bridge than in. For months and months and months putting up one thing and making sure that it's, like, built on sand so that in two days it'll collapse. So then you try it again. You know what I mean? So this destructive enterprise cannot be sustained over a long period of time. 50:09 Wes: Well, I think that's where Nicholson is right. 50:11 Erin: Right. 50:11 Wes: He's absolutely right. It is better for them individually. It's better for the men. It's better for the little social group that they have in that camp. It definitively improves morale and even the kind of characters of people. Right. Which have degenerated, and you can see they might naturally degenerate in captivity, especially if you're in the state of being sabotaging all the time. 50:34 Erin: I wanted to relate that to Warden, though, because I'm wondering if. Yeah. If there's a relation to this idea of captivity, not just in terms of, like, not having freedom, but sort of being limited in one's resources, you know, I guess for Warden, there's always another bridge to burn. You know, there's always something else to blow up. But I don't think that's an interesting enough. 50:56 Wes: Well, I think, you know. No, you're getting at something which I thought about, which I think is important, and I tried to give some thought to this as well, which is. So we've made a connection. Like, on first appearances. Warden actually seems quite absorbed in his work and quite delighted with it in a way, like playfully tossing Them, those explosives, shears. And with Nicholson, you get more of an obsession. And it's as if with Nicholson, it's more connected to pride, and with Warden, it's just more connected to the work, which is odd because it's so destructive. But you kind of have to combine all the different elements here, I think, to get a full picture of what work ought to be. So I think there's a place for all of these things, right? There's a place for Saito's conception of just being busy and being obedient to some higher order. There's a place for Nicholson's pride. There's a place for Warden's destructiveness and absorption and work. If you think of the destructiveness as having something to do with part of the larger process, you need the positive part, which is the Nicholson part. You need to be able to build things as well, but maybe you need to be able to destroy in the sense of rearrange and start over. And, you know, you need love and leisure as well, which is what Shears seems to be representing. And then there's the Clipton Principle as well, which we haven't mentioned. But the medical officer has his own conception of work, which is repair. It's to repair people, to help heal them. So I think if you put all those things together, you could get a fuller conception of work. But each one apart is obviously not enough. And what kind of war, in a way, has a function of severing all those different components and letting people get stuck in one or the other? But of course, we all do that anyway. We may have all of those things, but get stuck in one or another at a different time. I become obsessed with a project and I'm just driven to do it to the point where it's no longer absorbing or enjoyable. Or I get focused on the pride part. You know, is this gonna get me recognition? Is this, you know, gonna be career building? Something like that. So anyway. 53:08 Erin: And yet it seems as though the film is kind of arguing that Shears idea is the best idea, too. And I like the fact that you point out that his pursuit of leisure involves a lot of work. 53:18 Wes: You know, 53:21 Erin: so he's sort of a one man ecosystem according to the way that the film draws his schematics for how he's achieving this because he's able to enjoy his leisure, because it takes a lot of work to get it. And there's something satisfying for him in that. Anyway, you're making me think of. Because of the destructiveness, you know, I'm thinking about how there would have to be, like, a great plan for escape, like a great creative plan for escape in order to carry out the project of sabotage at the POW camp and still give the men something, like, positive to do. Which makes me think that, like, the perfect companion film to this is, of course, the Great Escape. You know, thinking about the parallels, actually, as you were talking was really fascinating to me because they are also, in a sense, building a bridge. The men in the Great Escape. It's a film I love. I don't know if you like that movie too, but. 54:08 Wes: Yeah, yeah. 54:09 Erin: And the kind of destructiveness of the fact that, like, in the end, you know, spoiler alert. Like, pretty much everybody dies trying to do this is interesting, too. And they kind of know that they're going to die. But the ways in which that work of escape brings everyone together is kind of like that's sort of the ideal of what you can do in a POW camp that is creative and also not aiding and abetting the enemy, but the tunnel under the ground, too. It is kind of like a perfect mirror image of this bridge over the ground that's going to give passage to the Japanese soldiers versus the sort of, like photographic negative image of that. Just interesting. 54:47 Wes: Okay, is that a good place to end it? 54:50 Erin: I think so, maybe. 54:51 Wes: All right, we'll say a little bit more about the movie and our postscript, but yeah. 54:58 Erin: Thank you, thank you, 55:09 Wes: [email protected] subtext Also, this podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. airwavemedia.com AirwaveMedia.com.