Catch-22 [DVD]

If you’ve been wanting to see Alan Arkin’s bare butt then this movie for you. It’s among the many funny-yet-unwelcome sights in Joseph Heller’s classic novel come to the screen. A decade after “Psycho” and Anthony Perkins is the clergyman and sanest individual in the squadron. That gives us an indication of what we’re in for. There’s even a mysterious stabbing by someone not identified (Mother? Is that you?). Martin Balsam, one of Mother’s victims in “Psycho,” survives this film in grand fashion. His line about keeping a contract is one of cinema’s most memorable. Buck Henry wrote the screenplay and plays the unforgettable sidekick to Balsam’s character. For a 2022 meditation see the Art Garfunkel discussion scene about the downfall of America. Orson Welles and Bob Newhart have smaller parts than usual but really there are no small parts in this movie. Everything is over-the-top satire amid haunting sadness. Vicious mockery matches the viciousness of war and bureaucracy. It’ll exhaust you emotionally but eventually you'll be glad you watched.

Joseph Heller’s book, “Catch -22” has joined other book titles, like “A Bridge Too Far,” “The Perfect Storm,” and even “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” as an essential cultural reference point and a useful metaphor that can explain more contemporary situations. I had never seen the movie before; I had read the book…a long time ago. I checked my listing of books read and realized, fittingly enough, that I had read Heller’s classic, when I was in the Army, in Vietnam. Furthermore, the very next book read was another classic, but a more conventional military history, “Hell in a Very Small Place – The Siege of Dien Binh Phu.” What a juxtaposition. Which book more truly conveyed the “truth” of the military experience?After half a century, I retained mainly two scenarios from Heller’s novel. There is the issue that the title references: In order to get out of the military for being crazy, you have to request a discharge, but the very act of requesting it proves you are not crazy. Voila. You can never get out. The other was form over substance. The general demanded that that aerial photographs showed a “tight bombing pattern.” It did not matter if you really hit the target.The movie was released in 1970, the year after I read the novel. Mike Nichols was the director. Yes, a cliché, “a star-studded cast,” but so it was. Alan Arkin played the protagonist, Captain John Yossarian. There is also Art Garfunkel, Bob Newhart, Anthony Perkins, Jon Voight in a memorable performance as Lt. Milo Minderbender, who is the quintessential wheeler-dealer, Martin Balsam is impressive as Col. Cathcart, and even Orson Wells plays a key role as General Driddle.The movie brought back to mind numerous other aspects of the novel that I had forgotten, aspects of war that are completely omitted or only lightly covered in more traditional histories, such as Fall’s account of the French disaster. For example, there is all that “fetish” about medals, Napoleon’s “hochets,” which is traditionally translated as “bobbles,” something you would give a baby to distract them. And thus the movie line from Col. Cathcart: “Don’t you want more oak leaf clusters on your air medal…” Ah, motivation. In another scene they award medals for bombing the ocean, the “logic of war” meant that no one could back down when it was obviously a farce. There is the doctor who “earns his flight pay” by being on the manifest of the flight. When the plane crashes, a guy is mourning him, because the documents indicate he was on the plane, even though the doctor is standing right next to him. The written document trumps reality. In another scene, one of the pilots is determine to kill Col. Cathcart, “before he kills us all.” The pilot proclaims: “the first sane thing I have ever done.” He does not use the “coin of the realm” in Vietnam: “fragging.” “Cheap available” women, with hunger being an all-important impetus was depicted well by Nichols, and a daily reality in Vietnam.Milo (Jon Voight) deserves his own paragraph. He is the quintessential wheeler-dealer, trading the silk in Yossarian’s parachute for Egyptian cotton, while providing Yossarian one share in “MM Enterprises” as a substitute to jump with. Real war? From the classic Vietnam War documentary, “Hearts and Minds” there is the scene of a Vietnamese wheeler-dealer at his desk in Saigon proclaiming: “I am a Johnny-come-lately to war profiteering… peace is coming, whether we like it or not.” In another documentary, one interviewee proclaimed that even a helicopter could be bought off the black market in Saigon. But isn’t the scene where Milo arranges for the American Airforce to bomb its own base, in a contractual obligation with the Germans, who will buy the Egyptian cotton, just too “over-the-top”? One might think so, yet it has recently been confirmed, via recently un-earthed documents, the historical allegations that Richard Nixon had taken steps to “throw a monkey wrench” in the Paris peace talks with the Vietnamese, in order to prolong the war until after the election, because if the peace talks were successful, his political opponent, Humbert Humphrey might win the election.Life imitating art, and I would have the opportunity to read the art while experiencing the real-life prolongation of that war. Heller got it right, and even the slap-stick aspects of Nichols’ movie were more right than wrong. 5-stars.

Catch 22 was based upon the novel of the same name by Joseph Heller. It takes place in the Mediterranean during World War II and was meant to show the absurdity of war.The main character is Captain John Yossarian (Alan Arkin) who is fed up. His commanding officer Colonel Cathcart (Martin Balsam) is ordering more and more missions. Yossarian wants a way out. The physician of the unit describes the Catch-22 of his situation. He can’t claim he’s crazy to get out of missions because that would mean that he’s sane, and if he’s sane that means he has to fly. Yossarian isn’t the only one tired of the fight and they deal with it in a number of absurd ways. That’s the gist of the movie, how these airmen deal with the situation that they can’t escape.To get the feel of the movie Colonel Cathcart is talking to Lt. Milo Mindebinder (Jon Voight) about getting eggs for the unit by trading with the enemy and others. That includes taking all the parachutes of the unit for their silk to be used in the deal. While they’re talking a plane crashes and burns. Neither Cathcart nor Mindbinder pay any attention. At other times the film becomes surreal such as when Yossarian is in a fantasy sequence trying to apply first aid to a gunner in his plane who is wounded and then sees a naked woman asking him to come over in a lake, but he ends up drowning trying to swim to her.The movie is funny and quirky. Many times the dialogue is a play on words and reminds one of a Marx Brothers’ routine. It is extremely anti-war, and well worth watching.C

Watch this after you read Mike Nichols biography. The movie has a great cast and story, is immensely entertaining, is sardonically funny, and provides a marvelous take on war and all its absurdities. I would see it again in a heartbeat.

Terrific, crazy, cynical observation on the futility and absurdity of war. Full of worthy stars and great central character. A thought provoking film derived from an implausible book on the madness of war. Well worth a viewing in my opinion!

One of those iconic 60's/70's films that plays with your mind. Poor Yosarian, stuck in a crazy world that locks him in a desperate situation. Not everyone was happy to go to war. No heroics. A grafting/skimming/scheming young John Voight, arrogant unfeeling commanders, a beautiful mix of personalities. Another classic film from an era of strange and wonderful movies made during and shortly after the wild sixties. I want out of this-but that means you're sane. You'd be mad to continue but you must. But that's crazy. But that's CATCH-22

You can't love it or hate it unless you watch it.If you hate it, you already bought it.If you love it, you have to tell other people and they will watch it and hate it.It's Marmite in celluloid.It has Art Garfunkel getting blown up in it though. (spoilers? Major major spoilers?)

First time round I just didn't get it. Second time around it clicked. So many elements of comedy wrapped up in a superbly directed film. 50 years on from the original release it still carries. Laugh without prejudice.

This is such a classic and if you haven't seen it by now you haven't lived! Alan Arkin is superlatively deadpan and irresistibly funny. The supporting cast are all first rate and it's the kind of film you can revisit year after year and still find something else that you missed or that you wanted to see again.