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Film · Columbia · 1957

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The Bridge on the River Kwai

64Watch it awake.

The largest American gross of 1957, and a best picture. The pride is the tragedy, not the bridge.

The review

The largest American gross of 1957, and the picture that won the year. A British colonel in a prison camp refuses to let his officers do manual work, takes the punishment, and then agrees to build the bridge properly so that British work will outlast the humiliation. The bridge is beautiful. It is also the enemy's railway. An American captive and a commando team are coming to blow it up. The colonel cannot stand the thought.

Competence is not innocence. That is the sentence, and the film waits a long time to say it because the colonel is admirable on the way there. I would watch it with anyone old enough to hold both facts: the courage was real, and the bridge was still a help to the wrong side. Do not come away whistling as if the whistle were a victory. Ask what you are currently building that you have not asked the purpose of.

Journal

Keep The Bridge on the River Kwai in the record.

No house has filed a sentence for this yet.

Live Historic number 64. Yours can differ.

The glance

Household and Piety are the thin ones.

Is a marriage, a parent, or a child a real life here, or just a prop?

This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.

Consider this

Saving Private Ryan

75 instead of 64

Saving Private Ryan is still a war film, and it scores 75 instead of 64. What you gain is household: The errand is a mother's remaining son.

The eight

9
Industry
He builds the bridge as a craft, and the craft is exactly the problem.
3
Household
The camp is not a household. The men are a unit he will spend to keep his idea of order.
4
Piety
Duty has replaced conscience, and he cannot hear the difference until the end.
8
Courage
He defies the commandant and takes a beating. The courage is real and then it curdles.
7
Republic
Soldiers owe the war a judgment, not a monument that helps the enemy's railway.
5
Temperance
The obsession is patient, which makes it look like discipline.
9
Truth
A well-built bridge can be a betrayal. The film says so in the last minutes and means it.
6
Stewardship
What you keep is the question of what your competence is serving.

Where to watch

Finding the page.

Live Historic · The Bridge on the River Kwai · 64IMDb tt0050212

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Film · Universal · 2019

Pass it on

1917

64Watch it awake.

A message carried through a broken country. The courage is not the camera. The courage is the errand.

The review

Schofield is not chosen because he is special. He is chosen because he can run and because he has a brother in the line, which is a questionable reason for a general to use and an understandable one for a soldier to accept. The film's gamble is to stay with the body that has to cross the ground. When it becomes a stunt, it thins. When it stays an errand, it is about duty under a command that is not always worthy of the men.

Older teenagers and adults. Do not let the technique be the conversation. The conversation is a piece of paper that can save lives if a tired man will keep walking. Most of moral life is closer to that than to a speech.