Spike Lee's Miracle at St. Anna follows four African-American soldiers stranded in an Italian village in 1944. There is a framing story set in 1983 where a black postal worker inexplicably shoots a customer and is found to have a priceless European artifact in his apartment. He is linked somehow to the four soldiers and by movie's end we will know the connection, sit through the story of these men, and what happened to them.
The four soldiers are survivors of an ambush. Calling for help on the radio, they find out that they have to carry out a mission that a racist superior officer hands them before they can be rescued. Along the way they meet a group of rebel Italians fighting the Nazis and a strange small boy who seems to be lost in more ways than one.
This is the setup. The first thing to say is that we have never seen a WWII movie from the African-American point of view. They were a vital part of America's victory but they faced institutional racism. The movie expertly shows this in the form of the white commanding officer who doesn't trust the men to get anything done. He represents the head shaking belief by some black soldiers of why fight for a country that doesn't respect them? In a chilling scene, the Germans capture this mood and try to use it against the U.S by having a female radio host try to persuade the men to switch sides so that they can be freer in fascist Germany than they are in America. The actress who plays her is remarkable.
So is the Italian boy the protagonists find. There are great performances here but the four principal characters are stereotypes and some are offensive ones. Do you know the stereotype of the black pimp with gold teeth and a randy disposition? He's one of the men. How about the innocent simpleton who praises Jesus all the time? He's in there too. The idea to represent black soldiers--their struggles, their characters and ideals is seriously undermined by making some of them cartoonish figures who are more at home in the racist minstrel shows of the past. Think of any movie made in the 1950s featuring a simple, God-fearing, bend-over-backward to help black maid or think of the parody of a militant black man Robert Downey Jr. plays in Tropic of Thunder.(Full disclosure: I am not African-American.) Roger Ebert called this movie a story that needed to be told. If it was a film of real, complex black grunts during World War II and what they went through, then I would agree. WHat we have instead is a much too packed story (it might be unwise for novelists to adapt their own books onto the screen. It's the first Harry Potter syndrome: the whole book is put into the movie. For me, the best movies are poems.) Plus the battle scenes are perfunctory, the pacing especially at the end is off, and their is a discordant note of comedy at the beginning. The relationship between the simpleton and the Italian boy to some may be touching, but I found it cynical and manipulative.
And yet, and yet, there is one devastating scene of war that will stay with you for a long time and the movie is never boring. I wish Spike Lee had edited some, made his characters into real people and found a cohesive theme to streamline his story. If he had done that, Miracle might have been a miracle.
The four soldiers are survivors of an ambush. Calling for help on the radio, they find out that they have to carry out a mission that a racist superior officer hands them before they can be rescued. Along the way they meet a group of rebel Italians fighting the Nazis and a strange small boy who seems to be lost in more ways than one.
This is the setup. The first thing to say is that we have never seen a WWII movie from the African-American point of view. They were a vital part of America's victory but they faced institutional racism. The movie expertly shows this in the form of the white commanding officer who doesn't trust the men to get anything done. He represents the head shaking belief by some black soldiers of why fight for a country that doesn't respect them? In a chilling scene, the Germans capture this mood and try to use it against the U.S by having a female radio host try to persuade the men to switch sides so that they can be freer in fascist Germany than they are in America. The actress who plays her is remarkable.
So is the Italian boy the protagonists find. There are great performances here but the four principal characters are stereotypes and some are offensive ones. Do you know the stereotype of the black pimp with gold teeth and a randy disposition? He's one of the men. How about the innocent simpleton who praises Jesus all the time? He's in there too. The idea to represent black soldiers--their struggles, their characters and ideals is seriously undermined by making some of them cartoonish figures who are more at home in the racist minstrel shows of the past. Think of any movie made in the 1950s featuring a simple, God-fearing, bend-over-backward to help black maid or think of the parody of a militant black man Robert Downey Jr. plays in Tropic of Thunder.(Full disclosure: I am not African-American.) Roger Ebert called this movie a story that needed to be told. If it was a film of real, complex black grunts during World War II and what they went through, then I would agree. WHat we have instead is a much too packed story (it might be unwise for novelists to adapt their own books onto the screen. It's the first Harry Potter syndrome: the whole book is put into the movie. For me, the best movies are poems.) Plus the battle scenes are perfunctory, the pacing especially at the end is off, and their is a discordant note of comedy at the beginning. The relationship between the simpleton and the Italian boy to some may be touching, but I found it cynical and manipulative.
And yet, and yet, there is one devastating scene of war that will stay with you for a long time and the movie is never boring. I wish Spike Lee had edited some, made his characters into real people and found a cohesive theme to streamline his story. If he had done that, Miracle might have been a miracle.