Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Miracle at St. Anna

by Ari

The ambition behind Spike Lee’s sprawling World War II epic Miracle at St. Anna is what helps the film overcome its over-stuffed story-line and disjointed execution. The mixture of heroic, old-fashioned American war film, on-the-nose racial commentary and European anti-war tragedy isn’t exactly the best recipe for success, but Lee’s innate understanding of cinematic language keeps the uneven vision (based on the novel by James McBride) at an intriguing, gripping place for the film’s nearly 3 hour runtime.

Like just about every war film to come out since Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan in 1998, Miracle at St. Anna bookends the story of an African American unit helping a small Italian village in 1944 with sequences of one of the veterans several years later. After Hector Negron (Laz Alonso) kills an Italian man in a New York bank in the 1980’s, the police investigate Negron's home and find that he’s not only a war hero but the owner of a priceless Italian artifact. From here we get the story of how that artifact made it all the way from Italy to Negron’s possession.

In the film’s first battle sequence we see the group crossing a river into enemy territory as a Nazi loudspeaker broadcasts the voice of Axis Sally (Alexandra Maria-Lara of Youth Without Youth and Control, one of the best young actresses we have today) telling the soldiers to surrender instead of fighting for a country with such a powerful racial divide. The battle rages on afterwards, killing most of the men and leaving four soldiers - Negron (now younger), Stamps (Derek Luke), Cummings (Michael Ealy) and Train (Omar Benson Miller) - to continue the drive forward through Italy. Along the way to a small village, Train saves a lost Italian boy named Angelo (Matteo Sciabordi) who talks to an imaginary friend and takes an immediate liking to his new American savior (he calls him “the Chocolate Giant”). They don’t understand each other, but a relationship develops as the Americans settle in the village.

Multiple side-plots are established with various characters (typical love interest, political upheaval between the villagers, tension between the Americans) and though they have individual moments, the film suffers from all the quick tonal changes. It’s especially difficult when you’re balancing a heroic battle film with a Neo-Realist inspired drama about a very tragic figure like Angelo. The problem is that Lee has two movies here and mashes them together for the sake of a huge epic. The material with Angelo is mostly excellent, and the boy gives one of the most naturalistic and emotional performances of the year.

It takes a while for everything to make it back to New York 40 years later, but the payoff works in a very splashy, old Hollywood way. It's an uneven experience and certainly not a Spike Lee classic, but I was still engaged more often than not, and almost two weeks after seeing it I still find myself pondering and replaying specific moments. That counts for something.