#36 ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’

War, Honor, and a Very British Breakdown

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) is David Lean’s lush, slow-burning war epic in which men sweat, suffer, and build monuments to their own delusion—namely, a bridge that becomes less about strategy and more about status, ego, and the colonial wet dream of “discipline as virtue.” It’s a film where nobody wins, except perhaps the jungle itself, which patiently watches as masculinity implodes in khaki.

At the center of this stiff-upper-lip psychodrama is Colonel Nicholson, played by Alec Guinness with such quiet fanaticism you don’t realize until halfway through that he’s not the hero—he’s the warning. As a British officer in a Japanese POW camp, Nicholson insists his men build a bridge not just efficiently, but exceptionally—for the enemy. Why? Because principle. Because order. Because nothing says defiance like aiding the imperial project of your captors while pretending it's a victory for morale.

Nicholson doesn’t care that the bridge will help the Japanese. He cares that it’s well made. That it stands as a testament to British resolve. That the men under his command don't lose their dignity. But dignity, in The Bridge on the River Kwai, is just ego in uniform. Nicholson is less a symbol of resistance than a tragicomic relic of imperial righteousness, blinded by the sound of his own moral superiority. He's the kind of man who'd die for a rulebook before admitting he might be wrong.

And how does the film treat this? With reverence, mostly. Until the last five minutes, when everyone suddenly remembers there's a war going on.

Let’s not forget the Japanese commander, Colonel Saito, played with stern, conflicted dignity by Sessue Hayakawa. The film sets him up as the antagonist, but he fades into the foliage once Nicholson starts unraveling—because ultimately, The Bridge on the River Kwai isn't about war between nations. It's about the war inside British men’s heads, between honor and hubris.

Women, naturally, are absent—unless you count the few Thai villagers who appear just long enough to carry equipment and serve as visual shorthand for “the exotic backdrop.” Their silence isn’t just narrative—it’s thematic. This is a world built entirely on male obsession, and the absence of female voices only sharpens the echo chamber of military pride and delusion.

And then there’s that final moment, the now-iconic line: “Madness!” It lands like a belated epiphany, after nearly three hours of men marching toward oblivion, convinced they’re making history. The bridge explodes, but the point has already been made: empire may crumble, but toxic ideals tend to be overengineered.

Yes, the cinematography is stunning. Yes, the performances are excellent. But what lingers is the film’s uncomfortable truth: war isn’t just fought with guns. It’s fought with pride, rituals, and the unshakable belief that dying for a structure you weren’t even supposed to build is somehow noble.

3 out of 5 marching tunes
(One for Guinness, mastering the art of a man unraveling by standing still. One for the bridge as metaphor. One for the final, glorious explosion of logic. The rest washed away in the river, along with any awareness of who this war actually affected.)