Posted on 01/02/2015 6:16:05 AM PST by KeyLargo
‘Unbroken’ and Billy Graham The movie and the book about Louis Zamperini’s life skimp on the pivotal role of a certain preacher.
By Grant Wacker Jan. 1, 2015
Newspaper headlines agreed. Billy Graham —“heaven’s super salesman,” “the Lord’s top salesman”—knew how to close the deal. If he just read from a telephone book, one associate quipped, people would stand up and commit their lives to Christ.
Louis Zamperini, who died July 2 at age 97, was a case in point. The Olympic distance runner and World War II hero is the subject of Laura Hillenbrand ’s acclaimed 2010 biography, “Unbroken,” and of the new Angelina Jolie-directed movie based on the book.
As Ms. Hillenbrand tells the story, after mechanical problems caused Zamperini’s B-24 Liberator bomber to crash into the Pacific in 1943, the bombardier endured 47 days drifting on a life raft, and then two horrific years in a Japanese prison camp. When he returned to California at the end of the war, Zamperini fell into a maw of nightmares, alcoholism and severe post-traumatic stress, obsessively dreaming of taking revenge on the Japanese.
In 1949 Zamperini’s wife implored him to go with her to Billy Graham’s tent revival in downtown Los Angeles. The second night, Zamperini “walked the sawdust trail”—and publicly professed his newfound faith. He tossed out booze and cigarettes and embraced a lifetime of selfless Christian service, including a trip to Japan to forgive his tormentors.
Though Ms. Hillenbrand recounts Zamperini’s conversion, she doesn’t say much about how it influenced the rest of his life. In the movie “Unbroken,” Billy Graham goes unmentioned, and Zamperini’s redemption narrative is largely reduced to a few title cards flashed before the closing credits. Yet Zamperini himself believed that the religious event was the pivotal moment of his long journey.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
i read the book but won’t see the movie...a Jewish friend of mine read the book as well as saw the movie and we were talking...i asked him how much of the movie focused on Billy Graham’s effect on Zamperini and my buddy was exasperated by how little the movie mentioned Graham...
The whole point of the book was Zamperini’s conversion at a Billy Graham crusade and his redemption and the message of hope in Christ.
So what is the point of the movie?
The point was probably to co-opt any other movie that might tell the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say.
The point of the movie is apparently is that in the liberal media agenda always trumps reality. They simply cannot utilize an anti PC theme.
that was not the whole point of the book but it was a turning point in his life the book brought out...
I think the point of the movie was: Forgiveness. This is what healed Louie after such an ordeal and that is Christ’s message.
Exactly ...
The message of the book is that there is hope in Christ's redemptive power.
What was the message of the movie? Did you read the book?
Did you see the movie?
I should have known better.
LOL...yes i read the book but won’t see the movie...two posts ago you claimed Zamperini’s conversion was the WHOLE point of the book and now you’re claiming it was just a message in the book...
it was neither- it was part of Zamperini’s life story, an important part of his life which saved him, but part of the story which had to be told...if Zamperini had died a drunk would his drinking be the whole point of the book?? or his survival in the Pacific??
“The whole point of the book was Zamperini’s conversion at a Billy Graham crusade and his redemption and the message of hope in Christ.
So what is the point of the movie?”
Basically, the movie was comparable to most of the Hollywood WWII war films made before PC took over, such as ‘Bridge Over the River Kwai’, and others.
I thought that it was very unusual for Hollywood to portray Japanese soldiers as sadistic in today’s PC world.
Angelina Jolie’s ‘Unbroken’ stirs resentment in Japan
Kirk Spitzer, Special for USA TODAY 9:28 p.m. EST December 23, 2014
TOKYO – Nationalists in Japan are denouncing Hollywood filmmaker Angelina Jolie’s new movie about an American airman brutalized in Japanese prison camps during World War II as anti-Japanese propaganda and are calling for a boycott of the film and its star director.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/12/23/japan-unbroken/20803301/
Too bad Clint Eastwood didn’t produce it instead of Joilie.
Typical Hollywood stunt.
I didn't say it was "a" message", I said it was "THE" Message.
Did you even read the book? Did you get past the title?
