Review: The Film, M*A*S*H…

It’s hard to watch a fifty-year-old film through a fifty-year-old critical lens. I know I can’t, especially since I’ve been studying Critical Theory lately. I see it, and consider it, from both my present artistic point of view and my humanist one.

And I’m glad I’ve seen M*A*S*H (1970) before—and enjoyed it before—because if this were the first time I had viewed it, my opinion would be quite different. I’d have unapologetically hated it outright. 

With that in mind, the movie has things to offer, especially thanks to director Robert Altman (Nashville). Somehow, he’s transformed overlapping dialogue—a chaotic device, for certain—into an art form. The interactions between Colonel Henry Blake (Roger Bowen, What About Bob?) and Corporal “Radar” O’Reilly (Gary Burghoff, Burke’s Law) are simply captivating, especially when the colonel issues orders and Radar echoes them before he even finishes speaking.

Altman also has an anti-establishment streak. The film’s premise follows rebellious, anti-authoritarian surgeons (Donald Sutherland, Ordinary People, and Elliott Gould, The Long Goodbye) who deal with the brutal realities of war by engaging in irreverent yet quite cruel pranks, heavy drinking, and chasing after women. The director employs a large ensemble cast, another one of his mainstays. The performances by Sutherland and Gould are considered among their career bests. 

Despite the film’s singular lack of a cohesive plot, it elevates dark political satire by reimagining war films, reinventing the “dramedy genre” by contrasting scenes in a bloody operating room with slapstick comedy and lewd jokes, and purports anti-establishment yet wholly professional protagonists. Would there have been a Gregory House without these two? That’s anybody’s guess.  

But these are the good aspects of the film. Here comes my real critiques. 

The film engenders ingrained misogyny. Women are mostly shown as nurses and are depicted as handmaidens, sexual targets, or victims of harsh pranks by the male surgeons, who are celebrated as the rebellious heroes. Sally Kellerman’s (Difficult People) portrayal of Major Margaret “Hot Lips” O’Houlihan is trapped within a chauvinistic system–even her nickname originates from a cruel, sexist prank. As a hard-line army officer, she tries to achieve agency, but ultimately winds up acquiescing to the U.S. military’s inherent patriarchy–she winds up a sexual partner of one of the offending surgeons. What does this say about women in general? And men? And how they should all behave?

It’s no wonder that the film is highly polarizing today. Although framed as coping mechanisms to the horrors of war, the pranks that Pierce (Sutherland) and McIntyre (Gould) play on others go far beyond brutal hazing. As a result of one of these pranks, Major Frank Burns (Robert Duvall, The Godfather) winds up discharged from the army for mental health reasons–they literally drove him crazy. As a victim of hazing from my youth, this really affected me, and not in a good way. 

Racism is condoned, if not wholly accepted, in this film as well. Two minority characters, Dr. Oliver “Spearchucker” Jones (Black Caesar), the surgeon called to the 4077th M*A*S*H unit only for his prowess as an athlete, and Ho-Jon (Kim Attwood, this being his only film), a Korean boy who serves the surgeons by doing menial tasks and making martinis for them, symbolize the marginalization of minorities here. To note, this film was made sixteen years after the emergence of the American Civil Rights era, specifically the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision (1954). You would think that Hollywood would have behaved better at this point. 

Even though this movie takes place during the Korean War (1950-1953) and before the historic Brown vs. Board of Education case, and considering that the roles of men and women hadn't been challenged or changed yet, I still find it all troubling. Again, not only can I not view this film through a 1970 lens, I surely cannot consider it with a 1950s one. The negatives outweigh the positives for me in M*A*S*H, and I’ll not concede that. 

As of now, I’m unsure if I can recommend this film, especially to viewers and friends younger than me, for fear of them considering me some sort of latent fascist. So I won’t.