Catch 22 Miniseries

[Orencio Suhag]

Catch22 is a satirical dark comedy television miniseries based on the 1961 novel of the same name by Joseph Heller. It premiered on May 17, 2019, on Hulu in the United States. The series stars Christopher Abbott, Kyle Chandler, Hugh Laurie, and George Clooney, who is also an executive producer alongside Grant Heslov, Luke Davies, David Michd, Richard Brown, Steve Golin, and Ellen Kuras. The series was written by Davies and Michd and directed by Clooney, Heslov, and Kuras, with each directing two episodes.

John Yossarian (Christopher Abbott) is a United States Army Air Forces bombardier in World War II, furious that thousands of people are trying to kill him and that his own army keeps increasing the number of missions he must fly. He is trapped by the bureaucratic rule Catch-22, which considers a request to be relieved of duty on the grounds of fear about the danger of missions to be the process of a rational mind, so any such request must be denied.[2]

Yossarian chose bombardier, hoping the war would finish before his lengthy training but now sits exposed in the nose of a B-25, dropping bombs on enemy territory who are trying to kill him. He tried to avoid flying by feigning illness, sabotaging his intercom, poisoning everyone at the base or clandestinely moving the bomb line so it appears their target has already been captured.

The events occur in the Mediterranean theatre of World War II while the fictional 256th US Army Air Squadron is based on the (fictionalized) island of Pianosa, in the Mediterranean Sea, and conducting bombing raids over heavily defended fascist controlled Italy.

Around 2014, producer Richard Brown, writer Luke Davies and writer-director David Michd discussed properties that they would like to tackle in limited series format similar to True Detective, which Brown had just executive produced. Davies brought up Heller's novel, which the trio agreed would benefit from a longer treatment than the two hours of Mike Nichols' 1970 feature film. The screen rights to the novel were held by Paramount Television where Anonymous Content had a deal. Davies and Michd co-wrote the adaptation, which Brown developed at Anonymous. Michd was originally set to direct until he became unavailable as a long-gestating feature film of his moved forward in production. The producers asked George Clooney to direct. He, along with his producing partner and frequent collaborator Grant Heslov, came on board as directors and executive producers.[3]

On November 16, 2017, the production was announced.[4][5] On January 12, 2018, it was announced that Hulu was in negotiations for the series[6] and two days later it was confirmed that the production had been given a six episode order.[3][7][8] On March 16, 2018, it was announced that Ellen Kuras was joining Clooney and Heslov in directing. They each directed two episodes, and Kuras also served as an executive producer.[9] On May 7, 2018, it was announced that Italy's Sky Italia was joining the production as a co-producer.[10][11]

Alongside the series order announcement, it was reported that in addition to directing the series George Clooney had been cast in the role of Colonel Cathcart.[4] On March 9, 2018, it was announced that Christopher Abbott had been cast in the lead role of John Yossarian.[12][13][14][15] On April 3, 2018, it was announced that Hugh Laurie had joined the main cast in the role of Major de Coverley.[16][17] On April 13, 2018, it was announced that Clooney would no longer be playing the role of Colonel Cathcart and would instead assume the smaller supporting role of Major (later Colonel and eventually General) Scheisskopf. It was simultaneously announced that Kyle Chandler would be replacing him in the role of Cathcart.[18] On May 3, 2018, it was reported that Daniel David Stewart, Austin Stowell, Rafi Gavron, Graham Patrick Martin, Pico Alexander, Jon Rudnitsky, Gerran Howell, and Lewis Pullman had joined the supporting cast as members of the "Merry Band."[19] A few days later, it was announced that Tessa Ferrer and Jay Paulson had been cast as Nurse Duckett and The Chaplain, respectively.[20] Towards the end of the month, it was reported that Giancarlo Giannini had been cast in the role of Marcello.[21] On June 13, 2018, it was announced that Harrison Osterfield had been cast in the role of Snowden.[22] On July 9, 2018, it was reported that Julie Ann Emery had been cast in the recurring role of Marion Scheisskopf.[23]

Principal photography was scheduled to commence at the end of May 2018 in Sardinia and Viterbo in Italy.[10][24] On July 10, 2018, George Clooney was struck by a car while riding a motorcycle to the set of the series. He was taken to a hospital in Olbia where he was released later that same day.[25][26] Filming for the series concluded on September 4, 2018, in Santa Teresa Gallura, Italy.[27][28] The series was directed by Clooney, Heslov, and Kuras, who worked simultaneously as scenes were shot out of sequence across all six episodes, a practice known as "cross-boarding", while Martin Ruhe served as cinematographer.[29]

