The Purple Plain: Robert Parrish

One of the most frequent tropes in war cinema is the idea that when things get tough, the biggest thing that can be relied upon to drive you forward is your family waiting back home. Robert Parrish's The Purple Plain, on the other hand, argues that it is not love for one's family or even the support of one's brothers-in-arms that ultimately matters. Instead, it takes something more internal, something that each man can only know, experience, and comprehend for themselves. For Canadian pilot Bill Forrester, a self-destructive member of the Royal Air Force fighting in Burma who lost his newlywed wife during the London Blitz, that unknowable something is the ability to let go of the past and to find value in the possibility of a future after the war. After being shot down behind enemy lines, he has to face the perils of survival, the difficulties of tending for a wounded comrade, and dealing with a suicidal survivor who, despite actually having a family waiting for him at home, seems convinced that there is no point in going on. Forrester's story becomes one of self-redemption and re-definition. This arc takes place primarily in the last half of The Purple Plain. The first half effectively establishes Forrester and the depths of his suffering after the death of his wife. Gregory Peck turns in a predictably excellent performance as the tortured Forrester. One of the more understated of classical Hollywood leading men, Peck could make stretches of silence as meaningful as any tortured screech by Brando or overzealous outburst by Cagney. Parrish also demonstrates considerable directorial acumen, turning a simple story about a recovering soldier into a genuinely powerful exploration of man's will to Be. I particularly enjoyed two sequences, one near the beginning and one near the end, where incidental noises are magnified by monstrous degrees on the soundtrack to highlight a character's deteriorating state of mind.

8/10