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Linda Alkana
California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, USA
The films Catch-22 (1970) and The English Patient (1996) are based on literary novels, and set in the specific time and place of World War II Italy. Each work uses the topic of the war to raise the issues of identity and loyalty that loom large during wartime, when nations place huge demands on their people. Both works explore these issues as relevant to their own time. In the 1960s, Catch-22 elevates loyalty to self as a value and challenges the dehumanizing conformity demanded by the bureaucratic states of the postwar world. Twenty-six years later, The English Patient honors loyalty to people rather than to nations. Both movies end in hope, with Yossarian’s escape in Catch-22, and the end to the European war in The English Patient. This paper argues that Michael Ondaatje’s novel, The English Patient, goes beyond the issues of identity and loyalty and the hopeful Hollywood ending as seen in the movies. By giving Kip’s and Hana’s points of view, which were not shown in the film—the view of a brown man in a world controlled by whites and of a woman who understands the horrors of the atomic bomb—Ondaatje offers the possibilities of a new sense of identity and loyalty, one more in tune with issues of a post-colonial 21st century world.
Keywords: identity, loyalty, Ondaatje, Heller, literature and war, film and war
Introduction
Nearly 80 years ago, Virginia Woolf was invited to present a talk on the topic of women and fiction. Her exploration of the relationship between these terms took her to the British Museum, where the closest link to the subject was the specific topic of Women and Poverty. The synergy of these terms, “women”, “fiction”, and“poverty” generated A Room of One’s Own (1929a), wherein Woolf argues that women need financial security and a room of their own in order to write fiction. Because she had both, Woolf was free to write fiction about the internal existence of individuals as they live their daily lives. Nevertheless, despite her path-breaking novels, neither she nor her fiction was free from the social and historical forces of her times. Perhaps as a consequence, many of her novels, such as Mrs. Dalloway (1925), Jacob’s Room (1922), and To the Lighthouse (1927) are haunted by the legacy of World War I.
The Great War, as it was then known, shocked a generation of writers who wanted to understand it. Some wrote books about it; others took their talents to the newly developing film industry. An early link between film and attempts to understand war in history is, perhaps, best seen in the film adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). Here the author and filmmaker present an explicitly anti-war message with their graphic depiction of the horrors of battle—often laying blame on the ineptitude and arrogance of those who make war.
If World War I haunted Woolf’s exploration of the internal existence of the individual, the rise of fascism and World War II raised issues about the role of that individual in an external world gone crazy. Existentialist thinkers such as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre stressed the importance of individual action and loyalty in a world that called into question traditional allegiances to home and country. When the Cold War followed World War II, these issues remained important.
Several wars later, novelists and filmmakers continue to feel the impact of wars, and continue to use their art to understand them. Some films about war offer generic messages about good guys, bad guys, and patriotism(from The Longest Day (1962) to Pearl Harbor (2001)), others are murkier (Platoon (1986) or Apocalypse Now(1979)), while still others deal with specific instances or individuals (Schindler’s List (1993) or Patton (1970)). Two films, however, reverse the process, and use a war setting to analyze specific questions of identity and loyalty. These issues gained prominence with the rise of the powerful bureaucratic states that emerged victorious after World War II. Although Catch-22 (1970) and The English Patient (1996) are set in a specific time and place—World War II Italy—they have little to do with that war. Rather, they address questions important to their own times (Eley, 2001). Catch-22 elevates loyalty to self as a value, and challenges the dehumanizing conformity to bureaucratic states that the Cold War demanded. Twenty-six years later, The English Patient honors loyalty to others as a value in a postcolonial world marked by constant conflict, the disintegration of borders and the emergence of globalism. Both films utilize the exaggerated situation of a war setting to explore these reoccurring issues of identity and loyalty.
Catch-22 and The English Patient
Early in Catch-22 Yossarian asks, “Why are they shooting at me?”. It is unclear that he is enlightened by the answer: “No one is trying to kill you… They’re shooting at everyone… They are trying to kill everyone”. Similarly, when the English patient is told that his treachery cost the lives of thousands of people, he answers that, without his treachery, thousands of other people would have died. When government leaders make war, everyone is shooting at everyone, and writers and filmmakers soon use their arts to ask why.
Catch-22 and The English Patient, however, are not about the governments that start wars; rather, they are about the people who are affected by them. As such, they use the occurrence of war to raise issues of identity and loyalty, which typically take on a particular importance during war, when nations place huge demands on their people. Yet, these seemingly timeless issues are manifest quite differently depending on the historical context. The English Patient
In The English Patient, four people settle temporarily in a bombed out Italian villa during the waning days of World War II. Hana (Juliette Binoche) is a Canadian military nurse who chooses to stay behind at the villa when her unit moves on, in order to nurse the badly burned English patient who cannot be moved. Hana’s patient—Count Almasy, the one they call the English patient (Ralph Fiennes)—remains anonymous to the rest of the characters for much of the movie. His plane had crashed in the desert and he was rescued by the Bedouin who turned him over to the Allies. The Allies did not know who he was, but he spoke English. Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), the third inhabitant, is an Italian speaking Canadian thief whom the Allies recruited. He was captured and had his thumbs cut off by the Germans. Now a morphine addict, he believes the English patient to be the traitor who turned maps of the desert over to the Germans, and the one responsible for his double amputation. He wants revenge. Kip (Naveen Andrews), a military officer, is the fourth person to inhabit the villa. He is stationed to the area in order to disarm land mines and unexploded bombs. Kip is from India, and he and the Canadian Hana become lovers. It is their presence in the movie that allows the issues raised in The English Patient to transcend most debates about loyalty and identity as seen in many war films.
