Robert Altman
M.A.S.H.

If 'Full Metal Jacket' was the most complete, tragic, and brutally realistic manifesto against war in all its dramatic aspects, M.A.S.H. (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) was the most entertaining, shameless, irreverent, and politically incorrect anti-militarist film in the history of cinema.

In 1970, amidst the Vietnam War, Robert Altman gifted us with this cynical and hilarious work, taking all the stereotypes of Hollywood military propaganda films and completely overturning them, ridiculing them fiercely in an epic parody that still today, even in a political and social context now distant (it was also the era of the Hippie pacifist movement), can teach a lot to directors who produce pretty, glossy, and fake-alternative comedies.

The film is structured in surreal and grotesque episodes that intertwine in a military hospital during the Korean War in the 1950s, a decade that was the epitome of unbearable and obtuse respectability and blind, fanatical, medieval patriotism. A backdrop that Altman cleverly uses to say his piece on the "dirty war" in Vietnam without risking the predictable ostracisms and censorship. The plot is entirely focused on the events of the two protagonists, Dr. "Trapper John" McIntyre and Dr. "Hawkeye" Pierce, two ramshackle doctors fond of pranks and resistant to discipline, who heavily target anyone they consider, from their personal point of view, worthy of atrocious jokes. Perhaps even just for sheer tomfoolery and to exorcise their depressing and uncomforting situation as soldier-doctors, and partly to fight boredom during the fortunately few moments of little work, they always try to make every situation spicy and grotesque, even the most delicate, always managing superbly, despite everything and thanks to their professional skill, in moments of absolute emergency.

The favorite targets of the two sarcastic and irresponsible doctors become their fellow soldier, Major Frank Burns, a bigoted and hypocritical incompetent doctor, and his lover, the capricious and grumpy nurse "Hot Lips," victims of ruthless and hilarious pranks. Later, Hawkeye and Trapper even stage a fake suicide to help the dentist "Painless" overcome his depression, persuading a nurse, Hawkeye's lover, to sleep with him for the good of Painless, her, and everyone. Interesting figures include the very little authoritative and carefree commander, also equipped with a nurse lover; Radar, a soldier with the tremendous gift of perceiving anything and listening and concentrating on multiple conversations or orders simultaneously; and the friendly and naive chaplain. Worthy of note is also the film's lead song, "Suicide is Painless," a hymn to suicide, perfectly in tune with the movie's irreverent and anti-respectability mood.

Needless to say, the level of acting is very high, especially thanks to the two protagonists Elliot Gould and Donald Sutherland, genuine scene-stealers, without taking anything away from luxury supporting actors like Robert Duvall and Sally Kellerman. The screenplay and direction are masterful and somewhat revolutionary, characterized by a style featuring long shots and close-ups skillfully alternated and the detail of the camera fixed on the military camp's loudspeaker, from which a deliberately ridiculous and stereotypical female voice with a Korean accent signals the beginning of each episode of the film.

Pacifist manifesto, cult par excellence, with director Altman among the pioneers of the new Hollywood school which will also see Scorsese and Coppola among the leading figures, M.A.S.H. today might mistakenly seem outdated and surpassed by a new way of making cinema—hectic and precise and, with very few exceptions, a certain broad and definitely less fierce humor. But its genius in battling the madness of war with equal madness, its freshness and its cruelty remain intact as ever.