gedhurst

Catch-22 is a film based on the celebrated book by Joseph Heller. It traces the bewilderment and disillusionment of Yossarian, a US air force bombardier based on an US airbase in Italy during the last stages of the second world war. Yossarian thinks the war is run by insane people who are trying to kill him by making him fly more missions. He wants to escape by claiming to be crazy, but there is a catch, the celebrated Catch-22. The meaning of 'Catch-22' is deftly explained by the movie, and has rightly entered popular culture.

I watched Catch-22 again after the death of the marvellous Alan Arkin. The whole film revolves around him, with a brilliant supporting cast. The airbase scenes with taxiing bombers roaring into the sky are justly famous. The film is stripped to the essentials of the book, with many amusing scenes and characters absent for reasons of space: a literal treatment would double the length. The book is also written in a post-modernist style with many flashbacks to previous events, just like a normal human memory works. This style is successfully caught and conveyed by the structuring of the movie.

However, the point about the film which struck me most forcefully was how the zeitgeist of present-day America is captured. What the film shouts out to the viewer is that America has been captured by Corporate Fascism which dominates all areas of life. Even the military is subject to it. This was true in the Sixties, with the debacle of Vietnam, and it is also true today; the events of the past 23 years amply demonstrate this. Yossarian is just a pawn in this totalitarian structure, driven to paranoia and small acts of rebellion, trapped in an insane world run by sociopaths for insane objectives. Just because you are not paranoid, it doesn't mean they don't want to kill you.

We are all Yossarian.

Hugely enjoyable documentary which is a very revealing look into a forgotten time. It's hard to believe that just 7 years before this, the Beatles had their first number 1 single, and here they are completely changed, yet still writing, still a tight unit, still larking about.

2 things stand out for me: the amazing keyboards contribution of Billy Preston, and the sad realisation on Macca's face near the end of the second episode, that yes, this really was going to be the last time.

Throw a boomerang and be amazed (if you throw it right) how long it spirals through the air... almost as if time stands still while you're watching it. And what if there really was a magic boomerang which paused time while it was flying? If you are a kid in the Sixties, that is unbelievably cool: think of all the problems you could solve! (problems are always a big part of the kid world).

This great kid's program came from Australia, so already it was exotic (but familiar) to children in Britain (like grey industrial Manchester, where I watched it), but this twist of a 'magic' boomerang really set it apart.

The key to a child's world of imagination is often slight and inconsequential or even unintelligible to adults. I can't remember much of the episodes, but this idea of a time-stopping boomerang has always stayed with me.