Looking Back at "The Bridge on the River Kwai"
"Madness!" cries the British doctor, Major Clipton, as he looks upon a scene of general death and destruction. "Madness!" His are the last words in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).Last, in that no words are spoken after his, but not last, as in definitive. For this great war movie that celebrates the heroism of the soldier, and this great anti-war movie that lays bare the tremendous waste of human life and labor that war involves, resists easy definition. I knew it already when I was a boy and watched it along with my father, who explained to me that the chief figure of the drama, Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness), the commanding officer of the British men who are prisoners at a Japanese camp in the jungles...
PhD, is a Distinguished Professor at Thales College and the author of over thirty books and many articles in both scholarly and general interest journals. A senior editor of Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, Dr. Esolen is known for his elegant essays on the faith and for his clear social commentaries. In addition to Salvo, his articles appear regularly in Touchstone, Crisis, First Things, Inside the Vatican, Public Discourse, Magnificat, Chronicles and in his own online literary magazine, Word & Song.
Get Salvo in your inbox! This article originally appeared in Salvo, Issue #61, Summer 2022 Copyright © 2025 Salvo | www.salvomag.com https://salvomag.com/article/salvo61/embattled-humanity