As the movie unfolds, the four inhabitants of the villa become friends: Even Caravaggio warms up to the English patient. Through flashback we learn that Almasy, the patient, had been part of an international geographic team who was mapping the North African desert before the war. The primary love story of the movie is his affair with Katherine Clifton (Kristin Scott Thomas), the wife of a fellow explorer. When her husband(Colin Firth) tries to kill himself and the lovers by crashing his plane in the desert, Almasy is forced to leave Katherine in a cave and walk three days through the desert for help. He is mistaken for a German spy by the British, and is, consequently, unable to rescue her. Since the English had made him their enemy, he later becomes one, giving the Germans his maps of the desert in exchange for petrol to return to his dead lover—his loyalty to her, obviously more important to him than any national cause. It is on his return flight that his plane is shot down, turning the Hungarian Count, who hates nations, maps, and possession, into the English patient.
Catch-22
Superficially, Catch 22 is an easier movie to summarize than The English Patient. Yossarian (Alan Arkin), a bombardier with the American forces on an island off the coast of Italy, wants to survive the war. He is haunted by the image of his crewmember, Snowden, who died in his arms. Yossarian has diligently completed the number of mission runs expected of him, only to see the mission numbers increase. When he inquires about what he can do to be grounded, Doc Daneeka (Jack Gilford) explains Catch-22: In order to be grounded you need to be crazy. But if you ask to be grounded it shows that you are not crazy. “That’s some catch, that Catch-22”, Yossarian realizes.
As the war winds down, Yossarian does not want to get killed, and there is no way out of his situation. This Catch-22, the damned-if-you-do-and-damned-if-you-don’t absurdity of life theme dominates the plot, and is best expressed through the actions of the characters. Major Major (Bob Newhart) is only available to be seen in his office when he is not there. Milo Minderbinder (Jon Voight) makes a deal with the Germans to take a surfeit of black-market cotton off his hands, if the Allies will bomb their own field. Sweet, rich Nately (Arthur Garfunkle), in love with an Italian prostitute, dies in that bombing, and then “Nately’s whore” tries to kill Yossarian. Colonel Cathcart (Martin Balsam), with an eye to fame and glory, promises to send Yossarian home if he will tell everyone how great Cathcart is. Throughout the film, Orr (Bob Balaban) regularly survives ditching his plane in the Mediterranean. When they finally hear of his escape to Sweden, Yossarian and the rest of the airmen realize that Orr had been practicing his getaway. The film ends with Yossarian paddling his dingy away from the base. If Orr could beat Catch-22, then maybe he could too.
Joseph Heller and Michael Ondaatje—Books Into Films
The similarities between these films are many. They are both major American films set in World War II that reveal an Allied point of view.2 They share roots in literary novels. Both authors, Joseph Heller who wrote Catch-22 in 1961 and Michael Ondaatje who wrote The English Patient in 1992, honor the films and the directors who interpreted their works—Mike Nichols for Catch-22 (Heller, 1973) and Anthony Minghella for The English Patient (Ondaatje, 2002). Each film takes place in Italy toward the end of the war in Europe—a crucible setting without Hitler or Hirohito, without kamikazes or death camps. Both stories unfold through flashbacks. Their protagonists are each wounded at the beginning of the film, but not by the enemy. In fact, neither film has a clear cut enemy; and, when violent death comes quickly in each movie, it is through accident or foolishness, not hostility. Finally, each movie ends with an escape—the English patient escapes from his pain and memories with an overdose of morphine, and Yossarian escapes from the confines of Catch-22 with a dinghy and determination.
A discussion of the differences between these two films highlights both how similar they are in their underlying concern with issues of personal identity and allegiance in an increasingly alien world, and how each film defines these issues differently due to the times in which the films are made. When they first came out, The New York Times reviewed Catch-22 as “an epic human comedy” (Canby, 1970) and The English Patient as“fiercely romantic” (Maslin, 1966). The war themes, obviously, are subordinated to their commercial appeal, although neither film minimizes the horror and capriciousness of wartime destruction (Simmons, 1999, p. 5).
Catch-22 presents primarily an all male cast, while The English Patient’s story focuses on two separate love affairs. The character of Yossarian is the core of Catch-22, yet, despite its title, Hana is given more screen time in The English Patient (Ondaatje, 2002, p. xiv). Catch-22 features the American military on an American military base, while The English Patient presents multinational characters in an old Italian monastery. Both movies are about time, but Catch-22 is about Yossarian’s attempts to escape from the present, while the English patient lives in his memories and the past. Characters, action, and the language of the absurd mark Catch-22: characters, ideas, and conversation mark The English Patient. Catch-22, the movie, maintains the spirit of Heller’s novel. The changes from book to film do not reflect a major compromise. In contrast, the movie, The English Patient, changes Ondaatje’s emphasis and ending, and, thus, represents a substantial alteration from book to film.
