A high point of director David Lean’s illustrious film career was the epic war film The Bridge on the River Kwai. Before producing this film, Lean was turning Charles Dickens novels into cinema and exploring such themes as class disparities as individuals charted his or her life’s course. Later as Lean went on to receive Academy Awards for such films as Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, and A Passage to India, he would address his preferred issues against the backdrop of an increasingly globalized 20^th century and the cultural clashes between East and West.

In Bridge on the River Kwai, we find a fictional account of the building of a bridge that was to be part of the Burma Railway. The movie is set in Thailand during World War II, and the two commanders in this drama, the honor-bound Japanese Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) and the duty-bound British commander, Nicholson (Alec Guinness) represent in a sense the East-West cultural divide. Both are victims of their circumstances, as military men who must carry out orders. Saito, however, has the upper hand as the British are his prisoners of war. He shows disdain for his British prisoners, proclaiming in one telling moment his utter contempt for them: “I hate the British! You are defeated but you have no shame. You are stubborn but you have no pride. You endure but you have no courage.”

The tension between the two commanders is clear from the outset. Saito needs Nicholson’s men to build his bridge by a certain date. Nicholson is adamantly opposed and cites the Geneva Convention which prohibits the use of war prisoners as slave labor. When Saito resorts to cruel tactics to coerce the British army to comply, Nicholson demonstrates courage and resolve. He defies Saito’s orders and commands his men to do the same. Saito, seeking to make an example of Nicholson, has his men beat the British commander, and toss him into “the oven” which is a locked box subject to intense heat. He also deprives the British commander of food and water.

When Nicholson finally emerges from the oven, he takes a different position. He allows himself to be talked into having his men build a beautifully engineered British bridge. Although this project will serve Japanese interests, to the detriment of the British and Allied forces, Nicholson becomes convinced that the work will reinvigorate his disheartened troops.