Posted on 12/27/2014 6:33:18 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Let’s imagine, for a moment, that “Unbroken” had been directed by somebody who wasn’t Angelina Jolie. It easily could have been. This tale of wartime adventure and survival, adapted from Laura Hillenbrand’s nonfiction bestseller, definitely called for a big-name Hollywood director, but it would have been highly plausible – maybe more plausible – as a project for Ron Howard or Ridley Scott or Steven Spielberg or Clint Eastwood than as the second film for the star-turned-director best known as the female half of the world’s most famous celebrity couple. Would it be getting less attention if one of those guys had made it, or more respect? Both, perhaps? How is our perception of the film being shaped by the unique fame and unique cultural status of its director, and by our desire to project meanings onto her unusual career transition?
I totally understand, and share, the longing to believe that Jolie can step behind the camera and compete with the big dogs in a nearly all-male field, at a level where making a movie is a lot more like running a small company than like painting a picture. Let’s be clear about this: She can. “Unbroken” is a rousing old-fashioned yarn with numerous exciting set-pieces and an uncomplicated hero you root for all the way through. It’s entertaining throughout and made with a high level of technical skill. If made 40 years ago, it would have been a leading Oscar contender and a huge hit, whereas today it’s a bit “meh” in both categories: It will likely get several Oscar nominations but won’t win anything big, and it might have trouble attracting eyeballs in the overcrowded holiday season.
We can say the gender of a filmmaker doesn’t matter or shouldn’t matter, but we aren’t even close to that place yet. There are still almost no women among A-list Hollywood directors; even Kathryn Bigelow makes her films relatively cheap with independent financing. Ava DuVernay, whose civil-rights drama “Selma” also comes out this week, may be the next one. If any female movie star of anywhere near Jolie’s prominence has gone on to direct major films … well, no one has and there’s no clear parallel. (Yeah, Ida Lupino made one movie, and there are a few examples in European cinema. The point stands.)
The aura of specialness around “Unbroken” has provoked various unhelpful reactions that have little to do with the film itself. On one hand, there is boosterism and solidarity: An awesome breakthrough for women! On the other, there’s sneering condescension: Not bad, for a privileged girl working with play money. A fairer way of framing Jolie’s blow for gender equality is to say that she has succeeded admirably in making an old-fashioned adventure movie just as capable and unmemorable as if one of those old dudes I mentioned above had made it. Indeed, Clint Eastwood – with whom Jolie worked in “Changeling” – is pretty much the obvious career model, and “Unbroken” is almost exactly like one of the proficient and pointless middlebrow dramas Eastwood has been making since he quit acting.
According to some reports, the story of real-life World War II hero Louis Zamperini, played by fast-rising British star Jack O’Connell in “Unbroken,” was considered possible fodder for a Hollywood feature as long ago as the late 1950s. Indeed, it might have fit better in that era than in this one, considering that Zamperini’s saga is like a one-man display of How America Won the War. A kid from Southern California whose Italian immigrant parents spoke no English, Zamperini emerged from teenage delinquency to compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics (the same games in which Jesse Owens won several gold medals) as a long-distance runner. In the war, Zamperini survived a plane crash in the Pacific Ocean, spent more than six weeks adrift in a lifeboat and endured several years in an especially brutal series of Japanese POW camps.
How to understand Zamperini’s stranger-than-fiction true story, either in life or in the movies, is open to debate. We could say that some people find reserves of courage and strength within themselves that most of us don’t possess (and will never have to search for), and leave it at that. There’s no moral to be found there, necessarily: Zamperini was young and strong and lucky, and outlasted circumstances in which thousands upon thousands of other strong young men died. If his story appealed to Hollywood filmmakers, first of all, because it’s a rip-roaring adventure that keeps shifting from one episode to the next, like an Indiana Jones movie, there was also another reason. It can be described in platitudinous terms as being about the resilience of the human spirit, while none-too-subtly making the point that human spirit runs just that little bit stronger in Americans than other people.
It’s almost surprising that a version of “Unbroken” wasn’t made around 1959, with Tony Curtis playing Zamperini and someone like Stanley Kramer directing the film. But it didn’t happen and the whole story receded into history for many years. Zamperini attended the 1998 Winter Olympics in Japan, meeting with some of his captors from the POW years. That brought his story back into the media spotlight and eventually Hillenbrand, the author of “Seabiscuit,” figured out that Zamperini was still alive and wrote a best-selling account of his adventures, which in turn became a hot Hollywood property. (Zamperini died last July, at age 97, but not before he had seen an early cut of Jolie’s film.)