Both movies end with hope. Although the war is absurd and the world is absurd, Yossarian, in Catch-22, can still act. He chooses life and flees the confines of the island. The movie, The English Patient, has a similar ending. While the English patient’s choice is death, it is still a free choice. With the movie’s end, Hana, Kip, and Caravaggio have a future. The American tanks have come in, the war in Europe is over, and there is a sense of hope ahead.
There is no hope, however, in the ending of the novel, The English Patient. Its ending challenges Hollywood’s typical scenarios, where, if the ending is not happy, it at least offers a sense of closure. The ending of Ondaatje’s novel offers no sense of relief. It presents a postcolonial and pre-apocalyptic view of the rest of the world and the end of the world. It gives us Kip’s point of view—the view of a brown man in a world controlled by whites, and Hana’s point of view—the view of one who knows the world is forever changed after the atomic bomb. Combined, they offer a new point of view—one not seen in the movies, but one more in tune to the issues of the 21st century, with possibilities of new identities and loyalties
Identity and Loyalty: What the Films Did Not Show
Dante reserved the deepest level of Hell for Judas, the disloyal apostle. Issues of loyalty are not new, then, but they become more pronounced during times of war. Both the coward and the traitor threaten the forces that conduct war, or for that matter, control society. Cowardice is not an issue in either Catch-22 or The English Patient, but disloyalty is. There are no patriots in the world of Catch-22. The commander is out for medals, the major shirks his duty, Milo trades with the enemy, Yossarian’s friends are dying, and Yossarian just wants to live. Both the novel and the film raise the question: Where should individual allegiance lie, when those who demand loyalty have no concern for the life of that individual? Yossarian’s answer is that his life is important, and his allegiance is to himself. He deserts at the end of the film in a quest for life.
Identity and Loyalty in the Films
It is doubtful that such an option would be shown in movie houses during World War II. When it appeared, however, in 1970, the world was much different. In World War II, the Nazis presented a clear threat. Heller points out that he situated his novel, intentionally, at the end of the war, when the threat of a German victory was over(Heller, 1994, p. 357). Thus, Yossarian could opt to desert. Saying no during the Cold War was different than saying not to fighting the Nazis. Certainly, some people objected to his disloyal stance (Sales, 1973, p. 366), but most people, during the protest years of the anti-Vietnam War era, saw Yossarian’s escape as anti-war, not treason. His concern for others is real, but when he tries to act on their behalf, he is powerless. Snowden dies, and“Nately’s whore” tries to kill Yossarian. He accepts responsibility for himself, his loyalty is to himself, and he goes for it. He is a true existential hero.
In The English Patient, responsibility to self is less important than responsibility to others. Almasy’s loyalty toward Katherine causes him to turn his maps over to the Germans. This action eventuates in Caravaggio’s mutilation; but, the patient is not the German spy Caravaggio wants to blame. Caravaggio’s Allied loyalties are also questionable. He was a Canadian thief whose talents had value in the war. In the villa, patient and thief share morphine and conversation. Meanwhile, Almasy and Kip discuss Kipling. In India there is a war cannon memorial to the British presence there. Kip reminds the English patient that that cannon was directed against the Indians. But now, Kip works for the British and is in love with a Canadian nurse. Hana has already lost too many people to the war. Her one loyalty now is to her patient—she becomes the healer who helps him die. The four become friends in this Italian villa. They look after each other. Human, not national, loyalties shape their actions. Their temporary respite exists, the movie suggests, because it is free from the national allegiances and the hostilities that result from them. Their loyalties are with each other.
At the films’ conclusions, Yossarian and the English patient choose their fates. Yossarian’s escape is a clear cut victory for the individual over the bureaucracy. Things are less clear in The English Patient. Although the English patient’s suffering is over, there are still three other people whose fates are unknown. The film hints at different futures for them in a different world, where national loyalties are less distinct. Nonetheless, it leaves vague the issues of identity and loyalty it initially raises, and opts, instead, for the European victory and hope. The English Patient, as a novel, however, does otherwise.
Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient
It is with their hopeful endings that the movies differ from Ondaatje’s book. By creating a love story between Hana and Kip, coming together in “his tent, in 1945, where their continents met” (Ondaatje, 1992, p. 226), Ondaatje shows a world of imperial powers with colonial pawns. By having Kip (the connections to Kipling, by the way, are not accidental)3 disarm bombs for the British, while his brother in India remains in jail for refusing to fight for his oppressor, Ondaatje raises issue of allegiance, willing warriors, and what they do.
But Ondaatje’s most powerful statement about identity and loyalty comes with Kip’s devastation when he hears about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is here where the book goes far beyond the movie, raising questions filmmakers have yet to tackle. Lord Suffolk, who trained Kip in the art of bomb disposal, had told Kip: “You must consider the character of your enemy… People think a bomb is a mechanical object, a mechanical enemy. But you have to consider that somebody made it” (Ondaatje, 1992, p. 192). Kip, the man, who defuses bombs, understands the A-bomb, who dropped it, and against whom. He lashes out at the English patient: “My brother told me. Never turn your back on Europe. The deal makers. The contract makers. The map drawers. Never trust Europeans he said. Never shake hands with them. But we, oh, we were easily impressed—by speeches and medals and your ceremonies. What have I been doing these last few years? Cutting away, defusing, limbs of evil. For what? For this to happen?” (Ondaatje, 1992, p. 185).
