The War According to Spike
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Never one to soft-pedal his ambitions, Spike Lee opens his grandiosely garish World War II epic Miracle at St. Anna with an old black man watching John Wayne in The Longest Day and muttering, “We fought for this country, too.” It’s a naked declaration—a big fat cinematic placard—of Lee’s intention to reclaim not only American history but American movies and their whitewashing myths. And that’s cool. As the most prominent African-American director of all time, Lee feels entitled, perhaps even obligated, to challenge the malign neglect of the past. He was right to mouth off about Clint Eastwood’s leaving black soldiers out of Iwo Jima (although his case was blunted by having once mouthed off about Eastwood’s audacity in making a Charlie Parker biopic—Lee wants to be the keeper of his brothers’ stories). And he was canny to recognize in James McBride’s novel about the all-black 92nd Infantry Division an ideal vehicle for his Flags of Our Fathers—his The Longest Day. Lee’s canvas is impressively vast. The shock is in how coarsely he fills it in.
In the jumpy prologue, set in 1983, the old John Wayne contrarian, a post-office teller, shoots an Italian at his window with a German Luger he keeps conveniently at his desk, and police searching his Harlem apartment find a long-lost marble head from a Florence bridge that was blown up by the Nazis. The film is a flashback in which we learn why the old man killed the Italian, and why he bristled at Wayne’s laconic avowal to hold a small Italian village, and who the hell is the middle-aged Italian guy who spilled his coffee in slow motion when he read about the murder. Along the way, there are hideous atrocities and holy resurrections, in addition to the heart-tugging story of a gentle-giant black soldier who adopts a traumatized Italian orphan. The movie skips from one formula to another, with clunky debates a constant: cynical blacks versus idealistic blacks; guilty Nazis versus bad Nazis; Italian partisans versus Italian Fascists.
In the jumpy prologue, set in 1983, the old John Wayne contrarian, a post-office teller, shoots an Italian at his window with a German Luger he keeps conveniently at his desk, and police searching his Harlem apartment find a long-lost marble head from a Florence bridge that was blown up by the Nazis. The film is a flashback in which we learn why the old man killed the Italian, and why he bristled at Wayne’s laconic avowal to hold a small Italian village, and who the hell is the middle-aged Italian guy who spilled his coffee in slow motion when he read about the murder. Along the way, there are hideous atrocities and holy resurrections, in addition to the heart-tugging story of a gentle-giant black soldier who adopts a traumatized Italian orphan. The movie skips from one formula to another, with clunky debates a constant: cynical blacks versus idealistic blacks; guilty Nazis versus bad Nazis; Italian partisans versus Italian Fascists.