As a movie, “Unbroken” is entertaining enough, but feels a bit like an afterthought. It has terrific cinematography by Roger Deakins and a long-in-development script whose credited writers include Joel and Ethan Coen, Richard LaGravenese (“Beloved”) and William Nicholson (“Gladiator”). It has airplanes and sharks and roaring crowds above swastika banners, and a sadistic Japanese soldier (the notorious Mutsuhiro “The Bird” Watanabe, a real-life war criminal) played with lubricious zeal by Japanese rock star Miyavi. Some people have claimed to raise various political objections to the movie, but I can’t get interested to that degree. My problem is that “Unbroken” melts into every other POW movie, and every other lifeboat movie, that I’ve ever seen. A week after seeing it, I’m not sure whether I’m remembering “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” or “Life of Pi.” O’Connell is meant to make a vigorous impression but just comes off as another square-jawed, pseudo-Nietzschean hero. I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten him mixed up with Hugh Jackman in “The Wolverine,” which is more worth watching in any case.
Great movie!
Do you think the movie could have been made without degenerating into “prison porn” but still be true this man's experience?
I don't plan on seeing the movie. Seriously, I don't think that Zamperini’s story could be told without showing the violence, and if they didn't show it, it wouldn't be his life. The violence would be just too much for me, just listening to the audiobook was almost too much.
“...good reason to believe that the bomb(s) resulted in FEWER Japanese casualties than an invasion would have...”
The two atomic bombs killed something like 150 to 200 thousand. I think the firebombing of Toyko almost 100k died in a few days of that campaign. An invasion would have been far more costly to the Japs.
The invasion plan of Japan was called “Operation Downfall”
excerpt:
“Personnel at the Navy Department estimated that the total losses to America would be between 1.7 and 4 million with 400,000 to 800,000 deaths.
The same department estimated that there would be up to 10 million Japanese casualties.”
I’m not sure what percantage of Jap casualties would end up as deaths. A higher percentage than America I would imagine - so at least 2 million. Or - if they went the way of fighting to the death like they did on Iwo Jima - then closer to 10 million.
And yet the revisionist left calls us barbarians for using the bomb. Disgusting.
Well, I don’t know what “Prison Porn” is.
But the brutal aspects of what this man went through are key to the story.
If they had fed the man three square meals a day, let him sleep in a featherbed and bathe every day, his forgiveness would have been far less dramatic and amazing.
I understand exactly what you mean...my wife and I discussed it when we found out a movie was being made, and both of us thought “Boy, that is going to be tough. It is all worth it in the end, but the getting to the end is pretty grim.
As far as movies go, “Saving Private Ryan” would not have the impact without the opening 30 minutes, just as “Band of Brothers” really needed the scenes from the Battle of The Bulge and D-Day.
I agree it is likely going to be uncomfortable to watch. I have heard some folks say they can’t watch movies like “Blackhawk Down” because of the portrayals of American servicemen being wounded and killed is more than they can take emotionally.
I respect that people feel that way. In this case, I think they have to show it, but...does that make it “Prison Porn”? I don’t think it does. I think it is a key to understanding.
Louie Zamperini’s life may or may not have been changed by the Olympics or being an AAF aircrew.
He might have never gone back to the Olympics, he might have hurt his legs, he might have had a family and got involved with them, and he might have finished the war as AAF crew without ever having spent a moment in a life raft or under the brutal gaze of a Japanese guard, and we would likely know nothing about him.
But...the floating in that raft, being a prisoner under the most brutal of captors, and finding God in a tent with Billy Graham...THOSE are the things that shaped him for the rest of his wonderful life, and MADE him the man he became. I fully understand they may not focus on his religious conversion the way I would want them to, but I do hope someone seeing the movie might read the book and get that message, it it isn’t conveyed correctly in the movie.
To me, that makes the trying worth it.
Yeah...Mel Brooks had his two best in the same year
Convert the grosses to 2014 dollars....its huge
Mebbe it hurted his widdle brain, having to actually think, and whatnot, without explosions and impossible acrobats somersaulting from helicopter doors.
Hey Laz, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Bless your late Mom, she raised a good guy.
Ditto
Pretty remarkable story.
I see strong parallels between this and the book of Job.
David Westheimer, who wrote the novel Von Ryan's Express, wrote a novel called Lighter Than A Feather, a fictionalized treatment of the invasion of Japan.
I read it when I was younger, and was suitably impressed with the appalling aftermath of such an undertaking - particularly amongst the civilian population.
The pious liars can jam it.
http://www.amazon.com/Lighter-Than-Feather-David-Westheimer/dp/1131309553
Quit being a damned victim. That’s the Left’s job.
After reading the book, seeing your comments, and then watching the movie; I don't think you could be more wrong if you tried.
Given that she only had a little over two and a half hours to tell the story. The high points were all there. His delinquent youth, redemption through sports, the air battles, 47 days on a raft, and brutality of his POW experience.
It might have been a better miniseries, but this movie presented it in such a way that some viewers will want to read the book.
Not the kind of attitude I would want with me in a foxhole.
Stanley Kaufman....New Republic... worse
Siskel and Ebert were just low wattage red diaper babies
Its nothing to do with gender
That Point Break chick
And Jodie Foster
And more girls
Have made decent film
Hollywood libtards love anything PC behind the movie....
Read "unbroken" as well. There are a lot of details in the book that didn't make it to the screen.
I think you are wrong
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.