Kip throws away his uniform and everything he got from the English. He changes his allegiance. He leaves the villa and Hana, realizing he had been fighting on the wrong side, and that the sides were not divided by nations, but by race: “American. French. I don’t care. When you start bombing the brown races of the world, you’re an Englishman”. Caravaggio agrees with Kip: “They would never have dropped a bomb on a white nation” (Ondaatje, 1992, p. 286).
In one page, Ondaatje reminds his readers that many of the warriors were not fighting against a particular enemy or for the Empire or Uncle Sam, but were fighting for freedoms they thought would be theirs after the War. With the dropping of the bomb, Kip realizes his allegiance to Britain was misguided. The victors would divide up the world, and the victors were white. Later memorials honor the victory, but the ensuing wars in Korea and Vietnam, and revolutions in Algeria, India, and much of Africa, as well as the Civil Rights movement in the United States have their roots in Kip’s observations. He represents a post-colonial world. Identities and allegiances will be different in the 21st century. Kip’s statement foreshadows the events of September 11, 2001. Hollywood has yet to.
Whether Kip is right or wrong about why the bomb was dropped on Japan is less an issue than the fact that Ondaatje gives him a voice. In fact, Ondaatje gives him two identities—the Indian who changes allegiances, and the bomb technician who understands the future. In the film, The English Patient, Corporal Hardy (Kevin Whately) climbs a statue in the town square to celebrate the end of the European war. The sabotaged statue explodes and Hardy is blown up. The editor of the film chose this to be the dramatic moment of the film—leaving out the atomic bomb and its consequences (Ondaatje, 2002, p. 213). This worked cinematically, but the message was lost.
Conclusions
No one can defuse an A-bomb. World War II ushered in the post-colonial age and the nuclear age. Hollywood likes neat endings—so the war ends in Europe. But history is on-going. Ondaatje shows us continuity, not conclusions. By including the Japanese bombings in his book, Ondaatje reveals the possibility of war, no longer among nations, but a war against people, and with a different weapon—the atomic bomb and the possibility of an end to history. Where do loyalties lie in such a world? To whom does one own allegiance? In much the same way as Woolf internalized World War I, Hana internalizes Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She writes about the bombings to her stepmother, the only one she knew who had opposed the war from its beginning: “… It feels like the end of the world. From now on, I believe the personal will forever be at war with the public. If we can rationalize this we can rationalize anything” (Ondaatje, 1992, p. 286).
The Cold War of the 1950s and 1960s rationalized the atomic bomb, so there is no sense of foreboding at the end of Catch-22, when Yossarian paddles away. But in the 1990s, the world was different. The end to the Cold War, continuing smaller wars, weapons of mass destruction, and nuclear proliferation have raised other questions about identity and allegiance. Hana and Kip understand the future. They are included in the movie of The English Patient, but their message is silenced. The first important film of the 21st century to address these issues of identity and loyalty will, thus, have to let Hana and Kip speak.
References
Alkana, L. (1999). From book to film: The English Patient. Film and history CD-ROM annual. Oshkosh, W.N.: Center for the Study of Film and History.
Alkana, L. (2000). Using Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient to teach world history: From Herodotus to Hiroshima. World History Bulletin, XVII, iv-vii.
Bruckheimer, J. (Producer), & Bay, M. (Director). (2001). Pearl harbor [Motion picture]. USA: Touchstone Pictures.
Calley, J. (Producer), & Nichols, M. (Director). (1970). Catch-22 [Motion picture]. USA: Paramount Pictures.
Canby, V. (1970, June 25). Nichols captures panic of Catch-22. New York Times.
Coppola, F. (Producer), & Coppola, F. (Director). (1979). Apocalypse now! [Motion picture]. USA: Zoetrope Studios.
Eley, G. (2001, June). Finding the people’s war: Film, British collective memory and World War II. American Historical Review, 106, 818-838.
Heller, J. (1973). On translating Catch-22 into a movie. In F. Kiley & W. McDonald (Eds.), A Catch-22 casebook (pp. 346-362). New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co..
Heller, J. (1994). Catch-22. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Kopelson, A. (Producer), & Stone, O. (Director). (1986). Platoon [Motion picture]. USA: Hemdale Film.
Laemmle, Jr. C. (Producer), & Milestone, L. (Director). (1930). All quiet on the western front [Motion picture]. USA: Universal Pictures.
Maslin, J. (1966, Nov. 15). Adrift in fiery layers of memory. New York Times.
McCarthy, F. (Producer), & Schaffner, F. (Director). (1970). Patton [Motion picture]. USA: Twentieth Century Fox.
Ondaatje, M. (1992). The English patient. New York: Vintage.
Ondaatje, M. (2002). The conversations: Walter Murch and the art of editing film. New York: Knopf.
Robb, D. (2001). Hollywood wars: Filmmakers who want their movies about the military to look real seek assistance. Brills’Content, 4, 134-144.
Sales, G. (1973). Catch-22. In F. Kiley & W. McDonald (Eds.), A Catch-22 casebook (pp. 366-372). New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co..
