Books into Celluloid: Catch-22
Written by Kelly Cozy Thursday, 26 March 2009 15:23
Sometimes all the talent in the world can’t make a successful movie adaptation.
The story
It’s late in World War II, and Air Force Captain Yossarian is in one hell of a bind. Like every other man in Colonel Cathcart’s battalion, he’s flown a ridiculous number of missions. Yossarian knows it’s only a matter of time before his luck runs out and he’s killed. But he learns that while only a crazy man would agree to fly more missions, by asking to be sent home he proves that he’s sane, and therefore fit to fly. It’s a catch, and it even has a name: Catch-22.
The book
Catch-22 has become such a part of the culture that even people who haven’t read it or seen the film adaptation know what a “catch-22” situation is. Because of this, people who haven’t read the book may feel they know what it’s about, which is a shame; while the joke of catch-22 is funny (and like all the book’s jokes it turns dark in the book’s last few chapters), there’s much more to the novel than that joke.
What’s most striking about reading Catch-22 is the audacity of the juggling act that Heller undertakes. Instead of a straightforward narrative, the story is told out of sequence, with the emotional linchpin of the novel — the death of the young gunner Snowden — hinted at throughout the book but only revealed fully near the end. In addition to the multiple plotlines, there are enough characters to populate several novels, and all of them are so deftly sketched that even the most minor, irrelevant characters (indeed, several characters such as Major Major and Chaplain Tappman are defined by their very irrelevance) are not one-dimensional. This depth of characterization takes on particular weight in the book’s final twelve chapters, when the self-serving or insane actions of colonels Cathcart and Korn, and the syndicate operator Milo Minderbinder, result in all of Yossarian’s friends dying, being “disappeared," or becoming nonentities. Because these are characters, not just names on a page, the full horror of the situation becomes complete.
Though the novel starts out as farce and full of funny moments, Heller uses telling details and tonal shifts to gradually deepen and darken the story. Starting with the appalling death of Kid Sampson, Catch-22 begins its shift into something of a horror novel — certainly there’s more genuine horror than there is in many books that wear that genre label.
Yet there’s a certain loony optimism to the book’s finale, as Yossarian rejects the easy route home by refusing to be “pals” with Colonel Korn and Colonel Cathcart, and instead flees with the hopes of joining his AWOL friend Orr in Sweden.
The movie
It’s difficult to say if transforming Catch-22 into
a movie is an impossible task — books that could be considered unfilmable,
such as
L. A. Confidential and
Fight Club, have been made into successful films. Catch-22
presents a special problem for adaptation because the book’s success is largely
dependent on well-chosen details and tone, two things that can be difficult to translate
into the film medium.
Which is not to say that director
Mike Nichols and screenwriter
Buck Henry didn’t try. After opening with a long, silent, and
strangely haunting shot of the island Air Force base where the story takes place,
the film starts near the end of the story, when Yossarian is stabbed by Nately’s
whore after agreeing to be “pals” with the colonels. The rest of the story is told
in flashback, often out of sequence, mimicking the time-jump structure of the novel.
To condense the story down to a two-hour running time, many characters have been combined, renamed, or eliminated from the story. At the same time it’s clear that Henry and Nichols were unwilling to eliminate too much and as a result the movie feels overstuffed with characters and incidents. Unfortunately, in addition to certainly confusing anyone who hasn’t read the novel, this softens the impact of many of the story’s key events. For example, the fate of Kid Sampson is given to the character of Hungry Joe, but since the character hasn’t been seen in the film until that scene, the event feels like a cheap shock rather than a pivotal moment.
This problem of tone recurs throughout the film — for every sequence that translates brilliantly there is a scene that falls flat. The result is a film that may leave fans of the book frustrated.
Still, there is a good deal to recommend in the film. The cast is, for the most part, astounding, with Alan Arkin a perfect Yossarian (his reaction to the death of Snowden should be shown in acting classes everywhere). Stealing his few scenes is Bob Balaban as Orr, and while it’s difficult to get past the “hey, it’s Art Garfunkle” reaction he does credibly well as the idealistic Nately. Richard Benjamin and Anthony Perkins play somewhat against expectations as Major Danby and Chaplain Tappman, the two most decent characters in the story. While it’s a shame that Henry Fonda wasn’t able to play Major Major, Bob Newhart makes the most of his too-limited screen time. Martin Balsam and Buck Henry are on hand as the loathsome colonels Cathcart and Korn, but the most odious villain may be Charles Grodin as the hypocrital rapist Aarfy. The only acting misstep seems to be Jon Voight, who’s all wrong as Milo Minderbinder for reasons I can’t quite nail down. The film looks gorgeous as well, and the use of no musical score works remarkably well.
Which should you check out first?
Difficult to say — if you read the book first the movie will be a disappointment. However, it may be hard to grasp the movie without having first read the book. Read the book — you should anyway, regardless of whether you see the film.
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