M*A*S*H and A Very Long Engagement: Life During Wartime

The films M*A*S*H and A Very Long Engagement, despite having similar subject matter, are on the surface two wholly different films. A Very Long Engagement is a lush, melodramatic portrait of love enduring through the first World War. M*A*S*H, on the other hand, is a callous, cynical depiction of a mobile army hospital in Korea, filled with Robert Altman’s “smart-ass tendencies.”3 Though Jean Pierre Jeunet and Robert Altman employ wholly different strategies, they come to surprisingly similar conclusions about the horrors of war and the way humans cope with those horrors.

A Very Long Engagement displays its views on war most clearly through its use of color. The World War I of the film is a drab, grey affair that is “almost closer to black and white than color.”1 This lifeless palette serves to display the feeling of suffering and death present in the trenches. Beyond simple black and white, Jeunet strived for a certain color “between green and yellow” to make the mud particularly “wet and disgusting”1. This color palette’s effectiveness is doubled because of the other color palette used in the film. The post and pre-war sequences are richly lit, with a golden tone that makes everything feel warm and idyllic. The contrast between these warm scenes, meant to represent life without war, and the utter cold of life during wartime serves to make the war even more dreadful.

Jeunet also employed a unique style of composition for the film, in which he “tried to avoid imagination, [and] use only references,”1 taking many of his shots directly from photographs of the period. Two examples he points out are the broken Christ figure at the beginning of the film, and the corpse hanging from the tree later on. This brings to the film a real sense of authenticity, and a sense that Jeunet is not simply devising by himself the horrors we witness throughout the film: indeed, these events did occur. Finally, Jeunet employed one more unique stylistic technique: using “only short lenses”1. This allows the camera to focus not only on the character, but “see everything behind the character”1. Jeunet uses this deep focus to show every aspect of the trenches: no horrifying detail is spared, further reinforcing the idea of war as terrible.

The effects of war in A Very Long Engagement are not seen only from a visual perspective. The effect of the war psychologically is displayed most clearly in the character Mathidle, played by Audrey Tautou. Mathidle deals with her grief by clinging to the remote possibility that her fiancé, who was sent off to war years ago, is still alive, and moreover, actively searching for him, even after his gravesite is found. She also plays games of faith with herself, telling herself, “if the dog walks in before supper, Manech is still alive.” This way of dealing with her loss is discouraged by her friends and family as being generally unhealthy until they too get wrapped up in the detective story that Mathidle unravels, and it is perhaps only because the film is a classic melodrama that Manech does survive. This notion, that people cope with war by distracting themselves because the real truth is too terrible to bear, will come into play in a big way in M*A*S*H.

M*A*S*H, one of Robert Altman’s few commercial successes, makes no attempt to follow a traditional dramatic structure in the way A Very Long Engagement does. Despite that, or perhaps because it is free of traditional storytelling restraints, M*A*S*H is able to display a significant view on war. One of the methods Altman uses to reveal his thoughts on war is the use of the “omnipresent”3 loudspeaker in the camp. Though the speaker initially broadcasts fairly standard messages, it soon delves into more “humorous pronouncements”3, such as calls to return stolen amphetamines and a warning that marijuana has been found to be a dangerous drug. This also serves to point out how many (including, we assume, our heroes, since they, as doctors, would have access) turn to drug use to distract themselves from the horror of war. This sentiment is also present in our heroes’ obsession with a good martini, going so far as to carry a jar of olives all the way to the front lines.

Altman does not use the loudspeaker only to point out the rampant drug use in the camp, however. In other scenes, the speaker announces upcoming films. Inevitably, they are all war films, specifically, “all real war movies about World War II.”3 These announcements come with silly ad-copy for this films, like “a story so big only the biggest screens can bring it to you,” all read in a flat, monotone expression. The humor of these pronouncements, which make serious war films sound ridiculous, serves to make war itself sound ridiculous. The fact that these propagandistic films are being shown to those experiencing the real horror on the front lines piles the irony even higher.

The firmest opposition to the concept of the military (and by association, war) comes from M*A*S*H’s main characters, specifically, Hawkeye and Trapper John. By constantly and consistently making a mockery of the “rigid military establishment”2, they clearly signal their disdain for all things war. Their humor in dire circumstances also serves to keep them sane in what they consider an insane situation. This penance for humor shows itself from the very beginning of the film onward. When Hawkeye first arrives, he is mistaken for a jeep driver. Instead of correcting the mistake, he “[senses] the potential humor” and “throws himself into the role of chauffeur”2. Here, Hawkeye shows utter disdain for his rank and role in the military, just as soon opting for the rank of chauffeur as captain. Later, when Hawkeye and Trapper John are in Japan, they scam, cheat, and “constantly outwit”2 those running the hospital, again showing blatant disregard for rank or duty.

