3. Catch-22
Joseph Hellers Catch-22 has become the archetypal anti-war novel; it explores the fear and horror of war with excellent depth. The book explores the same events through different characters viewpoints; this narrative structure enables us to imagine characters complexly, but it also enables us to think of the wider repercussions of our actions. This clear theme is one which must be instilled in people if we want society to continue in a positive way, and by teaching this lesson through a different format the film would be genuinely good. Like Slaughterhouse Five, this novel has a non-chronological structure; while this may appear as a barrier to a film, it is in fact one of the strengths of the book. Instead of the typical chronological structure of books, Heller uses ideas as a bonding narrative; this refreshing technique is begging to be made into a film. It would be considerably different to the typical war films, and would see war as the barbaric concept it is, not as an arena to hunt glory. A movie was produced in 1970, yet many story arcs were excluded for sake of time and coherency; again, like Slaughterhouse Five, there is now a precedent for films with a loose coalition of different story lines rather than direct narratives.