I am not particularly a fan of “life-raft” movies, or of
films focusing on torture of good guys forever.
Nevertheless, I found “
Unbroken”, directed by Angelina Jolie, quite
compelling. The end result was somewhat
that of a big 80s movie, but that “ain’t bad”. And this time, it leads to more
reflection of my own character. The film is based on Laura Hillenbrand’s book “
Unbroken:
A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption.” The screenwriters are the Coen Brothers (Joel
and Ethan Coen) but this film hardly seems typical of their work.
The film is a biography (through V-J Day of WWII) of Louis
Zamperini, (Jack O’Connell), who survived a plane crash in the Pacific Ocean in
1943, and was held under brutal conditions in a Japanese POW camp until the
end. The Japanese did not follow the
rules of the Geneva Convention, which we were taught in Army Basic (in 1968),
to say the least, but the conditions may have been more survivable than either
Hitler’s or Stalin’s.
The film starts with an air battle, which leads to the
crash. The earlier events are told in
flashback, and those related to combat (including an earlier crash landing) are
a bit confusing. But his boyhood as a “wop”
(played by C. J. Valleroy) is compelling, and leads to his running track in the
1936 Olympics in Berlin, expecting to repeat in 1940 in Tokyo! I wanted to see more of the 1936 event, to
see what Germany looked like to athletes then, and if they could pick up on any
clue as to what Hitler was doing. But
that might have made a different movie.
Once in the camp, Louis has repeated confrontations with the
abusive “Bird” Watanabe (Takamasa Ishihara), who makes his (and the other
prisoners’) status as an enemy very personal, gratuitously so. He was said to be spoiled when raised in the
aristocracy, and he acts sometimes like his sadistic pleasure is sexual. At one point, he gets the prisoners to
perform a Cinderella show in drag.
The life-raft sequence has the guys catching an albatross,
but vomiting after trying to eat it; but soon they learn the virtue of “free
fish”, even if raw.
There's one other point hinted. The movement of prisoners to Tokyo (before taking them high in the mountains), might have figured into Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb on (other) cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Other stars include Garrett Hedlund and Australian
heartthrob Jai Courtney, neither of whom you want to see abused.
The film calls to mind a number of films of partial genre
match: “All Is Lost”, “Life of Pi”, “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence” (1983). One
might even draw a comparison to “Pearl Harbor” (2001) with the Doolitle raid at
the end.
Tom Brokaw discussed the movie tonight on NBC News,
interviewing Louis at age 97. The idea
came up that the people who survive enemy capture best are those who are
extroverted and “like people’.
All of this gets personal for me. I “volunteered for the draft” in 1968 and “served
without serving” in a rather sheltered capacity, although I spent three weeks
in Special Training Company at Fort Jackson SC.
I used to say, when a grad student (before service), that if I were
maimed or disfigured in Vietnam combat, I didn’t want to come back. In fact, I wasn’t the only one who said that
then. It may sound cowardly, and most of
us don’t really know how we would react.
But the idea of expecting someone to love you (even sexually) after
disfigurement or extreme disability caused by the violence of others, has always
seemed revolting. Yet, I can understand
that unless people are game for that, a whole society will become fractured and
more vulnerable to dismemberment by enemies.
That may be a valuable point to remember in considering the “values” of
enemies of the West today (probably radical Islam – Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Iran –
more than communism, even North Korea).
Yet, I tend to see the personal aspect of this as cut and dried. Sacrifice is what it is – paying back karma,
perhaps. Playing up victimhood or even
heroism doesn’t work for me. Yet, I understand that forensic psychiatrists say people have to learn this as part of "resilience", maybe not so much for their own immediate good as for everyone else.
The official site is
here, from
Universal and Legendary (which usually works with Warner Brothers, especially
with Christopher Nolan). I saw this at
Angelika Mosaic on Friday afternoon, Boxing Day, before a sold-out crowd. The film is long, at 137 minutes, and rather
expansive, like a director’s cut, and somewhat styled like an independent film
(like Universal Focus) rather than studio.
Yet, to do justice to the Olympics material, which should have been
done, the film would top at about 160 minutes.
Expect the DVD to include more background material on this matter. The film was shot largely in Australia,
including the use of Fox studios there, swell as Queensland for the tropical
scenes. The music, by Andre Desplat, is
not as original as some of his other scores. The film has no relation to M. Night Shyamalan's "
Unbreakable" (2000) although the similarity of title is noteworthy, but probably coincidental.
See more of an earlier broadcast by Tom Brokaw on this movie on TV blog Dec. 9, 2014.
Wikipedia attribution
link for Japanese surrender in 1945.
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