OVP: MASH (1970)

Film: MASH (1970)
Stars: Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, Tom Skerritt, Sally Kellerman, Robert Duvall, Roger Bowen
Director: Robert Altman
Oscar History: 5 nominations/1 win (Picture, Director, Supporting Actress-Sally Kellerman, Editing, Adapted Screenplay*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Seeing a classic for the first time is something that is a sight to behold, and quite frankly something I don't get to do very often anymore, particularly if I know in advance it's already a classic.  Most of the classics I've actually had a chance to catch by now in my movie-watching.  In fact, looking at the famed AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list, I only have four movies left to see (all of which we'll have reviewed here before the year is up).  So I went into MASH (or M*A*S*H, if you so choose) with a bit of nervous anticipation.  Would I love it?  Would my expectations be too high?  Would it be one of those movies that I gush on and on about or would it be a film that I simply relegate to the "it was okay" pile of the cinematic conversation?  Let's find out, shall we?

(Spoilers Ahead) The thing I think that first threw me about the film, after tangential relationships with the hit show starring Alan Alda (I've seen a couple of episodes, but not enough to know anything other than Hawkeye, Radar, and Hot Lips' character names), was that the film felt grimier than I was expecting.  Perhaps forgetting that it was the 1970's and was filmed by Robert Altman, I was expecting something a bit glossier, a bit more in line with TV Land and not with an independent film channel.  The film gains from this, though.  Unlike other major war films of the era (The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now), we don't necessarily get a look at the realism of the war, but MASH is hardly supposed to be realistic-it's a farce of sorts, a comedy that isn't mocking previous films (like, say, Spy) but is simply going for straight laughs in its own Altman-esque world.

The film is by Altman and has to be called classic for at least a reason, so I am not going to sit here and tell you there aren't a few redeeming qualities to the movie.  The Altman-flow of the script, with actors talking over each other and in different directions is always jarring at first, and blissful when you see it working so well (Nashville is forever my favorite example of this, but none of his films have that much trouble achieving it).  The film is filled with characters, most of them memorable.  If a film is going to have a long shelf-list of actors, it's nice to know that they managed to create interesting side avenues with people like Robert Duvall's Frank Burns having tons of depth and interesting nuance.  The film rarely stops having a sterling script, even if some of the subplots border onto the offensive.

That's probably where my biggest issue with the movie lies.  It's finely written and directed, this is true, but the movie itself celebrates the jackassery of Hawkeye (Sutherland) and Trapper John (Gould) a little too much for my liking, particularly at the expense of the main female character Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan (Kellerman).  The film constantly wants to take Hot Lips down a peg for no real reason other than her gender, not only by giving her the nickname after a romantic dalliance with Duvall's Frank Burns is broadcast over the camp, but by consistently objectifying her, eventually watching her reduced to a faux shower stunt (where she is exposed naked for the entire camp to see) and to being a bouncy, idiotic cheerleader at a football game.  Honestly, the performance isn't helped by Kellerman, who plays Hot Lips as shrill and both uptight and randomly horny without any explanation for either, but she didn't get much to go by.  It's weird that this performance was cited for an Oscar nomination over anyone else in the film-perhaps it was the nudity (which was a pervy reason for the Academy, but not the first time they had done such a thing).

The sexism and the complete lack of empathy toward the main characters causes a disinterest as the film progresses, something that no amount of fine direction and writing is going to fix.  You need to care about the main characters, and I found nothing to like or really even hate in the main protagonists, so in the end it becomes something like a series of stunts, and the gravity of Hawkeye leaving loses all of its meaning in the final scene.

So while I see why this is regarded as a good film, a classic is a big stretch.  The film has aged miserably, and the writing/directing has been on display in far better pictures that Altman has made like Nashville and McCabe and Mrs. Miller.  These were my thoughts at least-I suspect a number of you have seen this iconic movie-what were yours?