Catch-22 (the Film)

After reading Catch-22 again I thought I'd take another look at the film version, which was released in 1970. I saw it years ago, but with the book fresh in my mind it was interesting to see how the adaptation was handled.

It must have been highly anticipated, as it was directed by Mike Nichols, who was one of the pre-eminent Hollywood directors. The script was written by Buck Henry, who also wrote The Graduate.

The result was a critical and financial failure, with most people coming to the conclusion that the book was unfilmable. I would tend to agree, as it is very episodic in nature and most of the humor is verbal. Nichols and Henry, while attempting to assemble some sort of plot, jettisoned a lot of the comic set pieces, and the result is a dour, unpleasant war film that kind of misses what Heller was trying to say.

Most of everything in the film was in the book, but out of necessity of time there are dozens of characters cut. We have Yossarian, of course (Alan Arkin), and two of the evil colonels (Martin Balsam and Henry). Milo Minderbinder (Jon Voight) is featured prominently, and his bombing of his base turns out to be a major plot point.

What is lost is the Carrollignian quality of the absurdity of military bureaucracy. Clevinger's trial and the inquisition of the Chaplain (here played by Anthony Perkins) are cut. Instead the focus is on Yossarian's outrage over having to fly more missions. There are many shots of planes taking off, perhaps the producers not wanting to waste that they got the use of so many vintage aircraft.

For one of my favorite books to be turned into such a flat, humorless film is a damn shame. I wonder if it's possible to capture the essence of the book in something visual--maybe in a miniseries, but not in two hours. I did like Arkin, who expresses outrage well (as he would so wonderfully in The In-Laws).

There are also a number of young actors in the film before they were famous, like Martin Sheen and Bob Balaban, and a certain Arthur Garfunkel as Nately, who's not bad.

The film has had some reappraisals and appreciation in hindsight, but I don't share it. This thing was really a turkey. It didn't help that the far superior M*A*S*H was released the same year. It's kind of interesting that the TV show of M*A*S*H ended up being a better representation of Catch-22's theme--the futility of reasoning with the military brass.