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 get tired of hyperbole that says “never before” “only”...
Nobody feels sorry for what happened to Germany because of WWII. But due to the A-blasts, many people somehow feel Japan was wronged by the Allies. The Japanese were about as bad as the Germans concerning atrocities. It wasn't just Allied POWs who were subjected to brutal conditions...the Japanese murdered millions of civilians in China and other Asian countries.
Even before the world war started, Japan had invaded China and started merciless treatment of civilians. Many millions of Chinese civilians were killed by the Japanese. Maybe a million or more in other Asian countries.
So no tears here for the Japanese who were killed in Allied bombing raids. Sorry. Like Germany, they reaped the whirlwind.
IMHO, Stephen Hunter is the only one worth a damn.
Hitler thought the Japanese were being unnecessarily cruel to the Chinese.
You are a troll. I watched the movie. There was nothing bizarre except the actual events which must be used to tell the story. The boredom of being on a raft for 45 days must have been excruciating. But instead of feeling that, and empathizing with the characters, you think it’s a flaw of moviemaking that must be relayed immediately. Huh? Why are you here? There can only be one reason; to keep people from seeing the film. If the film was bizarre, or inaccurate, or poorly made, then your comments might make sense. However, since it is none of these things your presence here suggests an alterior motive. A boring movie does not motivate anyone to say anything but... Hey, it’s boring.
***Japanese behavior during WWII tends to raise my blood pressure**
Especially since the US government gave up looking for Japanese war criminals a few years after the war, but will still compass land and sea to root out an aged Nazi prison guard.
ping for later viewing.
We had already established air superiority over Japan. Here's a thought: we should have just saturated Japan with conventional bombing runs. Just bomb them back into the stone age. But not drop the nukes yet.
Then, at the close of the war, when Stalin demanded Russia take possession of Poland, etc, we say "no." Flat out. And when Stalin started massing troops to enslave Poland, etc, then we drop nukes on Moscow, St. Petersburg, etc.
Talk about saving millions of lives. Stalin killed more than Hitler ever dreamed of. And Stalin was our ally.
Please read “Downfall” by Richard Frank, it details the last six months or so of the battle against Japan.
It goes into detail about the planning for the invasion of Japan the B-29 bombing raids and the decision to use the Atomic Bombs. Will answer most all questions of the what and why.
I think maybe that dropping the bomb on Japan may have had something to do with Russia. Russia was getting ready to jump in against Japan and grab up Japanese land. There was also the shock value.
ding ding ding. Post of the day.
Saw Lone Survivor on DVD last night. True story. Not boring.
One estimate I saw years ago stated that a conventional invasion of Japan would have extended the war through at least 1946 and would have cost 5 - 6 million Japanese lives and one million additional American casualties.
The A-bombs, as you said, saved millions of lives.
The lives SAVED by the japanese Abombs will NEVER be known..
Therefore never appreciated, honored, highlighted, movies made of them, or recognized..
Almost like they didn’t happen..
When they DID HAPPEN.. both Japanese and American.. (and the allies)
and went on to have children, grand children, AND great grand children..
Whom may surely not (( BE HERE )) except for the Abombs in Japan..
Any LACK of gratitude should be SLAPPED.. HARD...
Not to muddy the issue, but I always believed that the bombs saved millions of lives, both American and Japanese
...absolutely correct...and another way to look at it; let’s say for humanitarian purposes Truman decided not to deploy the two weapons, and the long invasion and certain siege to follow cost hundreds of thousands of Allied lives...when the news of the existence of these bombs were made public, and the fact that Truman declined to use them...would he not be considered a war criminal...?
LeMay and Hap Arnold had reported that we would run out of bombing targets in Japan by Septenber 1945. There was literally nothing left to bomb.
Then, at the close of the war, when Stalin demanded Russia take possession of Poland, etc, we say "no." Flat out. And when Stalin started massing troops to enslave Poland, etc, then we drop nukes on Moscow, St. Petersburg, etc.
The Soviets already had Poland. They had to go through it to get to Berlin. They paused to let the Germans annihilate any Polish resistance before moving through though.
I’m reading the book but won’t see the movie. I’ve yet to read a review that says the movie is anywhere near the book in terms of describing the scope of Zamperini’s life.
My knees buckled reading that book. It was amazing. A truly great man.
The Soviets already had Poland. They had to go through it to get to Berlin. They paused to let the Germans annihilate any Polish resistance before moving through though.
Nonetheless, Patton wanted to continue marching into Russia as we knew Stalin was our enemy, even when he was our ally. If the first time we let him know we had nukes was when we blew him into eternity, it would have saved a lot of lives.
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