The bird at the start and end ?
Anyone know what the bird at the start and end was about ?
I don't remember the bird at the start, but I think it was a Vulture or Griffon flying over the "dead" bridge in the end.
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MovieChat Forums > The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Discussion > The bird at the start and end ?
A really good question.
The two shots of the bird bracket the entire story, so they're clearly meant to have great significance. And like a lot of other elements in the film, they're subject to interpretation.
I think the bird is a symbol of nature - something outside of the war, an outside observer. It's soaring free and at peace; unlike all the other characters in the story, it's not at war. If the bird could talk, he'd say the same thing the doctor said at the climax (another outside observer, who deliberately chooses "not to be a part of it" (the bridge dedication/train crossing): "Madness! Madness!"
Soldiers come and soldiers go, but the birds remain?
I see this as an anti-war movie, a not uncommon sentiment as the fifties moved closer to the sixties. War is madness. As in the song, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. This was in the Cold War when the US under Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers were carrying on warfare in third world nations, with no Congressional oversight, to have an advantage over the USSR. What was that good for? Absolutely nothing? We look at it today and can see the madness of bombing countries and assassinating their leaders to make them our staunch allies against the Soviets. Or the lunatic schemes of the Soviets toward the US.
And certainly mutually assured destruction was insane. When the movie was made there was no way of knowing if we'd all be dead soon like the men on the screen. This isn't a WWII movie even though it is set then. The irony at the end is brutal, especially set against the cheery music, shouting, and marching. I think the message is snap out of it! You've lost your mind.
The women watching what the men are doing to each other at the end of the movie are very important. One might say they symbolize the sadness of those who cannot stop the madness and care very deeply about their men who died because of it. Is the next generation gone, too? On the Beach, 1959, left me with the same depressed feeling about humanity. As time went on we got more and more movies about the twisted ways the human race finds to exterminate itself, including Dr. Strangelove and Catch 22. Before WWII, All Quiet on the Western Front utilized a WWI setting to make its anti-war point, but it changed nothing. The next war was already in the pipeline, as they always seem to be.
"I am the grass; I cover all." Grass by Carl Sandburg. 1918.
I think I'll watch a comedy and cheer myself up.