Bravery Of Buffalo Soldiers Belatedly Acknowledged By Spike Lee’s WWII
Saga
During World War II, the
United States Armed Forces were still segregated, and the government directed embedded cameramen not to film or photograph any black soldiers
on the front lines. Consequently, African-American GIs were invisible not only
in official news footage, but later when it came time to write the history books
and to shoot Hollywood movies.
As
a Baby Boomer, I distinctly remember being virtually raised on sentimental,
patriotic war flicks which invariably suggested that all of the country’s heroes
had been white, misleading accounts which stood in sharp contrast to the
stories simultaneously being shared with me by my father, my uncles and other honorably-discharged
veterans. Regrettably, this slight against them was never corrected during most
of their lifetimes.
Even relatively-recent
World War II cinematic adventures, such as Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our
Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, have continued
to overlook the bravery of the so-called Buffalo Soldiers. This makes Spike
Lee’s Miracle
at St. Anna an important contribution simply
by virtue of its being brought to the big screen at all, for it pays tribute to
the service, albeit belatedly, of the long-neglected black members of “America's
Greatest Generation.”
The movie was adapted by James McBride from his fact-based best-seller
of the same name, a 300+ page-turner chronicling the exploits of the all-black
92nd Division stationed in Italy in 1944. This
character-driven tale specifically telescopes on the plight of a quartet of enlisted
men separated from their decimated unit and forced to survive by their wits in
a tiny Tuscan village located behind enemy lines.
Each of the four protagonists represents a readily-recognizable
archetype, starting with Aubrey Stamps (Derek Luke), the prototypical no-nonsense
Staff Sergeant and highest ranking officer. Then there’s the
preacher-turned-playboy Bishop Cummings (Michael Ealy), gentle giant Sam Train
(Omar Benson Miller) and Puerto Rican Hector Negron (Laz Alonso), a Corporal
who adds a little Latin flava’.
The movie opens and closes in New York City in 1983, courtesy of a wraparound
featuring sixty-something Negron going postal just three months before his planned
retirement. Was there perhaps a valid reason for his seemingly inexplicable
violent outburst? The bulk of the balance of the picture is devoted to an
extended wartime flashback wherein the answer ostensibly lies.
While only indirectly addressing the solution to that mystery, the
multi-layered plot instead concerns itself with threading in an array of
complicated sidebars. One involves Private Train’s adopting a boy (Matteo Sciabordi) orphaned by a Nazi massacre. Another pits
gentlemanly Sgt. Stamps against the womanizing Bishop in a love/lust triangle
for the affections of the most attractive lass (Valentina Cervi) in town. The
third strand raises the question of the trustworthiness of the leader (Pierfrancesco
Favino) of the local cell of the anti-Fascist resistance.
Nonetheless, the power of Miracle
at St. Anna repeatedly derives from
its plausibly portraying the Second World War from the heretofore unseen
perspective of African-American soldiers, whether they’re shown secretly spitting
into the canteen of a racist white superior, wondering why they’re risking
their lives for a country where they can’t even vote, or reflecting on actually
feeling more free in a foreign land than they ever have at home. An overdue history
lesson about the indelible stain left by Jim Crow on the conflicted minds of black
men forced to wage a white man’s war when they’d really prefer to be fighting
for their own civil rights.
lll1/2
Rated: R for graphic war violence, profanity, ethnic slurs, nudity
and sexual content.
Running time: 160 minutes
Studio: Touchstone Pictures
To see a trailer for Miracle at St. Anna, visit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXMVLN5rqpA
