Posted on 12/27/2014 6:33:18 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Let’s imagine, for a moment, that “Unbroken” had been directed by somebody who wasn’t Angelina Jolie. It easily could have been. This tale of wartime adventure and survival, adapted from Laura Hillenbrand’s nonfiction bestseller, definitely called for a big-name Hollywood director, but it would have been highly plausible – maybe more plausible – as a project for Ron Howard or Ridley Scott or Steven Spielberg or Clint Eastwood than as the second film for the star-turned-director best known as the female half of the world’s most famous celebrity couple. Would it be getting less attention if one of those guys had made it, or more respect? Both, perhaps? How is our perception of the film being shaped by the unique fame and unique cultural status of its director, and by our desire to project meanings onto her unusual career transition?
I totally understand, and share, the longing to believe that Jolie can step behind the camera and compete with the big dogs in a nearly all-male field, at a level where making a movie is a lot more like running a small company than like painting a picture. Let’s be clear about this: She can. “Unbroken” is a rousing old-fashioned yarn with numerous exciting set-pieces and an uncomplicated hero you root for all the way through. It’s entertaining throughout and made with a high level of technical skill. If made 40 years ago, it would have been a leading Oscar contender and a huge hit, whereas today it’s a bit “meh” in both categories: It will likely get several Oscar nominations but won’t win anything big, and it might have trouble attracting eyeballs in the overcrowded holiday season.
We can say the gender of a filmmaker doesn’t matter or shouldn’t matter, but we aren’t even close to that place yet. There are still almost no women among A-list Hollywood directors; even Kathryn Bigelow makes her films relatively cheap with independent financing. Ava DuVernay, whose civil-rights drama “Selma” also comes out this week, may be the next one. If any female movie star of anywhere near Jolie’s prominence has gone on to direct major films … well, no one has and there’s no clear parallel. (Yeah, Ida Lupino made one movie, and there are a few examples in European cinema. The point stands.)
The aura of specialness around “Unbroken” has provoked various unhelpful reactions that have little to do with the film itself. On one hand, there is boosterism and solidarity: An awesome breakthrough for women! On the other, there’s sneering condescension: Not bad, for a privileged girl working with play money. A fairer way of framing Jolie’s blow for gender equality is to say that she has succeeded admirably in making an old-fashioned adventure movie just as capable and unmemorable as if one of those old dudes I mentioned above had made it. Indeed, Clint Eastwood – with whom Jolie worked in “Changeling” – is pretty much the obvious career model, and “Unbroken” is almost exactly like one of the proficient and pointless middlebrow dramas Eastwood has been making since he quit acting.
According to some reports, the story of real-life World War II hero Louis Zamperini, played by fast-rising British star Jack O’Connell in “Unbroken,” was considered possible fodder for a Hollywood feature as long ago as the late 1950s. Indeed, it might have fit better in that era than in this one, considering that Zamperini’s saga is like a one-man display of How America Won the War. A kid from Southern California whose Italian immigrant parents spoke no English, Zamperini emerged from teenage delinquency to compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics (the same games in which Jesse Owens won several gold medals) as a long-distance runner. In the war, Zamperini survived a plane crash in the Pacific Ocean, spent more than six weeks adrift in a lifeboat and endured several years in an especially brutal series of Japanese POW camps.
How to understand Zamperini’s stranger-than-fiction true story, either in life or in the movies, is open to debate. We could say that some people find reserves of courage and strength within themselves that most of us don’t possess (and will never have to search for), and leave it at that. There’s no moral to be found there, necessarily: Zamperini was young and strong and lucky, and outlasted circumstances in which thousands upon thousands of other strong young men died. If his story appealed to Hollywood filmmakers, first of all, because it’s a rip-roaring adventure that keeps shifting from one episode to the next, like an Indiana Jones movie, there was also another reason. It can be described in platitudinous terms as being about the resilience of the human spirit, while none-too-subtly making the point that human spirit runs just that little bit stronger in Americans than other people.
It’s almost surprising that a version of “Unbroken” wasn’t made around 1959, with Tony Curtis playing Zamperini and someone like Stanley Kramer directing the film. But it didn’t happen and the whole story receded into history for many years. Zamperini attended the 1998 Winter Olympics in Japan, meeting with some of his captors from the POW years. That brought his story back into the media spotlight and eventually Hillenbrand, the author of “Seabiscuit,” figured out that Zamperini was still alive and wrote a best-selling account of his adventures, which in turn became a hot Hollywood property. (Zamperini died last July, at age 97, but not before he had seen an early cut of Jolie’s film.)
