Stage and Screen (October 1971)

Johnny Got His Gun

Johnny Got His Gun. A shockingly realistic portrait of a war victim who has lost his arms, legs, and face. Tough to sit through, but worth it in the end. From the novel by Dalton Trumbo, with Timothy Bottoms, Jason Robards, Donald Sutherland, and a fine cast.

To dismiss Johnny as just another anti-war movie would do a disservice to this excellent film.

Catch-22 and MAS*H, stunning as they are in their narrow realms, fade beside the fierce honesty of Dalton Trumbo’s creation. The hero, a rather ordinary young man at best, enters the wartime army sporting a vague desire to serve his country. During a skirmish his foxhole is blown up by the enemy, and when he awakens in a hospital he cannot move, hear, or see. The horrible realization that he is now a “piece of meat”, with only his trunk left intact, comes to him gradually — as he feels the stitches being snipped from his shoulders, as he senses the wet at the edges of what was once his face.

Official army policy is to keep him locked in an airless closet with no stimulation, separate from any contact except with those who are unwillingly required to meet his needs. Only when one sympathetic nurse, acting against orders, comprehends the depths of his hopelessness is he allowed sunlight and the privilege of communication. Reaching out, he learns to “speak” by beating his head against a pillow in Morse code. But the army, preferring to subjugate him like an animal, rejects his triumph by shutting him up again in a dark cell. He cannot even demand his own death, the one thing he ardently desires.

No doubt, Johnny is a sentimental film, as it depicts through fantasy and flashbacks the hero’s close attachments to his family, his girl, and his beloved nurse. Yet we must feel sentimental if we are not to despair totally. There is hardly a moment when we are not bombarded by feelings of dread, pity, or anger, and we are skillfully induced to sympathize with all of his anguish. We are made to understand what it must be like to be alive and thinking — thinking constantly — though listed as officially dead; to be without a name because you cannot identify yourself; to be forever unrecognizable; to have family and friends far away who will never know that you still exist. We cannot help but share the soldier’s joy at being able to speak and his misery at being separated from the only person who has cared for his mutilated body.

Timothy Bottoms gives a convincing performance as the young man, with Jason Robards scoring as his tough-tender father. You must also see Donald Sutherland as the self-doubting Christ who haunts the cripple’s fantasies.

Johnny Got His Gun may well cause you a few sleepless nights, but it is a must for any anti-war libertarian. You will remember it for the rest of your life.

* * *

The Devils

The Devils. A horror movie that poses as a film of significance. A hunchbacked nun who would like to get her hands on a sexy priest sets off a chain of events leading to general hysteria. Directed by Ken Russell, with

Oliver Reed, Vanessa Redgrave, and the entire East Wing of the Royal Institute for the Insane.

This one may also cause you some restless hours, but it has less justification. The film distantly resembles the John Whiting play on which it is supposedly based. The play is well-constructed, spectacular, and engrossing, and its producing history has been undeservedly spare. It fared well in the original Royal Shakespeare Company staging (in which Diana Rigg had a featured role).

Russell’s film dredges up and dwells on all the less attractive aspects of Whiting’s play. The Devils makes even Marat/Sade look light and playful. Common medieval tortures are graphically portrayed, and sex is presented as abhorrent and depraved. If you are at all squeamish this film is not for you. Perhaps with some effort you may be able to laugh at the unrelieved misery of the characters, but most likely it will turn your stomach.

This result is unfortunate for two reasons: first, Ken Russell has shown so much promise as a director in his earlier films (particularly Women in Love, one of the most literate films in recent years) that it is downright sickening to see him operating at such a level. Perhaps The Music Lovers, which I have not yet seen, represents a link between his earlier and current approaches to film. At any rate, because he relies on disgust rather than plot for his effect in The Devils, he seems to be rejecting his own filmic strengths in favour of his weaknesses.

The second reason is that, buried beneath the sludge so characteristic of this film, is an honest-to-goodness libertarian plot — one that never attains stature due to the director’s pre-occupation with sub-plots. Father Grandier, portrayed with much physical assurance by Oliver Reed, wants to keep his own town of Loudon out of the grasp of the insane king, who gets his thrills from dressing Huguenots in bird feathers and gunning them down. Grandier walls in the town but cannot resist the onslaught of federal power, and the walls come down as he burns at the stake.

The performances are good, but who wants to sit through this whole movie to watch them? The movie’s sense of life is apparent in that the weakest episodes are those representing sanity (i.e. Grandier’s interludes with his wife). Surely no one need put himself through this kind of trauma for so meagre a reward.

* * *

Millhouse

Millhouse. By Emile de Antonio, who is also known for Point of Order, about the McCarthy hearings of the ’50’s. A very funny “documentary” on the career of Our Leader, and a real gem for anyone who still thinks Nixon’s The One.

Don’t miss Millhouse when it plays near you. Like all good films, it has an unflinching point of view, and in this case the point is directed squarely at Richard Nixon. The funniest events in his career are presented with much relish: De Antonio has found just the right newsreels, tapes, and stills to show Nixon at his most ridiculous. And the irony of the film is that those absurd and freaky moments which he has captured are also those in which Nixon is at his political best. The famous Checkers clip, with Pat staring admiringly at her hero throughout like a patient lapdog, is actually a classic example of psychological persuasion. Contrary to the claims of his political adversaries, Nixon is one of our most effective political plotters, as he has shown on occasion after occasion. The fact that so many of us could have followed him trustingly in ’68, against all caution, attests to this.

And so Millhouse will find a warm spot in many libertarian hearts. We can both laugh at it and be wary of what it shows at the same time, for De Antonio does not ignore the implications of Nixon:ism. As an art work it is less compelling than as a political tract. It lacks cohesiveness, the early sections about the Great Pumpkin Conspiracy and young Dick being more interesting than the later, more diffuse clips of the ripened Nixon. As a whole, though, it is worth the price of admission and even more.

* * *

Drive, He Said

Drive, He Said. This month’s With-It, Right-On, Now Flick, directed by Jack Nicholson. With an unrememberable cast.

I will swear that this movie has a plot, though it is buried under layers of suffocating Relevance. To sum up what goes on, a college basketball player decides he’s in love with the wife of a boring but sincere friend. He pursues her. She isn’t sure if she really cares for him; most probably she doesn’t like anyone much. The athlete’s longhaired, neurotic roommate goes progressively bananas, finally ripping off his clothes and invading the bio lab — not to blow up the university, but to let all the animals out of their cages (for some reason or another). He also attacks his roommate’s girlfriend, convincing her to leave town.

Like too many other current films, Drive substitutes hysteria for a well-conceived dramatic ending. Furthermore, it is plagued by mediocre performances. The athlete goes through the entire film with his eyes unfocused, and no one else is sufficiently appealing to enlist the sympathy of the viewer. Drive does not have much connexion with reality, and it need not be taken too seriously either as social comment or as artistic endeavor.

Honey Mead has been a guerilla fighter, war reporter, professional subverter, and spare-time nuclear physicist. She is currently finding satisfaction as a wife and mother in Lanham, Maryland.