Miracle à Santa Anna

I attended the world premier of Miracle at St. Anna at Toronto International Film Festival. Unfortunately as much as I respect Spike Lee as a filmmaker I thought the movie was a bit dull and kind of boring. At 166 minutes I found that the movie was overlong and dragged too much. I became restless after awhile as the movie progressed. The story didn't seem to go anywhere, was uninteresting and I had trouble connecting with it. It was hard to follow at times as well. The movie jumped all over the place at several points to different years in the history of the characters. I found this to be jarring and irritating. Spike Lee should have taken more time to edit his film because each of the scenes went longer than they should have. It's not the worst movie I have ever seen although it could have been better. My expectations were high. I came away somewhat disappointed.

Sometimes a true-blue filmmaker, full of art-filled aspirations and good intentions, isn't always the best judge of what will ultimately really work for the story. This has happened to Spike Lee on more than one occasion- this taking aside the fact that he has consistently puffed-up many of his films lenght-wise- and in Miracle at St. Anna he makes an admirable, powerful stumble. It's not embarrassing like Bamboozled or just laughable like She Hate Me; he has a goal here, and it's worth trying out. The message is made right in the first scene: John Wayne war movies are propagandistic drek that show really only one side. Spike Lee's 'version' of black soldiers embedded in a Tuscan village in WW2 is meant to be an antidote to all of those pompous, (practically) white-only war pictures. The problem is that he hasn't done much to advance the genre, or break out of anything really interesting with the bulk of the characters.

Ironic then that Lee should criticize Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers since both films suffer from similar faults: they're too long, too convoluted, occasionally far too schmaltzy, and whether by partnership (being co-produced by Spielberg himself) or just ripping-off, Saving Private Ryan is evoked more than once in the battle scenes. In the case of Lee's film, he also isn't entirely sure always how he wants to ground the picture: is it about the black soldiers on their quagmire of sorts, or about the little boy who nicknames the big friendly black soldier "Chocolate Giant", or about Partisans and their daring-do and corruption alongside the Nazi's? Or is it about believing in frigging miracles? Lee wants it to be about all of these things, and has made the running time of 160+ minutes so that he can fit as much as possible with pretty much anything and everything from James McBride's book packed in (this even includes anachronisms, like a German officer referring to the Geneva conventions!)

And while it is easy to criticize Lee for putting in so much, and overcrowding the mid-section of his picture (and eventually coming to some real head-scratching, groan-inducing bits towards the very end), there is passionate film-making on display. There are chunks that are compelling, that do convey the blatant racism that was pervasive at the time for anyone with dark skin color (albeit Lee stuffs in next to no white people who aren't dumb bigots), and the as-a-given brutality of the Nazi war machine. There's one particular scene, I should note where an entire town is massacred, that delivers the devastating effect Lee wants, and there are a couple others like it that deliver the visceral reaction intended with modern war pictures.

For all of its faults, for all of its hackneyed acting- including one guy who seems like a WW2 version of the Alpa Chino character from Tropic Thunder complete with gold tooth- and bits involving a precocious kid communicating by tapping, and for its mind-boggling plot twists, it is often well-directed and conscious of its message. It's a disappointment, to be certain, but there's worse. 5.5/10

Lee makes a European film allowing philosophical questions and moral questions to supplant desire for personal satisfaction and identifiable this is a Spike Lee film signature patterns. There are a number of excellent directorial decisions in this film. Lee's camera is sensitive, gentle and sincere. He shows us the many ways our eyes are deceived and how much of what we perceive is illusion. I think its a great film that is inspirational, has meaning and is both emotionally and intellectually satisfying. I hope that Lee will continue to make films outside his comfort zone and articulate events from the African American experience around the world to show our contribution to history and civilization.

A funny thing happens when you're counted among the preeminent talents in any contemporary art form: Everything you do must approach sublime... or else. Something less funny happens when your art is as socially outspoken as Spike Lee's body of work: Folk wait with baited breath to name every shred of detail that marks your work as somehow less than sublime. And in so doing, they ever miss the forest for the trees.

Lee's latest "joint," MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA, based on James McBride's novel of the same name, no doubt will suffer from such deconstruction, some of which will be justified. At 160+ minutes, the fictional recollection of four black American WWII soldiers who get trapped in an Italian village during a German insurgence, can wax tedious. And Lee's defaulting to certain conventions of the war genre and his own signature style occasionally comes off forced, sentimental, even ridiculous. After, say, the 10th close-up of a slain human -- eyes still open in horror -- we may not need to see an 11th, 12th, 13th. And any casual student of cinema might spot Lee's attempted tear-jerker ending a la CINEMA PARADISO coming a mile away.

Then there are the technical shortcomings of personnel who should know better: A score by Terence Blanchard is uncharacteristically overwrought; cinematography by Matthew Libatique is alternately breathtaking and obtuse; and a self-adapted screenplay by McBride suffers from a conspicuously uncommitted point of view. But, indeed, what may most undercut any visceral charm of MASA is at once admirably realistic: The film's characters aren't particularly moving in their conflicted natures and utter lack of romance. Only a visionary Italian boy, played beautifully by newcomer Matteo Sciabordi, and the black American soldier who befriends him, played by the hulking Omar Benson Miller, elicit any real sympathy.

All told, the numerous missteps do not seriously undercut a captive tale of humans -- white, black and brown -- who find themselves thrown into a hell not of their making and forced to juggle universal sensibilities with the duties of their divergent identities. In this regard, Lee's latest shows marked progress: Gone are the one-sided depictions of whites. Fascist-era native Italians are shown here in all their warring complexity; American actor D.B. Sweeney plays a key, if understated, role as a white U.S. colonel opposed to the exploitation of the all-black 92nd Army Division; even Nazi stormtroopers here are given back a modicum of humanity. Neither is the African American experience sanctified: Actor Michael Ealy's preacher-turned-soldier character is equal parts charming and vile; and one pre-Civil Rights-era American flashback begs the question of what line separates hero and villain. If one is willing to forgive the imperfect details from a filmmaker who has proved capable of better, the aggregate statement is hardly ineffectual.

Lee's real victory here shouldn't be missed. MASA does not rise to the level of the best of the genre. Neither is it worthy to be called the definitive tribute to an unsung 92nd Army Division or the souls lost at Sant'Anna di Stazzema. But it is always watchable, always interesting -- and as an engaging enough mystery film and thoughtful ensemble piece with an important, forgotten corner of human failure as backdrop, it succeeds.

I don't know why everyone here keeps telling that this movie is bad, because it's definitely rather good. Only thing to take out of plot was mas execution of civilians which I couldn't take and just pressed "skip the scene". From the very beginning, where troops advancing to enemy lines got under artillery and machine-gun fire dialogs are interesting and realistic, let alone so called hook from first minutes where black postman kills his customer for no apparent reason. It cost $45M to produce and true that commercially it has become a screw up but not everything revolves around money. I say it has no major faults in plot, definitely no more than any other picture does. And that story with Italian girl - Renata was her name, all is fair in love and war. Definitely worth seeing. Comparison to Save Private Ryan is not applicable.