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.
I read the book and saw the movie. It does hit all the highlights. The book is better due to the detail, but the movie is good.
What are you babbling about?
Maybe because the guards had the guns while the prisoners were malnourished and battling diseases.
I appreciate your thoughtful comments, and I agree with you.
I disagree with those who suggest it strays from the overall story. It doesn’t stray from the key facts or the timeline.
A few of the details used, such as the focus on gnocchi as his prime motivation, were trivial and misleading regarding their ocean ordeal. And, his experience depicted duringJapanese captivity were equally abridged.
No movie, unless 11 hours long, could capture the richness of the book, his heroic will to survive, his disintegration after returning home, the consequent failure of his marriage, then his eventual healing by faith.
So, while the movie is recognizable, much of the story doesn’t fit the Hollywood progressive world-view, and most of us are quite accustomed to that.
His story really does lack power without the context that was ignored, but perhaps our discussion here will raise interest in those reading to seek the book, so they can discover “the rest of the story”, as Paul Harvey used to say.
I have respect for the Coen brothers. I did not like all of their movies, but a few were excellent, and most were well-constructed. I think they did a good job of “constructing” this one so it would pass muster in tinsel-town.
Those of you who have seen the movie should really get your hands on the book. It is a serious read, and one that I hope eventually is widely read.
My uncle was the second wave to hit the beach at Iwo Jima when he was 17 years old. Think about that.
He never recovered, and like Zamperini, even though married to a wonderful and supportive wife, with two little boys, failed at jobs, drank, brooded, and eventually committed suicide.
My mother could never talk about it or explain it to us, and thanks to Unbroken, I now understand a bit of why so many young men came home broken.
You and I have agreed on a number of other issues, I don't think I am going to lose sleep over this disagreement and neither should you.
Oh ok thanks for the advice
Yes!
There are those who say there is never anything new under the sun, and sometimes I believe them.
Thanks for that insight.
My wife and I talked quite a bit about the book after we read it, and wondered aloud how anyone could return from those experiences and live a constructive life.
The fact that many people did is a testament to the resiliency of people. There were so many, not as famous as Louie Z. who went through some horrific things, but somehow survived, returned, married, had children and worked at jobs.
It is easy to think that the man who drank himself to death forty years later or shot himself in the head a week later is just as much a casualty of that war as any man killed on the front line in combat.
That even more did not is remarkable in and of itself.
I read the book by chance a couple of years ago and found it quite interesting. Saw the movie today and I thought it very well done and true to the book. I plan to see it again.
I and my family went yesterday. The theatre was filled and what struck me was how quiet the audience was. My complaint, as one who read the book, was that it seemed to end abruptly. Louie’s real triumph was the ordeal of his recovery recovery from his mental as well as physical health and his willingness to forgive even the Bird.
It’s funny you wrote that about dropping the bombs. I am in the process of transcribing some letters home from my uncles to their sister.
One letter dated Aug 9, ‘45 he wrote: “The Japs are saying dropping the atomic bomb was inhumane. I probably agree with that. But they can quit any time, and that would be fine with me.”
I was surprised at his agreement in the inhumanity at first. Then I realized this guy had been slogging through the jungles for a year and a half, working in graves registration-collecting bodies from the mountains and from the beaches. He was often under fire. He had seen enough inhumanity. He was just ready to come home.
I will not be responding to the content of your posts. Of course, if you continue to post to me, others may conclude that you are a stalker.
Just came back from seeing Unbroken. I have not read the book.
To those who criticize the movie as not living up to the standards of the book, I offer this:
A full theater, in deep blue Connecticut, sat still in total silence at the end of the movie to learn what became of Louie Z after the end of the story told by the movie. How God turned his life around. Then the entire theater applauded. For a good minute.
This movie hit a lot of people hard. Many of them will now be reading the book. They will just be doing the book-movie thing in a different order than you.
One of the prisoners mentioned in the book was captured a very short time after the war started. That means that he was in the camp roughly twice as long as Louie Z. I can't imagine the mental suffering and physical deprivation he underwent over that time.
B) Most have already concluded that you are a complete whack job due to the stupid comments you make on an almost daily basis.<>Have a good day and please note I am still praying for you and your family.
You could say that about anything.
LOL...well, that is ALSO true!
The movie just does not nail the prison of war experience. Even though they had to keep in the guidelines of the PG-13, there are ways to do the barbaric treatment by the Japanese to bring home the reality.
There were problems with the movie that I know will be seen as knit-picky. I will spare my entire list.
The story of Louis Zamperini's road to the Olympics was done well and inspiring. Why he didn't do so well in his race was not told. It did not tell of Louis' weight gain on the voyage over to Germany. The food aboard the ship was too much for him to resist. I would have wanted that tidbit of information.
During the opening ceremony, Zamperini and a Japanese athlete were shown nodding at each other. The Japanese athlete was the prison camp tormentor, Mutsuhiro "The Bird" Watanabe! What? Later in the prison camp, out trots "The Bird" and nothing is made about the Olympics encounter.
The B-24 was laden with eight long range Browning M2 .50 caliber machine guns: one in the nose, one in the belly, two in a tail turret, two in a dorsal turret (just aft of the cockpit), and two in the waist. The movie showed incredible trouble by the machine gun operators in knocking out the Japanese Zeros. The M2 wasn't called "Ma Deuce" for nothing. The movie showed the crew's airplane shot up like Swiss cheese. Why such a poor shooting performance? Hello!
The prison camp was moved to a coal transportation hub in a Japanese bay somewhere. It showed the prisoners packing coal off the barge, up a high staircase and up a ramp to the train car. The packs, strapped to their shoulders, were bucket-shaped and seemed to carry a huge weight of coal. Prisoners worked from early morning to nightfall. I cannot imagine why the Japanese used this method for transferring coal from a barge to a railroad car. Certainly conveyor belts and bucket elevators would have done it more efficiently--or a better design of the transfer station. The Japanese weren't that stupid!
There are many other holes in this movie that makes it like the Swiss cheese of the B-24 Liberator we saw in the movie.
In the real story of Zamperini, he is saved by his Christian faith after the war. He was converted at the 1949 Billy Graham crusade in Los Angeles. He threw away his cigarettes and booze and would go on to support Victory Boys camp, a place where young addicts received treatment. All was made about Zamperini's survival but nothing was made of his redemption. That is the huge hole that shoots down this movie for me.
I had the same question about the prisoners turning on the guards. I believe that these prisoners were not easy to come by. Keeping them alive gave them a valuable human resource. It seems like to me, if the guards had to shoot all the prisoners, they would have shot themselves out of a job. Thus, shooting prisoners would have been a last resort scenario they would not want to make. Also, I wonder where the Japanese would be if they shot all those coal workers at their distribution hub? They would have been without coal. That would be like shooting themselves in the foot.
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