A quote by William Friedkin himself opens “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” describing the film, as well as all the filmmaker’s other works, as being about “the thin line between good and evil.” This line is all the thinner here, in the American director’s final feature, for it is entirely a matter of opinion. We are not given to see the facts of this story as they unfolded; we cannot watch and make up our own minds as to whether the people involved were right or wrong to act the way they did. All we get are these participants’ highly subjective recollections of events that, in this adaptation of Herman Wouk’s 1953 play and unlike the 1954 film, will remain entirely offscreen.
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As its title indicates, the film takes place almost entirely in a courtroom, and a military one at that — a setting that immediately suggests an intransigent rigidity that can either be reassuring or frightening. As the prosecution and the defense begin to speak, the clarity of their expression is soothing; they talk straightforwardly and are direct since insinuations are strictly forbidden in court. Michael Grady’s cinematography is similarly matter-of-fact, his still shots and editor Darrin Navarro’s exacting cuts emphasizing the filmed-play quality of the movie but also the precision of the argumentation from both parties.
The case, however, turns out to be anything but simple, and this aesthetic becomes almost suffocating as we realize that it cannot account for that most frustrating truth: that even when exposed to the same information, two people can have completely different opinions about it. The line between good and evil is often the line between differing perspectives.
The mutiny in question refers to an incident aboard a U.S. ship where Captain Queeg (Kiefer Sutherland) was “relieved from his duties” (to use the euphemistic Navy terminology) by Officer Maryk (Jake Lacy) who believed he was giving dangerous orders and putting all on board at risk in the middle of a storm. Defending Maryk, who therefore stands accused of mutiny and disloyalty to his superior, is Greenwald (Jason Clarke), a lawyer who soon reveals himself very adept at turning to his advantage the sometimes very harsh rules of this court.
As Greenwald puts it, Maryk did what he did because he believed that Queeg was “mentally ill.” And so begins an increasingly morbid dive into Queeg’s personality and shortcomings. What constitutes mental illness, and according to whom? Most other officers speaking on the stand are wary of using the term, claiming they are not experts in that field. Even the psychiatrist Lieutenant Bird (Jay Duplass), charged with evaluating Queeg, rejects Greenwald’s use of the word “crazy.” Bird does admit that Queeg has shortcomings but claims they are “well compensated,” meaning safely channeled through other things, chief among them his work.
Prosecutor Challee (Monica Raymund) opts for a strategy based on outrage at the accused’s lack of respect for the chain of command. But Greenwald’s dialectical approach, although it dramatically annoys the judge (Lance Reddick) and is so pushy as almost to be impertinent, isn’t just logical and rational. It is also more interesting, and the people in that room also feel part of the pleasure we feel in following Greenwald’s reasoning to its end. Determining whether someone is “crazy” or not makes for drama of the highest order. The emphasis on psychoanalytical terms like “mental illness” and “paranoid personality” must have been particularly novel and impactful in the 1950s. But it is perhaps even more creepily fascinating in an age where (self-)diagnosing as in some way mentally unwell has almost become a trend.
The same unsavory mix of cruelty and entertainment is at play when Greenwald asks Maryk to talk about some of the other alarming behaviors he had observed from Captain Queeg in the months leading up to the mutiny. Although these are examples of severe abuse of a crew by its captain and very convincing evidence of Queeg’s mentally unfit state, they are also undeniably funny. As he did on “The White Lotus,” Lacy beautifully combines his excellent comic timing with a tone of indignation as he discusses “the coffee machine episode,” “the cheese business,” and “the strawberry thing” — being names that stand in amusing but chilling contrast to the extremity of the abuse described.
It isn’t difficult from here to guess how things will go for Queeg, but “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial” has a twist in its tail. While some may perceive it as distasteful and reactionary, I would argue that the rest of the film suggests we should not take it at face value. This is a film that urges us to consider that the truth may be more complex than we’re comfortable with. Like “Cruising” and “To Live and Die in L.A.,” to cite two of my favorite works by Friedkin, “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial” does not stop playing with our heads when the credits start to roll. [B]
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