Simmons, J. (1999). The English Patient, 1996: Colonization through film genre. Film and History CD-ROM Annual. Oshkosh, W.N.: Center for the Study of Film and History.
Spielberg, S. (Producer), & Spielberg, S. (Director). (1993). Schindler’s list [Motion picture]. USA: Universal Pictures.
Woolf, V. (1927). To the lighthouse. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co..
Woolf, V. (1929a). A room of one’s own. New York: Harcourt, Brace World, Inc..
Woolf, V. (1929b). Jacob’s room. London: Hogarth Press.
Zaentz, S. (Producer), & Minghella, A. (Director). (1996). The English patient [Motion picture]. USA: Miramax Films.
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Linda Alkana, Ph.D., lecturer at Department of History, California State University, Long Beach.
1 Some passages included in this paper are adopted from the author’s on-going research on Michael Ondaatje’s The English
Patient (Alkana, 1999).
2 Although Catch-22 features the American military in World War II, it was without the military’s imprimatur. Director Mike Nichols was refused assistance by the military because it showed American airmen trying to get out of the service (Robb, 2001).
3 Ondaatje refers to Rudyard Kipling’s Kim (1901) several times throughout The English Patient. He notes how the relationship between the wise old Asian and the boy in Kim is reversed with the English patient and Kip in The English Patient. Elsewhere he notes that Hana is Kim, and Kip is the Officer Creighton (Ondaatje, 1992, p. 111).
California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, USA
The films Catch-22 (1970) and The English Patient (1996) are based on literary novels, and set in the specific time and place of World War II Italy. Each work uses the topic of the war to raise the issues of identity and loyalty that loom large during wartime, when nations place huge demands on their people. Both works explore these issues as relevant to their own time. In the 1960s, Catch-22 elevates loyalty to self as a value and challenges the dehumanizing conformity demanded by the bureaucratic states of the postwar world. Twenty-six years later, The English Patient honors loyalty to people rather than to nations. Both movies end in hope, with Yossarian’s escape in Catch-22, and the end to the European war in The English Patient. This paper argues that Michael Ondaatje’s novel, The English Patient, goes beyond the issues of identity and loyalty and the hopeful Hollywood ending as seen in the movies. By giving Kip’s and Hana’s points of view, which were not shown in the film—the view of a brown man in a world controlled by whites and of a woman who understands the horrors of the atomic bomb—Ondaatje offers the possibilities of a new sense of identity and loyalty, one more in tune with issues of a post-colonial 21st century world.
Keywords: identity, loyalty, Ondaatje, Heller, literature and war, film and war
Introduction
Nearly 80 years ago, Virginia Woolf was invited to present a talk on the topic of women and fiction. Her exploration of the relationship between these terms took her to the British Museum, where the closest link to the subject was the specific topic of Women and Poverty. The synergy of these terms, “women”, “fiction”, and“poverty” generated A Room of One’s Own (1929a), wherein Woolf argues that women need financial security and a room of their own in order to write fiction. Because she had both, Woolf was free to write fiction about the internal existence of individuals as they live their daily lives. Nevertheless, despite her path-breaking novels, neither she nor her fiction was free from the social and historical forces of her times. Perhaps as a consequence, many of her novels, such as Mrs. Dalloway (1925), Jacob’s Room (1922), and To the Lighthouse (1927) are haunted by the legacy of World War I.
The Great War, as it was then known, shocked a generation of writers who wanted to understand it. Some wrote books about it; others took their talents to the newly developing film industry. An early link between film and attempts to understand war in history is, perhaps, best seen in the film adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). Here the author and filmmaker present an explicitly anti-war message with their graphic depiction of the horrors of battle—often laying blame on the ineptitude and arrogance of those who make war.
If World War I haunted Woolf’s exploration of the internal existence of the individual, the rise of fascism and World War II raised issues about the role of that individual in an external world gone crazy. Existentialist thinkers such as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre stressed the importance of individual action and loyalty in a world that called into question traditional allegiances to home and country. When the Cold War followed World War II, these issues remained important.
Several wars later, novelists and filmmakers continue to feel the impact of wars, and continue to use their art to understand them. Some films about war offer generic messages about good guys, bad guys, and patriotism(from The Longest Day (1962) to Pearl Harbor (2001)), others are murkier (Platoon (1986) or Apocalypse Now(1979)), while still others deal with specific instances or individuals (Schindler’s List (1993) or Patton (1970)). Two films, however, reverse the process, and use a war setting to analyze specific questions of identity and loyalty. These issues gained prominence with the rise of the powerful bureaucratic states that emerged victorious after World War II. Although Catch-22 (1970) and The English Patient (1996) are set in a specific time and place—World War II Italy—they have little to do with that war. Rather, they address questions important to their own times (Eley, 2001). Catch-22 elevates loyalty to self as a value, and challenges the dehumanizing conformity to bureaucratic states that the Cold War demanded. Twenty-six years later, The English Patient honors loyalty to others as a value in a postcolonial world marked by constant conflict, the disintegration of borders and the emergence of globalism. Both films utilize the exaggerated situation of a war setting to explore these reoccurring issues of identity and loyalty.
