The Men Blu-ray Review
Wounded Warrior Project, circa 1950.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, May 6, 2013
The airwaves are currently full of some heart wrenching commercials for the Wounded Warrior Project, a laudable outfit
that
helps to provide rehabilitation and support services to our many returning veterans who have suffered unimaginable
injuries, as well as to their families which must attempt to pick up the shattered pieces of their loved ones' lives.
Wounded Warrior was formed in 2002, which begs the question as to how we as a nation cared for
servicemen and women injured in conflicts that happened before that year. The Veterans Administration of course bore
the brunt of those responsibilities, but as any number of press reports over the past few years have proven, the VA has
not always been a model of efficient, nurturing care. My own father was badly wounded twice in World War II, earning
a Purple Heart and Oak Leaf Cluster in the process, and one of the wounds he carried with him for the rest of his life.
Twelve days after D-Day, he was severely wounded by shrapnel, a piece of which tore through his left arm right at the
elbow, almost severing the limb in the process. While the doctors managed to knit him back together, he had a really
nasty looking scar and his arm was "locked" in a sort of half crooked position that he could not alter. I remember
asking him about the wound and the day he got hit when I was just a little boy, and in one of the
very few
moments of my Dad opening up about his battle experiences, he looked straight at me and said quite calmly, "Well, I
thought I was going to die". Men of my Dad's generation tended to tamp down their emotional responses to their
wartime experiences, and that also spilled over into how they handled their injuries, something that was portrayed to
heartbreaking effect in William Wyler's
The Best Years of Our Lives (certainly an ironic title if ever there were
one). Four years after that legendary film, director Fred Zinnemann and producer Stanley Kramer joined with writer
Carl Foreman (the three of whom would reteam in two years to make
High Noon) to revisit at least some of the themes of the Wyler film, but with a
somewhat more dour outlook. Though many incorrectly think that Marlon Brando made his big screen debut recreating
his
iconic Broadway role of Stanley Kowalski in Elia Kazan's film adaptation of Tennessee Williams'
A Streetcar Named Desire, he actually made his
first appearance in this much less remembered film.
The Men begins with a brief textual prelude which is also voiced by a narrator where we're told that vets often
fight
two battles, without the second type being immediately defined. We soon find out what that refers to
when
Ken (Marlon Brando) is shot by a sniper while on patrol and immediately senses that he's lost the use of his legs.
Ironically, Ken's voiceover which bridges the battle sequence and his stay in the hospital contains an near duplicate of
the
quote my own father gave to me so many years ago:
I was afraid I was going to die. In Ken's case, however,
it
becomes an ironic counterpart to the way he now feels as a quadriplegic:
I'm afraid I'm going to live.
The film then charts Ken's slow and halting steps (no pun intended) toward recovery, which in Ken's case hinge as much
on his emotional state as they do on his physical infirmities. Ken is a sullen, angry man who can't quite come to terms
with what has happened to him, and he's not about to be coddled by the V.A. resident doctor (Everett Sloane), a man
who tends to upbraid his patients rather than nurture them. The good doctor also doesn't shirk from "educating" the
relatives of these paralyzed vets, telling their wives and mothers that it's "useless" to even discuss walking again.
There's also some surprisingly frank dialogue about bladders and bowels, especially for a circa 1950 film.
Ken's lovely young fiancée Ellen (Teresa Wright) enters this roiling emotional state of affairs despite Ken trying to get
her to give him up. Ken is both helped and harassed by a bunch of other vets on the same VA ward, including a caustic
guy named Norm (Jack Webb) and, in a perhaps unexpected bit of comedy relief, a go getter who constantly bets on
horses named Leo (Richard Erdman). Still, Ken remains defiantly sullen for vast stretches of the film. He makes some
emotional strides only to back pedal when some unexpected events throw a monkey wrench into his growing
acceptance of his fate.
The Men is a rather prescient film for its era in a number of ways. The United States really wasn't used to such
a searing examination of the repercussions of battle, despite such well meaning efforts like Wyler's
The Best Years
of Our Lives. The film world was much more used to offering rah-rah battle films that celebrated America's might
and fights for justice. That began to change in the late forties and early fifties, and
The Men was at the
forefront of films offering some searing proof that returning vets, especially those with debilitating injuries, did not have
an easy time of it. What's perhaps even more fascinating than Ken's emotional arc is that of Ellen. Wright essays a
character who goes through some unexpected changes of heart—if only momentarily—that more than ably points out
how difficult these situations are for relatives.
The Men is bolstered by the work of Wright and Brando, as well as fine supporting turns by a colorful cast
(those who only know Webb from
Dragnet may be stunned at how effective he is in an unusual role). Brando
seethes with resentment and anger throughout the film, but he's also incredibly vulnerable, something that makes
several of his interchanges with Wright incredibly moving. Zinnemann directs in his typically unobtrusive way and
Foreman's writing makes the most out of these emotionally and physically wounded characters.