As a movie, “Unbroken” is entertaining enough, but feels a bit like an afterthought. It has terrific cinematography by Roger Deakins and a long-in-development script whose credited writers include Joel and Ethan Coen, Richard LaGravenese (“Beloved”) and William Nicholson (“Gladiator”). It has airplanes and sharks and roaring crowds above swastika banners, and a sadistic Japanese soldier (the notorious Mutsuhiro “The Bird” Watanabe, a real-life war criminal) played with lubricious zeal by Japanese rock star Miyavi. Some people have claimed to raise various political objections to the movie, but I can’t get interested to that degree. My problem is that “Unbroken” melts into every other POW movie, and every other lifeboat movie, that I’ve ever seen. A week after seeing it, I’m not sure whether I’m remembering “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” or “Life of Pi.” O’Connell is meant to make a vigorous impression but just comes off as another square-jawed, pseudo-Nietzschean hero. I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten him mixed up with Hugh Jackman in “The Wolverine,” which is more worth watching in any case.
No. It is two plus hours of pure boredom
Had to break out ‘band of brothers’ for viewing as soon as I got home for an antidote
You are correct. Don’t doubt it
Some lefty gomer from Salon. About what you’d expect.
#1 on Christmas Day.
Louie became an alcoholic after WWII. His fame and war hero status wasn't sufficient. Eventually he found himself, by the grace of God, at a Billy Graham crusade in Los Angeles.
Jesus Christ took up residence in Louie's heart and changed him completely. Louie went to Japan and forgave his abusers. He started an organization for troubled kids. He truly became, through his Saviour, unbroken.
Jolie's film barely touches this aspect of Louie's life, but it is there.
One suspects the Christian viewpoint of the film's subject might be tainting this "journalist".
The bomb saved those men's lives.
: )
Yes, he’s a grump, just like all liberals.
When I saw where this article came from, I immediately consulted the Freeper Comments for the truth. I got it. As usual. Thanks.
Can’t wait to see this movie.
Yeah. Letters from Iwo Jima, Flags of my Fathers, Gran Torino, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, yeah just a few pointless middlebrow director jobs indeed.
Looking for a single word for this reviewer who was clearly weened on lemons: #$@%^, OK there - I said it!
I was thinking about that. In general, it could have been due to the extreme abuse that allies suffered that was displayed in the movie, and that it made him/her support the use of nuclear weapons more.
Or it could have been that there is a scene in the movie that he talked about the book, that when they went through the firebombed cities where everything had been reduced to ashes, he saw lots of large, shiny things looming large out of the rubble. They were all over the place, industrial machines that people produced war materials in their homes with. Nobody at that time (except for the people running the war) had any idea the Japanese had distributed war production to that extent.
Or, the viewer might have felt differently in a negative way by seeing the destruction. Even a Hollywoodized version of the destruction can be emotionally disturbing in a way that makes some people think there is NO cause worth fighting for if it results in a 1945 Japan.
ABSOLUTELY no question on that point. My father (USMC) also was in Pacific Theater for a time in 1944-45. He served in Korea and in Nam (adviser 1963-64). On military matters I always considered is opinion more astute than any civilian's. Especially a politician or a pundant of any kind. A manned invasion of the island would have been a long bloodbath of immense scale. American lives had to be a higher priority than Japanese lives in that situation. That's hard, cold reality. Still, there is good reason to believe that the bomb(s) resulted in FEWER Japanese casualties than an invasion would have.
Do see it. You will be searching the dictionary for a synonym to fetishness. People think it’s inspiring to young people to watch two hours of a guy getting beaten, no. It is not
Zamperinis story has the perfect combination of independent thinking, discipline, devotion to faith, normal male motivations, legal immigrant devotion to country and endurance with hope and humor
Jolie turns that opportunity into two hours of prison porn
What’s bad about film criticism? There should not be serious discussion of cinema?
I saw it last night. It was a good movie, but it did drag out in some places. I would have liked it to get through the war part a little faster (not leave it out)and get into his life after the war a little. His battle with alcoholism and his conversion. I guess that would have been too much for the Hollywood liberals, though.
Is most of the movie really him being beaten? We are seeing it later today...I think.
I find the reviews on imdb to generally be pretty accurate. And they say just what I’d expect from an Angelina Jolie movie:
No depth.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1809398/reviews?ref_=tt_urv
I thought so. Excellent review and thanks for saving me $8.00.
The teenaged crew (four) I took to see Unbroken last night immediately began relating the fanaticism of Japan circa 1943 with Islam 2014. I’m am soooo glad Jolie did not insult my intelligence with a protracted backstory about WWII.
None of the ones you listed are since he quit acting. His post acting career (Gran Torino was when he announced his retirement, but he got tempted out again for Trouble With The Curve) is pretty bland: Invictus, J Edgar, Jersey Boys. American Sniper is getting decent reviews though.
The Soft Sciences have been corrupted.
However, I do wish that serious people could take an honest look at modern views of sexuality and male-female relationships. I think there is strange stuff going on, and I think some of the fetishes out there are probably quite revealing about the health of our society. As an example: many women seem to shave their public hair -- what does THAT say about men? Not anything good.
Prison porn and watching a man be beaten for 2 hours? That also probably reflects badly on someone's psychological health.
I can see the pattern with Stanne... So now I start to wonder. . .
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