Catch-22 and The English Patient
Early in Catch-22 Yossarian asks, “Why are they shooting at me?”. It is unclear that he is enlightened by the answer: “No one is trying to kill you… They’re shooting at everyone… They are trying to kill everyone”. Similarly, when the English patient is told that his treachery cost the lives of thousands of people, he answers that, without his treachery, thousands of other people would have died. When government leaders make war, everyone is shooting at everyone, and writers and filmmakers soon use their arts to ask why.
Catch-22 and The English Patient, however, are not about the governments that start wars; rather, they are about the people who are affected by them. As such, they use the occurrence of war to raise issues of identity and loyalty, which typically take on a particular importance during war, when nations place huge demands on their people. Yet, these seemingly timeless issues are manifest quite differently depending on the historical context. The English Patient
In The English Patient, four people settle temporarily in a bombed out Italian villa during the waning days of World War II. Hana (Juliette Binoche) is a Canadian military nurse who chooses to stay behind at the villa when her unit moves on, in order to nurse the badly burned English patient who cannot be moved. Hana’s patient—Count Almasy, the one they call the English patient (Ralph Fiennes)—remains anonymous to the rest of the characters for much of the movie. His plane had crashed in the desert and he was rescued by the Bedouin who turned him over to the Allies. The Allies did not know who he was, but he spoke English. Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), the third inhabitant, is an Italian speaking Canadian thief whom the Allies recruited. He was captured and had his thumbs cut off by the Germans. Now a morphine addict, he believes the English patient to be the traitor who turned maps of the desert over to the Germans, and the one responsible for his double amputation. He wants revenge. Kip (Naveen Andrews), a military officer, is the fourth person to inhabit the villa. He is stationed to the area in order to disarm land mines and unexploded bombs. Kip is from India, and he and the Canadian Hana become lovers. It is their presence in the movie that allows the issues raised in The English Patient to transcend most debates about loyalty and identity as seen in many war films.
As the movie unfolds, the four inhabitants of the villa become friends: Even Caravaggio warms up to the English patient. Through flashback we learn that Almasy, the patient, had been part of an international geographic team who was mapping the North African desert before the war. The primary love story of the movie is his affair with Katherine Clifton (Kristin Scott Thomas), the wife of a fellow explorer. When her husband(Colin Firth) tries to kill himself and the lovers by crashing his plane in the desert, Almasy is forced to leave Katherine in a cave and walk three days through the desert for help. He is mistaken for a German spy by the British, and is, consequently, unable to rescue her. Since the English had made him their enemy, he later becomes one, giving the Germans his maps of the desert in exchange for petrol to return to his dead lover—his loyalty to her, obviously more important to him than any national cause. It is on his return flight that his plane is shot down, turning the Hungarian Count, who hates nations, maps, and possession, into the English patient.
Catch-22
Superficially, Catch 22 is an easier movie to summarize than The English Patient. Yossarian (Alan Arkin), a bombardier with the American forces on an island off the coast of Italy, wants to survive the war. He is haunted by the image of his crewmember, Snowden, who died in his arms. Yossarian has diligently completed the number of mission runs expected of him, only to see the mission numbers increase. When he inquires about what he can do to be grounded, Doc Daneeka (Jack Gilford) explains Catch-22: In order to be grounded you need to be crazy. But if you ask to be grounded it shows that you are not crazy. “That’s some catch, that Catch-22”, Yossarian realizes.
As the war winds down, Yossarian does not want to get killed, and there is no way out of his situation. This Catch-22, the damned-if-you-do-and-damned-if-you-don’t absurdity of life theme dominates the plot, and is best expressed through the actions of the characters. Major Major (Bob Newhart) is only available to be seen in his office when he is not there. Milo Minderbinder (Jon Voight) makes a deal with the Germans to take a surfeit of black-market cotton off his hands, if the Allies will bomb their own field. Sweet, rich Nately (Arthur Garfunkle), in love with an Italian prostitute, dies in that bombing, and then “Nately’s whore” tries to kill Yossarian. Colonel Cathcart (Martin Balsam), with an eye to fame and glory, promises to send Yossarian home if he will tell everyone how great Cathcart is. Throughout the film, Orr (Bob Balaban) regularly survives ditching his plane in the Mediterranean. When they finally hear of his escape to Sweden, Yossarian and the rest of the airmen realize that Orr had been practicing his getaway. The film ends with Yossarian paddling his dingy away from the base. If Orr could beat Catch-22, then maybe he could too.
Joseph Heller and Michael Ondaatje—Books Into Films
The similarities between these films are many. They are both major American films set in World War II that reveal an Allied point of view.2 They share roots in literary novels. Both authors, Joseph Heller who wrote Catch-22 in 1961 and Michael Ondaatje who wrote The English Patient in 1992, honor the films and the directors who interpreted their works—Mike Nichols for Catch-22 (Heller, 1973) and Anthony Minghella for The English Patient (Ondaatje, 2002). Each film takes place in Italy toward the end of the war in Europe—a crucible setting without Hitler or Hirohito, without kamikazes or death camps. Both stories unfold through flashbacks. Their protagonists are each wounded at the beginning of the film, but not by the enemy. In fact, neither film has a clear cut enemy; and, when violent death comes quickly in each movie, it is through accident or foolishness, not hostility. Finally, each movie ends with an escape—the English patient escapes from his pain and memories with an overdose of morphine, and Yossarian escapes from the confines of Catch-22 with a dinghy and determination.