By comparison, the 1970 film adaptation of Catch-22 featured 18 original B-25 Mitchells. Seventeen were in flying condition and one non-flyable example was destroyed in the filming of the crash landing scene. Fifteen of the 18 bombers used in that film remain intact to this day.[31]

The series premiered on May 17, 2019.[32] In the United Kingdom, the series aired on Channel 4.[10] In France, it aired on Canal+.[33] In Australia, it was streamed on Stan. In Canada, it was streamed on Citytv Now.[34]

At the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the series holds an approval rating of 84% based on 90 reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's critical consensus states, "Though not quite as sharp as Joseph Heller's seminal novel, Catch-22's handsomely rendered, hilariously horrifying exploration of war still soars thanks to its stellar cast and reverent adherence to its source material."[35] On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 70 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[36]

Mike Nichols' "Catch-22" is a disappointment, and not simply because it fails to do justice to the Heller novel. That was almost inevitable, I guess; there was something of a juggling act in Heller's eccentric masterpiece. It took him seven years of rewriting to get all the pieces in the air at the same time. For Nichols to pull off the same trick with a movie, which has so many more pieces than a novel, looked impossible.

Still, I thought perhaps Nichols would pull off something. Not a movie that would please the cultists, maybe, but at least a movie that would work on its own terms. His failure on this front is especially disappointing. "Catch-22" the movie is essentially a parasite, depending on the novel for its vitality. Nichols doesn't bring much to the party.

His challenge in directing the movie was to somehow catch Heller's tone, that delicate balance between insanity and ice cold logic. Everything in the book was crazy because it made sense, a paradox illustrated in the case of Yossarian, the hero. Yossarian didn't want to fly any more missions over Italy. Why? Because they were shooting at him and someday they would hit him and he would die.

Now that seems like sound reasoning, but (understandably) it doesn't work with most armies. When Yossarian claimed insanity in hopes of being shipped home, Doc Daneeka explained his mistake. You'd have to be crazy to want to fly dangerous missions over Italy and maybe get killed, right? But Yossarian didn't want to fly those missions. Ergo, Yossarian was sane.

This sort of Alice-in-Wonderland logic is at the heart of Heller's book, and somehow he keeps it going. Nichols doesn't. Nichols doesn't even try; if we are to understand Catch-22 and all the other catches, we just have to be familiar with the book. The movie recites speeches and passages from the novel, but doesn't explain them or make them part of its style.

No, Nichols avoids those hard things altogether, and tries to distract us with razzle-dazzle while he sneaks in a couple of easy messages instead. Pushovers. In the first half of the movie, he tells us officers are dumb and war doesn't make sense. In the second half, he tells us war is evil and causes human suffering. We already knew all that; we knew it from every other war movie ever made.

And that's the problem: Nichols has gone and made another war movie, the last thing he should have made from 'Catch-22.' Nichols has been at pains to put himself on the fashionable side and make a juicy humanist statement against war, not realizing that for Heller World War II was symbolic of a much larger disease: life.

Yossarian is afraid of dying, yes. But we all are. He doesn't want to fly five more missions. That's his problem. We have our own. Yossarian wants out of the Air Corps.; we want to escape from time, to become immortal. But to get out of the Air Corps, or stop time, you've got to be insane. And no one who wants out is insane. The truly horrifying truth at the center of the Heller novel is that we're all trapped in that airplane, or in life, and there's no escaping death because eventually...

But Nichols boils all this down into the stunning revelation that war is hell. And his movie is about war. True, we see little enough actual fighting, but "Catch-22" nevertheless seems to mine its laughs and its "truths" in the same worked-out veins of so many other war movies. It is particularly inspired by the fashionable antiwar movies that preceded it; Richard Lester's dreary "How I Won the War" belongs on the same double bill.

The movie divides in the middle; the first half is funny, the second is not. The method of the first half is caricature and burlesque. The second half uses overkill and spills bloody guts and sliced bodies all over us. Aren't we getting tired of being bludgeoned with these same old antiwar clubs? Even masochists, after a while, welcome variety.

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