JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN

JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN: Although the two films couldn’t be more different in approach, Dalton Trumbo’s literary-minded attack on the architects of war shares the same agenda as Robert Altman’s M.A.S.H. which came out just the year before. And the presence of Donald Sutherland, playing Jesus as part of a hallucinogenic vision, only strengthens the counterculture comparison. Written in 1939 just before the US entered WW2, Dalton finally got a chance to adapt the material himself (his first and only film as a director despite having a celebrated screenwriting career) with Timothy Bottoms in the lead role of Joe Bonham, a young GI whose battlefield injuries leave him with no arms, no legs, and no face. Essentially a “piece of meat,” he’s kept alive for years in the backroom of a nondescript hospital where the medical personnel assume he has no brain function. However, Joe has in fact a very active mind which drifts through his past memories and meanders through an abstract landscape of fantasy and personal reflection. Trumbo contrasts Joe’s harsh reality in the hospital from his induced dream life by means of stark black n’ white photography, footage of which was used memorably in Metallica’s video for “One” (wisely included on the DVD extras). While M.A.S.H. successfully skewered the Vietnam War beneath a veneer of biting satire, Johnny Got His Gun lifts up the sheet and shows exactly what the war machine leaves behind. Shout Factory’s DVD should be essential viewing for the major studios in “How to Put Together a Sweet Special Edition.” Trumbo’s legendary career, and his role in the Hollywood Ten, is examined in detail in the 2006 documentary Dalton Trumbo: Rebel in Hollywood. But that just scratches the surface of great extras, including the aforementioned Metallica video, interview and behind-the-scenes footage with Timothy Bottoms and a full radio adaption from 1940 starring James Cagney.