However, Hawkeye and Trapper John do care about their job: saving lives. Hawkeye’s sincerity about good medical work is evident when he complains to Hot Lips about Frank Burns’ lack of skill. Though he dislikes the man personally, he takes even greater offense to Burns being a danger to wounded men. The scenes in which Hawkeye and company are shown operating display both their conviction and the way in which they cope with their insane surroundings. Altman makes the repulsiveness of the situation clear by having “veins pop and guts flow”2 in a fairly gruesome fashion. Among this gore, Hawkeye and co. joke endlessly, flirting with nurses and singing choruses in unison. This coping device is given full approval by Altman: his heroes joke and survive, while those who practice deadly seriousness, like Major Burns, are hauled off in strait jackets.

The ways in which A Very Long Engagement and M*A*S*H differ are numerous. One of the most significant is structure. A Very Long Engagement follows typical dramatic structure: though noteworthy for its flashbacks, which blend war and peace, the film features rising action, a climax, and so on. M*A*S*H is set up differently. Instead of one two-hour story, the film is simply a series of non-related events that happen over the course of some undefined time in the camp. Traditional form is thrown out the window: the main characters do not fundamentally change in any way, nor face any daunting task. Beginning, middle, and end are barely relevant; only the action of Hawkeye arriving and leaving serve to tack bookends to the film.

Another major difference between the two films is tone. A Very Long Engagement is highly melodramatic, with sweeping strings and emotional close-ups. This is especially true in the love scenes between Manech and Mathilde. Though the film does not romanticize war, it is otherwise highly romantic, especially with the idea of searching for a loved one who is almost certainly dead. M*A*S*H, on the other hand, seems to take a much more callous view of human behavior. Romance, in the traditional sense, does not exist. “Painless” Waldowski, for example, cheats on the three women he has at home by sleeping with Lt. Dish, who is betraying her husband by doing so. Even Burns, who is married and professes to be deeply religious, sleeps with O’Houlihan. Certainly, none of the characters in M*A*S*H would wait three years hoping for the love of their life to return from the dead.

What is amazing, then, despite all these differences, is how similar a view both films take on war. First, of note, is the wars in which they are set. Both World War I and the Korean War (or Vietnam, depending on whether you decide to take M*A*S*H literally or figuratively) are not heroic struggles on the scale of World War II. Rather, they are regarded as pure wastes of human life. While the soldiers in Saving Private Ryan may be heroes, the soldiers we are presented with in these films have no illusions of heroism. We see men mutilate themselves to go home in A Very Long Engagement: obviously, they are more concerned with themselves than their country. Another telling moment occurs in the same film when the trench leader yells, “For France!” and receives utter silence from his men in return.

The most obvious connection these two films have to each other is that they are explicitly anti-war. In fact, put together, they serve to show the effects of war on a multitude of different people: those fighting the battles, their loved ones who hope for a safe return, and those who treat the wounded, who, we assume as we watch Hawkeye work, are more concerned with the aforementioned loved ones than returning the wounded to the battlefield.

Also tying A Very Long Engagement and M*A*S*H are the attitudes its characters take toward war. Though searching for a lost love and making dirty jokes in the operating room hardly seem like the same thing, they are both strategies used by their respective characters to keep their minds from the horror before them. The implication in both films is that war, taken at face value without distracting oneself from its true nature, is too horrifying to stand. To show us this is the case, both films display characters to which this has happened: Manech and his four compatriots, who willingly destroy a part of their own bodies to get out, and Major Burns, who is removed in a strait jacket because he is not able to joke his way through war like Hawkeye.

A Very Long Engagement and M*A*S*H are two films that would not typically been seen together in any context but a very comprehensive list of war films. However, the radical differences between the two make for a much more interesting comparison: what do two filmmakers separated by structure, tone, and more than thirty years have to say about war? In the case of Jeunet and Altman, they come to surprisingly similar conclusions: that war is hell, and that people cope with that hell the best they can.

Bibliography

1“French Director Jean Pierre Jeunet.” Fresh Air. NPR. WHYY, Philadelphia. 12 Jan.
2005. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4280683.

2Feineman, Neil. Persistence of Vision: The Films of Robert Altman. New York: Arno Press, 1978.

3Karp, Alan. The Films of Robert Altman. New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1981.