Review of M*A*S*H (1970) by Halfwelshman — 15 Jan 2012

MASH delivers in the same ways all the truly great New Hollywood films do. It challenges both traditional Hollywood filmmaking (through unconventional titles and end credits, over-lapping dialogue and ad-libbing) and American government policy of the late 1960s (though the film is set in the Korean War, the subtext is clearly about the far more contemporary and relevant Vietnam conflict) Genre-smashing maverick Robert Altman directs, and he and writer Ring Lardner Jr put an interesting spin on the war film by including a liberal dose of black humour and satire.

The MASH camp is presented like a highschool, with all the archetypal characters associated with that location - you've got the by-the book senior students (Robert Duvall's Major Frank Burns and Sally Kellerman's Major "Hot Lips" Houlihan), the jocks (Donald Sutherland's Captain "Hawkeye" Pierce, Elliott Gould's Captain "Trapper John" McIntyre and Tom Skerritt's Captain "Duke" Forrest), the nerds (Rene Auberjonois' Father "Dago Red" Mulcahy, John Schuck's dentist Captain "Painless" Waldowski, Gary Burghoff's Corporal "Radar" O'Reilly) and even an incompetent principal (Roger Bowen's Lt.

Colonel Blake). The screenplay quite rightly won an Academy Award, and all the dialogue has a very naturalistic, believable feel. It's probably worth re-watching the film a few times to pick up on all the jokes - there are so many brilliant throw-away one-liners that are lost in amongst the overlapping dialogue.

That's MASH's crowning achievement really - yes, it's intellectual, political and extremely well made and performed, but above all else it's side-splittingly funny. The film works on multiple levels, but works the best as an extremely black comedy that is as hard hitting now as it was in 1970.