Spike Lee’s goal of making “Miracle at St. Anna” the first Hollywood feature film to tell the story of the African-American soldiers who fought in World War II is an admirable one. Too bad the resulting movie is not admirable as well. Instead, it’s muddled and confusing and overly long. The screenplay, written by James McBride and based on his novel, does not tell the story from the perspective of one character, but from multiple viewpoints, resulting in the movie being a series of episodes. And by threading so many story lines together without a common focus, “Miracle at St. Anna” becomes a tangle of competing conflicts, underlying themes and distracting events.
The story is essentially one long flashback with an opening and closing sequence set in the 1980s. A postal worker, Hector Negron (Laz Alonso) shoots and kills a man who comes to his window to buy stamps. After his arrest, Hector won’t talk, but a reporter finds a clue hidden in Hector’s closet, a head of a statue that once adorned a bridge in Florence that was destroyed by bombs in World War II. From here, Lee takes us back to the Tuscan countryside where the all-black 92nd Infantry Division is trying to cross the Serchio River. In a sequence that rivals the opening of “Saving Private Ryan,” the men are ambushed and bodies and body parts go flying. Four members of the division end up stranded behind enemy lines, all but abandoned by their racist commander. Along with Negron, there’s Staff Sgt. Aubrey Stamps (Derek Luke), a college-educated man devoted to military service; Sgt. Bishop Cummings (Michael Ealy), the stereotypical angry black man; Pvt. Sam Train (Omar Benson Miller), a gentle giant of a man who rescues an Italian boy (Matteo Sciabordi). The men arrive at a picturesque village, where they mingle with the locals and a lovely married woman, Renata (Valentina Cervi) flirts with both Stamps and Cummings. The story then dissolves into murky subplots involving the Italian resistance and conflicted Germans.
The film jumps from brutal combat sequences to a man saving a boy, from erotic flirtations to comic interludes with the townspeople, from arguments between good and bad Germans to those of partisans fighting among themselves, from scenes of hope to scenes of bloody massacres. To these, Lee throws in occasional speeches about bigotry and a flashback within a flashback to prove how badly these men were treated stateside during their basic training. If Lee had more control of his material, the movie wouldn’t have been so confusing. Unfortunately, elements in "Miracle at St. Anna" never combine into an effective whole. And at the end of 160 minutes, all you feel is disappointment. 10/4/08
2 comments:
This Spike Lee Film is one of the most poorly constructed films I have seen this year. About the time I am trying to get interested in the story line the movie changes to another story line. After that and throughout the film I am trying to figure out what the "Miracle" is supposed to be and then the "Sleeping Man" enters into the story. I then try to figure what the "Sleeping Man" has to do with the plot and the little boy gets shot. Then his dead friend comes to take him by the hand to Heaven? Then the dead boy disappears and the other little boy is ok?? Is this the Miracle or is the fact that the German general handed a black soldier a gun and helps him get away after he slaughters almost everyone in the village??????????? All this time the acient sculptured head is lugged from scene to scene with people saying that the head gives them great strength. Was that the miracle???????? I'm going to bed, I'm confused
I give it one "Snicker"
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