A discussion of the differences between these two films highlights both how similar they are in their underlying concern with issues of personal identity and allegiance in an increasingly alien world, and how each film defines these issues differently due to the times in which the films are made. When they first came out, The New York Times reviewed Catch-22 as “an epic human comedy” (Canby, 1970) and The English Patient as“fiercely romantic” (Maslin, 1966). The war themes, obviously, are subordinated to their commercial appeal, although neither film minimizes the horror and capriciousness of wartime destruction (Simmons, 1999, p. 5).
Catch-22 presents primarily an all male cast, while The English Patient’s story focuses on two separate love affairs. The character of Yossarian is the core of Catch-22, yet, despite its title, Hana is given more screen time in The English Patient (Ondaatje, 2002, p. xiv). Catch-22 features the American military on an American military base, while The English Patient presents multinational characters in an old Italian monastery. Both movies are about time, but Catch-22 is about Yossarian’s attempts to escape from the present, while the English patient lives in his memories and the past. Characters, action, and the language of the absurd mark Catch-22: characters, ideas, and conversation mark The English Patient. Catch-22, the movie, maintains the spirit of Heller’s novel. The changes from book to film do not reflect a major compromise. In contrast, the movie, The English Patient, changes Ondaatje’s emphasis and ending, and, thus, represents a substantial alteration from book to film.
Both movies end with hope. Although the war is absurd and the world is absurd, Yossarian, in Catch-22, can still act. He chooses life and flees the confines of the island. The movie, The English Patient, has a similar ending. While the English patient’s choice is death, it is still a free choice. With the movie’s end, Hana, Kip, and Caravaggio have a future. The American tanks have come in, the war in Europe is over, and there is a sense of hope ahead.
There is no hope, however, in the ending of the novel, The English Patient. Its ending challenges Hollywood’s typical scenarios, where, if the ending is not happy, it at least offers a sense of closure. The ending of Ondaatje’s novel offers no sense of relief. It presents a postcolonial and pre-apocalyptic view of the rest of the world and the end of the world. It gives us Kip’s point of view—the view of a brown man in a world controlled by whites, and Hana’s point of view—the view of one who knows the world is forever changed after the atomic bomb. Combined, they offer a new point of view—one not seen in the movies, but one more in tune to the issues of the 21st century, with possibilities of new identities and loyalties
Identity and Loyalty: What the Films Did Not Show
Dante reserved the deepest level of Hell for Judas, the disloyal apostle. Issues of loyalty are not new, then, but they become more pronounced during times of war. Both the coward and the traitor threaten the forces that conduct war, or for that matter, control society. Cowardice is not an issue in either Catch-22 or The English Patient, but disloyalty is. There are no patriots in the world of Catch-22. The commander is out for medals, the major shirks his duty, Milo trades with the enemy, Yossarian’s friends are dying, and Yossarian just wants to live. Both the novel and the film raise the question: Where should individual allegiance lie, when those who demand loyalty have no concern for the life of that individual? Yossarian’s answer is that his life is important, and his allegiance is to himself. He deserts at the end of the film in a quest for life.
Identity and Loyalty in the Films
It is doubtful that such an option would be shown in movie houses during World War II. When it appeared, however, in 1970, the world was much different. In World War II, the Nazis presented a clear threat. Heller points out that he situated his novel, intentionally, at the end of the war, when the threat of a German victory was over(Heller, 1994, p. 357). Thus, Yossarian could opt to desert. Saying no during the Cold War was different than saying not to fighting the Nazis. Certainly, some people objected to his disloyal stance (Sales, 1973, p. 366), but most people, during the protest years of the anti-Vietnam War era, saw Yossarian’s escape as anti-war, not treason. His concern for others is real, but when he tries to act on their behalf, he is powerless. Snowden dies, and“Nately’s whore” tries to kill Yossarian. He accepts responsibility for himself, his loyalty is to himself, and he goes for it. He is a true existential hero.
In The English Patient, responsibility to self is less important than responsibility to others. Almasy’s loyalty toward Katherine causes him to turn his maps over to the Germans. This action eventuates in Caravaggio’s mutilation; but, the patient is not the German spy Caravaggio wants to blame. Caravaggio’s Allied loyalties are also questionable. He was a Canadian thief whose talents had value in the war. In the villa, patient and thief share morphine and conversation. Meanwhile, Almasy and Kip discuss Kipling. In India there is a war cannon memorial to the British presence there. Kip reminds the English patient that that cannon was directed against the Indians. But now, Kip works for the British and is in love with a Canadian nurse. Hana has already lost too many people to the war. Her one loyalty now is to her patient—she becomes the healer who helps him die. The four become friends in this Italian villa. They look after each other. Human, not national, loyalties shape their actions. Their temporary respite exists, the movie suggests, because it is free from the national allegiances and the hostilities that result from them. Their loyalties are with each other.
At the films’ conclusions, Yossarian and the English patient choose their fates. Yossarian’s escape is a clear cut victory for the individual over the bureaucracy. Things are less clear in The English Patient. Although the English patient’s suffering is over, there are still three other people whose fates are unknown. The film hints at different futures for them in a different world, where national loyalties are less distinct. Nonetheless, it leaves vague the issues of identity and loyalty it initially raises, and opts, instead, for the European victory and hope. The English Patient, as a novel, however, does otherwise.
Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient
It is with their hopeful endings that the movies differ from Ondaatje’s book. By creating a love story between Hana and Kip, coming together in “his tent, in 1945, where their continents met” (Ondaatje, 1992, p. 226), Ondaatje shows a world of imperial powers with colonial pawns. By having Kip (the connections to Kipling, by the way, are not accidental)3 disarm bombs for the British, while his brother in India remains in jail for refusing to fight for his oppressor, Ondaatje raises issue of allegiance, willing warriors, and what they do.
But Ondaatje’s most powerful statement about identity and loyalty comes with Kip’s devastation when he hears about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is here where the book goes far beyond the movie, raising questions filmmakers have yet to tackle. Lord Suffolk, who trained Kip in the art of bomb disposal, had told Kip: “You must consider the character of your enemy… People think a bomb is a mechanical object, a mechanical enemy. But you have to consider that somebody made it” (Ondaatje, 1992, p. 192). Kip, the man, who defuses bombs, understands the A-bomb, who dropped it, and against whom. He lashes out at the English patient: “My brother told me. Never turn your back on Europe. The deal makers. The contract makers. The map drawers. Never trust Europeans he said. Never shake hands with them. But we, oh, we were easily impressed—by speeches and medals and your ceremonies. What have I been doing these last few years? Cutting away, defusing, limbs of evil. For what? For this to happen?” (Ondaatje, 1992, p. 185).
Kip throws away his uniform and everything he got from the English. He changes his allegiance. He leaves the villa and Hana, realizing he had been fighting on the wrong side, and that the sides were not divided by nations, but by race: “American. French. I don’t care. When you start bombing the brown races of the world, you’re an Englishman”. Caravaggio agrees with Kip: “They would never have dropped a bomb on a white nation” (Ondaatje, 1992, p. 286).
In one page, Ondaatje reminds his readers that many of the warriors were not fighting against a particular enemy or for the Empire or Uncle Sam, but were fighting for freedoms they thought would be theirs after the War. With the dropping of the bomb, Kip realizes his allegiance to Britain was misguided. The victors would divide up the world, and the victors were white. Later memorials honor the victory, but the ensuing wars in Korea and Vietnam, and revolutions in Algeria, India, and much of Africa, as well as the Civil Rights movement in the United States have their roots in Kip’s observations. He represents a post-colonial world. Identities and allegiances will be different in the 21st century. Kip’s statement foreshadows the events of September 11, 2001. Hollywood has yet to.
Whether Kip is right or wrong about why the bomb was dropped on Japan is less an issue than the fact that Ondaatje gives him a voice. In fact, Ondaatje gives him two identities—the Indian who changes allegiances, and the bomb technician who understands the future. In the film, The English Patient, Corporal Hardy (Kevin Whately) climbs a statue in the town square to celebrate the end of the European war. The sabotaged statue explodes and Hardy is blown up. The editor of the film chose this to be the dramatic moment of the film—leaving out the atomic bomb and its consequences (Ondaatje, 2002, p. 213). This worked cinematically, but the message was lost.
Conclusions
No one can defuse an A-bomb. World War II ushered in the post-colonial age and the nuclear age. Hollywood likes neat endings—so the war ends in Europe. But history is on-going. Ondaatje shows us continuity, not conclusions. By including the Japanese bombings in his book, Ondaatje reveals the possibility of war, no longer among nations, but a war against people, and with a different weapon—the atomic bomb and the possibility of an end to history. Where do loyalties lie in such a world? To whom does one own allegiance? In much the same way as Woolf internalized World War I, Hana internalizes Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She writes about the bombings to her stepmother, the only one she knew who had opposed the war from its beginning: “… It feels like the end of the world. From now on, I believe the personal will forever be at war with the public. If we can rationalize this we can rationalize anything” (Ondaatje, 1992, p. 286).
The Cold War of the 1950s and 1960s rationalized the atomic bomb, so there is no sense of foreboding at the end of Catch-22, when Yossarian paddles away. But in the 1990s, the world was different. The end to the Cold War, continuing smaller wars, weapons of mass destruction, and nuclear proliferation have raised other questions about identity and allegiance. Hana and Kip understand the future. They are included in the movie of The English Patient, but their message is silenced. The first important film of the 21st century to address these issues of identity and loyalty will, thus, have to let Hana and Kip speak.
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Linda Alkana, Ph.D., lecturer at Department of History, California State University, Long Beach.
1 Some passages included in this paper are adopted from the author’s on-going research on Michael Ondaatje’s The English
Patient (Alkana, 1999).
2 Although Catch-22 features the American military in World War II, it was without the military’s imprimatur. Director Mike Nichols was refused assistance by the military because it showed American airmen trying to get out of the service (Robb, 2001).
3 Ondaatje refers to Rudyard Kipling’s Kim (1901) several times throughout The English Patient. He notes how the relationship between the wise old Asian and the boy in Kim is reversed with the English patient and Kip in The English Patient. Elsewhere he notes that Hana is Kim, and Kip is the Officer Creighton (Ondaatje, 1992, p. 111).