#120: Johnny Got His Gun
Not even a Metallica music video will prepare you for how grim this Dalton Trumbo classic really is
This review was originally posted to Twitter on June 18, 2019.
Initial release: May 14, 1971
Director: Dalton Trumbo
“Now the world is gone, I’m just one, oh God help me!”
— Metallica, “One”
No other movie has gotten such exposure through a music video as Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo’s brutally depressing World War 1 psychological nightmare; more people know about it through Metallica than on its own merits — and more’s the pity, because it’s a fantastic film, but also so very hard to watch.
For 20-year-old Joe Bonham, the Great War is over, and so is his life, at least the way he knew it. An artillery blast has taken his sight, his speech, his hearing, his arms, his legs — perhaps, as Metallica’s iconic, grim ballad “One” suggests, even his very soul.
Trapped in his own body with no way to communicate, he languishes for years, drifting in and out of consciousness. He revisits his past life, slowly disintegrating into a kind of dreamy fantasy. Along the way, he meets his girlfriend, his deceased father, and Jesus Christ.
This is not a pretty film by any stretch of the imagination. trumbo is a director of middling skill who approaches the whole thing largely like it was a TV show; but a somewhat workmanlike camera and schmaltzy script don’t take away from an emotionally moving work. In fact, that schmaltziness may be the film’s saving grace — while it’s altogether rather talky, for a film like this, talky is the point. More to the point, the fantasy scenes speak to the honest, lonely mind of a 20-year-old kid who got shipped off to fight someone else’s war.
Trumbo does bring an artistic sensibility to the film in separating reality from fantasy through color. The real-world scenes, set in the hospital, are in a stark black and white, evoking films of the 1930s with simple sets and occasionally monstrously apt framing and lighting. Conversely, the fantasy scenes are in the muted color palette common to low-budget early 1970s films, grainy and muddy, made worse by the low definition of the film transfer, further enhancing its dreamy quality. Films of this era often have a slightly psychedelic vibe; this is no different.
Sometimes it feels like certain scenes were pieced together through clips of different quality — a noticeable one is a severe drop in quality for a few certain shots in a scene late in the film. I don’t know if this is original to the film or not.
Unfortunately, infuriatingly, it’s long been out of print. That might also be Metallica’s doing, albeit unintentionally. The seminal music video for “One” used several clips from the film, and the band eventually bought the rights to avoid paying royalties. The film languished in VHS hell until Shout! Factory’s 2009 DVD release; as of now this is the only version available on DVD and streaming services. But if you care about cinema, are looking for a good anti-war flick, or just like Metallica, you owe it to yourself to see it.
Make no mistake, this is not a war drama. There are no heroes. This is an anti-war film in the plainest possible terms, an indictment of a military that sends young men to fight old men’s wars and then doesn’t even have the decency to let them die.
Everything you saw in that Metallica video is just scratching the surface of how relentlessly depressing this film is. It’s easy to see why Metallica wrote that song: this isn’t just about war, this is the primal scream of a society that doesn’t seem to know anything but. To scream is to function, and in the end, we all are Joe, unable to scream, but only silently begging for death, but being told that it’s against regulations.
-june❤
