M*A*S*H

Without ever becoming a classic, this is a film that had its own space and time.

There are certain films that, despite being forty or fifty years old, seem to maintain all their relevance and pertinence. These films generally surpass the test of time and continue to win new audiences, generation after generation. On the other hand, there are films that are a portrait of the time in which they were made, and belong to that specific time and need to be understood in the light of that particular moment.

The plot unfolds during the Korean War, which occurred shortly after the Second World War and divided two countries that are still at war, although it is a frozen conflict. The action focuses on a mobile medical unit near the front line, where a group of doctors and nurses seek, through humor and sarcasm, to lighten the tense environment and forget the surrounding danger, ignoring and mocking their superiors. As you can see, we cannot understand the film without delving into the mentality of the 70s. At a time when American youth were shouting for peace and against the war in Vietnam, what film would make more sense than a comic parody of the army? Korea had been recent and did not have the almost sacred nature of participation in the Second World War, it was acceptable to play with that and have bearded doctors, 100% hippie style, drunk or semi-drugged, doing antics that, in real circumstances, would lead them to court-martial. If this film had been released just ten years earlier, we would have had something totally different, but this is the decade of Flower Power, of peace and love.

Robert Altman provides reasonably effective direction. The recreation of the time, and the environments of the military field, is done with technical care. There was a lot of authentic war material that could be used in the design of sets and costumes, and it is quite likely that some witness told what those mobile health units were like, and what was done there. However, th...