Catch-22

Many years ago when I was in high school, one of the books we read in English class one year was Joseph Heller's Catch-22. I had learned at that time that the novel had been adapted into a movie, although I hadn't seen it in part because in those days it wasn't quite as east to watch whatever classic movie you might want to. With that in mind, when TCM ran the film adaptation of Catch-22, I decided to record it so that I could finally watch the film and do a post on it.

The story revolves around Capt. Yossarian (Alan Arkan), a bombardier at one of the Americans' southern European air bases in the latter days of World War II after the invasion of Italy had already begun. Despite the romanticization of the flyboys, bombing runs were thoroughly unromantic and suffered from a high rate of mishaps. If you could get through 25 bombing runs you were lucky and could be rotated out, at least for the most part. Unfortunately for Yossarian and the fellow crews at his base, their commander, Col. Cathcart (Martain Balsam), keeps pushing the men further and further in attempt to win fame for himself. Every time it looks like crews are going to reach Cathcart's target, he ups the number of bombing raids they have to run.

Yossarian understandably wants to get out of going on these raids and get himself declared unfit to fly. There is, however, a catch. In theory, if you're insane, you would be declared unfit to fly. However, if you say you're crazy and that flying the missions is crazy, that's a sign that you are in fact quite sane, which means that you're pretty much never going to be declared unfit for service. This despite all the things Yossarian tries to do, such as showing up to inspection stark naked. None of it is going to get him out of service.

Meanwhile, other of the people around Yossarian have come up with their own ways of trying to get out of service. Capt. Orr (Bob Balaban) keeps crashing planes before he disspears over the Baltic. The base chaplain, Tappman (Anthony Perkins) pretty much no longer believes in any sort of God. And then there's Lt. Milo Minderbender (Jon Voight), who has a rather more extreme way of dealing with things. He's gone into the black market and become a sort of king of the black market, with all sorts of enterprises throughout the part of Italy the allies control. One wonders how he has any time to do his military service, and how nobody anywhere in the military hierarchy is willing to stop him.

Eventually, Col. Cathcart and his adjutant Lt. Col. Korn (Buck Henry) offer Yossarian a deal. We'll let you get out of flight service, and even recommend you for a promotion, but you have to do something for us, which is to give us all the credit and get us the publicity we crave. Will Yossarian knuckle under, or will he find some other way to cope?

I have to admit that I wasn't the biggest fan of the book version of Catch-22 when I was in high school. As a result, I'm also not the biggest fan of the movie version. There are going to be other people who like the book and not particuarly care for the fact that a lot of changes had to be made for the movie since the book is the sort of narrative it's difficult to make a movie out of. Many people, however, recognize this and think that the changes that Buck Henry (who wrote the screenplay in addition to taking on the role of Lt. Col. Korn) made mostly work. Indeed, author Joseph Heller himself did ultimately think Henry's working the novel worked for the film. There's also a whole of other stars that I haven't mentioned yet, notbaly Orson Welles as a general who shows up at the base.

Ultimately, I think that Catch-22 is the sort of movie you're going to want to watch for yourself and draw your own conclusions.