Watching "The Bridge on the River Kwai"

In 1958, when we were living in Negombo, my father took my brother and me to watch “The Bridge on the River Kwai” at the Asokamala cinema. Asokamala cinema was later renamed Regal, which has since closed down.

“The Bridge …” is based on a fictionalized account of the railway line through Thailand to Burma, built under Japanese army supervision during World War II. About 12,000 Allied prisoners-of-war (POWs) and 100,000 forced laborers died during the railway’s brutal construction, and it earned the nickname “death railway”. The movie, filmed entirely in Ceylon, was directed by David Lean, and went onto win seven academy awards.

Forty years later, when I was living in Hong Kong, my best friends were David and Jennifer, a Canadian couple. One day, to my surprise, I learned that Jennifer had been born in Singapore during the war, where her father, a Major in the British army, was stationed. As the Japanese troops came sweeping down the Malay peninsula towards Singapore, wives and children of British soldiers and civil servants were evacuated to safer destinations. Jennifer, an infant, and her mother traveled to South Africa on a British ship named “Empress of Japan”. The irony!

The British forces in Singapore surrendered to the Japanese in February, 1942, and the Major was sent north to work on the infamous railway. He survived the horrendous conditions, but refused to eat rice for the rest of his life, recalling the miserable gruel he had been fed while working on the railway.

Jennifer later told me that she had never watched “The Bridge …”, because, even seeing a fictionalized version of the suffering her father underwent would be too painful. But, I persuaded her that the movie was a masterpiece worth watching, and she reluctantly agreed. So, Jennifer, David, and I gathered in my living room - cheese, crackers, and wine at hand - to watch the DVD. From the moment it started, Jennifer was on the edge of her seat, without a word, the food untouched, for all 160 minutes of the movie. At the end, I saw that her eyes were filled with tears. We never again talked about the movie.

On a visit to Thailand, I went up to Kanchanaburi, where a section of the original bridge still stands.

The high point of the movie comes at the end, when the wooden railway bridge built by the prisoners is blown-up, sending the first train plunging to the river below. But, for me, the most memorable scene comes at the beginning, when, led by the proud, chin-up Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness), Allied soldiers - defeated, in frayed, rag tag uniforms - march into the POW camp whistling “Colonel Bogey March”.