The title is
Devil at My Heels (Google eBook)
Louis Zamperini, David Rensin
Harper Collins, Oct 6, 2009 - Biography & Autobiography - 336 pages
70 Reviews
An “inspirational” and “extraordinary” memoir of one of the most courageous of the greatest generation, Devil at My Heels is a must-read for anyone who read and loved Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Lauren Hillenbrand. Now with a new foreword exclusive to the ebook edition, in which Louis Zamperini reflects on his life through 2010 and being the subject of Hillenbrand’s critically acclaimed biography.
A juvenile delinquent, a world class NCAA miler, a 1936 Olympian, a WWII bombardier: Louis Zamperini had a fuller than most, when it changed in an instant. On May 27, 1943, his B–24 crashed into the Pacific Ocean. Louis and two other survivors found a raft amid the flaming wreckage and waited for rescue. Instead, they drifted two thousand miles for forty–seven days. Their only food: two shark livers and three raw albatross. Their only water: sporadic rainfall. Their only companions: hope and faith–and the ever–present sharks. On the forty–seventh day, mere skeletons close to death, Zamperini and pilot Russell Phillips spotted land–and were captured by the Japanese. Thus began more than two years of torture and humiliation as a prisoner of war.
Zamperini was threatened with beheading, subject to medical experiments, routinely beaten, hidden in a secret interrogation facility, starved and forced into slave labour, and was the constant victim of a brutal prison guard nicknamed the Bird–a man so vicious that the other guards feared him and called him a psychopath. Meanwhile, the Army Air Corps declared Zamperini dead and President Roosevelt sends official condolences to his family, who never gave up hope that he was alive.
Somehow, Zamperini survived and he returned home a hero. The celebration was short–lived. He plunged into drinking and brawling and the depths of rage and despair. Nightly, the Bird’s face leered at him in his dreams. It would take years, but with the love of his wife and the power of faith, he was able to stop the nightmares and the drinking.
A stirring memoir from one of the greatest of the “Greatest Generation,” Devil at My Heels is a living document about the brutality of war, the tenacity of the human spirit, and the power of forgiveness.
From Booklist
Zamperini and Rensin devote three-quarters of the former’s autobiography to his ups and downs before the influence of Billy Graham turned him around and he became a well-known inspirational speaker. A near delinquent in interwar Los Angeles, he nevertheless became a good enough runner to make the U.S. team for the 1936 Olympics. Later, serving in the Army Air Force in World War II, he survived six weeks adrift on a raft after his plane went down at sea and then, more than two years of particularly atrocious treatment as a prisoner of the Japanese. His postwar rehabilitation involved opportunities missed, money squandered, and sieges of alcoholism until Graham’s counsel took hold (he also credits his wife, paying her generous tribute). His book not only retells the interesting life story of a generation now passing from the scene but also adds significantly to knowledge of each of the kinds of experience he underwent. It will find readers and please them. Roland Green
I’d like to see the film, but hubby is not keen on prisoner of war camp movies. Must be the Ret. SCPO in him.
I’ll skip the movie and buy the book.
I haven’t read the book or seen the movie, so it’s fascinating watching the comments.
What do we really have when we take Christ out of the equation? There might be success; there might be tragedy; there might be something in between — but there’s only one way to add lasting meaning. That’s to add in what part Christ played in that person’s life.
Every life is an object lesson about eternal destination.
‘Unbroken’ is in the same genre as;
To End All Wars (2001)
117 min - Action | Drama | War - 2 September 2001 (USA)
7.1
“A true story about four Allied POWs who endure harsh treatment from their Japanese captors during World War II while being forced to build a railroad through the Burmese jungle.”
Excellent, critical review of ‘Unbroken’ here:
Unbroken: Broken Storytelling. Read the Book. See the Movie To End All Wars.
“And if you want to watch a true story about spiritual transcendence, and the power of forgiveness in a Japanese POW camp, watch To End All Wars, starring Kiefer Sutherland, on Amazon Movies On Demand. It’s got everything the movie Unbroken has about survival in suffering injustice. But it also has on-screen what Unbroken doesn’t: redemption, atonement, transcendence.”
http://godawa.com/movieblog/unbroken-broken-storytelling-read-book-see-movie-end-wars/
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