Miracle at St. Anna

Dir: Spike Lee (2008)

Spike Lee has achieved what he has been dreaming about all his life: he has made a WWII movie centered on black soldiers that is just as bad as the ones Hollywood churned out during the war and just after. Trouble is, we are in the next century already! The war movie has been refined a bit since the 1940s (but apparently the only war movie Spike has seen since then is "Saving Private Ryan" (because he borrows from it shamelessly). His longtime music collaborator, Terrence Blanchard, uncharacteristically follows suit: his soundtrack is chock-full of every rehashed, hackneyed musical motif from all of those war movies combined! (This from the man who gave us the original and electrifying musical background to last year's "Inside Man." I wouldn't expect him to lay an egg, too.)

I will not start at the beginning, because the 'framing device' of a story set in the present is so mishandled that it rivals the other worse parts of the movie. The initial battle action faced by this unit of all-black soldiers is straight out of the first half-hour of Spielberg's SPR. Then Lee reverts to standard, cliche-driven hokum (also a feature of SPR) as we get to know the four members of group who are stranded on the wrong side of an Italian river. Individually, these young and mostly unknown actors are convincing, even likeable. I do not doubt for a minute the racism they endured in the US Army and in American society as a whole, either. But Lee's depiction of this racism is so ham-handed and obvious that it is embarrassing to watch. [For a parallel, see mentor Spielberg (again) in his absolute worst movie: "The Color Purple."]

But that's not the worst part of the movie. At the movie's centerpiece is an atrocity committed by the Nazis in a Tuscan village called Sant'Anna di Stazzema (where the movie was actually filmed): 560 civilians were gunned-down by the retreating SS. An unspeakable act that needs to be remembered and the lives of those victims honoured. For this sequence, I would have applauded Lee for taking a page from Spielberg's note-perfect "Schindler's List" on the proper, respectful way to depict such an atrocity in an entertainment vehicle. Instead, he treats it with all the subtlety (and historical accuracy) of Roland Emmerich's "The Patriot," i.e., none. (You remember that detestable Revolutionary War pic (with Mel Gibson & Heath Ledger), that had the nerve to depict the British soldiers on an equal plane of depravity as the Nazis!)

Here, Lee has come under fire from Italian survivors for inventing a character of a turncoat partisan who plays a part in the massacre. It is justified fire, from what I have read: it is these peoples' history, after all. They deserve to have it told to the world accurately. My beef is in the way Lee points his unblinking camera at every bullet-ridden civilian at the point of their murder, and then goes back to give us a shot of 'artfully-posed,' blood-streaked corpses. Most directors know when to show the brutality outright, and when it would be more powerful to show the aftermath. Lee cannot resist showing us both -- every time. The effect is dulling and vulgar. When Lee inevitably shows a crying baby on top of her dead mother, the audience's emotion is not sympathy or dread, it is "I can't believe he is stooping this low" (to show us a baby getting bayoneted). But stoop he literally does: you guessed it, he films the hovering Nazi from the perspective of the baby!

But that's not the worst part of the movie! Remember the framing device I said I wouldn't mention? Not only does it make a long movie interminable, it is filled with the worst collection of 'look-at-who-my-friends-are' cameos since Burt Reynolds hung up his car keys! Every one of them is out-of-place and completely unnecessary to the plot: John Turturro, ___ Gordon-Levitt, Kerry Washington, but especially, ESPECIALLY the pointless appearance by John Leguizamo! Somebody please explain to me why his scene was ever necessary? It ends with his newspaper flying out the window and landing on a key character's table. Why couldn't that character have just BOUGHT THE FREAKIN' PAPER! (I just saved five minutes of screen time, right there). Sheesh, Spike, sheesh ....