"Field Army Hospital" would be wrong if it was watched as a war movie. If you swap the whole story setting for an American campus, that's right.
All the stories and characters in this movie are all those people and things on American campuses. After watching the movie, you will find that this is the same road as a later school sex comedy in the United States, such as "American Pie", "Hala on the Road" and so on. That's right, this film is the pioneer of this kind of campus sex comedy.
But this film is much more famous than those purely hilarious campus sex comedies.
Because he changed the story scene to a field army hospital. With this change, the comedy elements of the film have social significance, and it has become a representative work of anti-war culture among American youth in the sixties and seventies.
The movie was deeply loved by American audiences, and it had a box office of 80 million that year, which was a miracle. The previously unknown director Robert Altman became a blockbuster.
People who have really fought a war can't write this kind of comedy, only people who haven't been to the front line can write this kind of heartless comedy.
In the sixties, those pampered young students in the United States were suddenly frightened by the bloody scenes of the Vietnam War. In order not to go to the front line, a lot of absurd behaviors were committed, sexual liberation, rock music, drugs, etc., and hippies became synonymous with them.
They are not stupid, and the mainstream traditional values of the government are the theoretical basis for them to go to war as cannon fodder. So they don't say that they are afraid of death, but bombard all traditional American values. Dissolve the theoretical basis of war from the roots.
From this point of view, it can be said that liberal democracy can indeed prevent human beings from doing self-destructive stupid things.
The film is narrated from a positive point of view with the values of a hippie. It is a precious phenomenal film that understands that era.
The protagonists in the movie are all representatives of the hippie spirit of the time. They are sincere and kind, oppose hypocrisy and hypocrisy, love life, and hate being disciplined. It expresses the voice of most young American students during that period. Be love, don't fight. Later in those people came Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
The director is talented, and this film inherits the style of satirical comedy of American writer Mark Twain. It seems to be a documentary-like casual scene style, but it hides a delicate scene scheduling.
The character temperament and story atmosphere of this film are similar to the Chinese movie "The Stubborn Master" in the late 80s and early 90s (theoretically, people come first). And the male protagonists Donald Sutherland and Ge You are also similar (the performance style is not the looks). Is this the reason why "Big Names" later invited Sutherland? Isn't the Beijing ruffian in Wang Shuo and Feng Xiaogang's film a Chinese version of the hippie spirit?
The film perfectly seals the hippie spirit, the spirit of sincere fraternity and disgust with hypocrisy is admirable. The uncompromising courage to thoroughly satirize and expose the false and ugly highlights the possibility of another kind of comedy.