Better In Your Head?--CATCH-22

 

Spoiler Alert: say it till yer tongue falls out.

THE BOOK-Written by Joseph Heller, released 1961

THE MOVIE-Directed by Mike Nichols, written by Buck Henry, released 1970

THE STORY-A beleaguered bombardier, a paragon of paranoia, a notorious poor loser despite a wealth of practice, caught in the no-win situation. That's our hero? Yossarian? That's not a family name, that's a breed of dog. He's kind of a coward, possibly a traitor. What red-blooded white-skinned blue-veined patriot doesn't leap at the opportunity to lose their life for the winning team? God have mercy on his seditious soul!

MIND THE GAP-Set on the Italian front during WWII, Catch-22 is a classic capture of the infuriatingly absurd. Told straight, it would be occasionally favorably compared to the rest of Heller's ouevre. His chronological audaciousness, from launch to landing, is a masterclass in trajectory.

The team behind The Graduate adored Catch-22. A No-Hero Zone for the ages, full of bureaucratic madness, alliterative names, and temporal leaps. To enact their humble interpretation, Nichols assembled a fantastic cast: Alan Arkin, Martin Sheen, Charles Grodin, Tony Perkins, Paula Prentiss, Martin Balsam, Bob Newhart, Orson Welles! To a man tremendous. Arkin really was the best available fit for the flesh-and-blood Yossarian. Initially, he's a mild amusement, a sidewalk soliloquist in a fancy uniform, a low-energy player in a high-stakes game. As time progresses, and the absurdities accumulate, the effects of enormous effort grow evident, and the only mystery is how quickly and how decisively the facade will fall at the moment of anagnorisis. Will Yossarian draw blood? Or will he just walk in the water?

Catch-22 gained a reputation as a vicious anti-war lampoon, lauded loudly by younger readers incensed over U.S. vulgarities in Vietnam. The humorous paradoxes and calamitous hypocrisies, the barbed sketches of peacock-chested goal-post movers entrusted with thousands of lives, are not elements found in any work intent on selling America on itself. However, Air Corps veteran Heller was not anti-war, and nor was his most famous novel. He had bigger potatoes to blast off the barrel. Catch-22 is anti-idiocy, anti-corruption, anti-religion. His God is not an awesome God, or a jealous God, but a lazy God, a hideous craftsman uninterested in self-improvement. Through Yossarian, the author assaults plain-brains and stone-hearts. Many of whom read Catch-22 and did a whole lotta projection.

The world is full of Aarfys. I'd be made at God, too.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-One's a seriously brilliant landmark. The other's a fine entry in a mighty filmography. Arkin's awesome performance, some intrepid set-pieces emblematic of the era and a few killer verbal volleys that earned even Heller's envy aside, the film cannot keep hold of a mood. 

Catch-22 is definitely better in my head.