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.
To me, that was the salvation of the story.
By itself, it would have been interesting, but that he came home a ruined man, bent on self destruction and murder, would have made it a side note like hundreds or thousands of others.
But this man found God, and was able to forgive those men who mistreated him so violently. God had opened up Louie’s eyes for a day out on the ocean and let him see the miracle of what He and his creation is, and that came back to him later.
It is not really the story of an Olympic hero or a military man being stranded in a raft, or even a man who was declared dead and came back to life.
It is, in my opinion, a story about a man who was tested by God, who found his way to God in one of the darkest hours of his life, and was able to forgive those who hated and tortured him, which allowed him to live the rest of his life in happiness and with purpose.
Pretty remarkable story.
I was so young when the bombs were dropped, therefore really didn’t have a “context” for the necessity of using them.
After reading “Unbroken”, it was crystal clear why we had no other choice. I wish we could have used them sooner.
The Japanese were unbelievably cruel and sadistic. They were far worse than ISIS is today.
This movie is directed by a person who has no idea about war, and it is obvious. The Coen bros who wrote the screenplay have no idea about war and that is obvious.
Maybe a movie about how war affects people can be made by people who have no idea about war, but it is best done as hanks and Spielberg did this with band of brothers. Fund it, then hire experts and step aside
It’s not that she’s a girl that makes it so bad, It’s that her being a girl is what is bad about it. It is boring and pointless, no character development. The kids I was with said the acting was terrible. Is that because she’s a girl? Probably not. But she shows no respect for the subject matter just like a girl coming in to do football commentary. I’d rather listen to Hannah storm on football than anyone. But she knows what she’s talking about
There is nothing intrinsically bad about film criticism.
What I find repellent about almost all film review is the self indulgent way it is performed by people who do not create, and are primarily interested in hearing their own voices.
Why do movie reviewers come off as grumpy faggots?
Maybe they’re just grumpy faggots.
What do you mean?
What male actors of Jolies prominence have gone on to become (primarily) directors? None, because there is more money is being the star of a film than being a director. Of those male actors that have gone on to become directors (Ron Howard as example) they were never leading men. A good female example would be Penny Marshall.
I’d asked wifey to get me the book for Christmas, which she did (Neither of us “do” movies). I just got started on it this morning - it’s gonna be a good one.
Prison Porn, eh? Don’t know what that is, but a strange way to characterize it.
Well, I haven’t seen it yet, so I’ll let you know what I think.
Ron Howard is a good actor. He was so fifty years ago. See ‘the courtship of Effie’s father’ for example. He went on in TV and discovered tgen that he was a good director. ‘Apollo 13 took a great story and Mae if better and is a tribute to American exceptional ism as well as simply inspiring and re watchable
Just for example
And penny marshal also grew up in the business she was a good director with talent and connections and knew or knows her limitations as any successful professional does. She told mark wahlberg to quit being an idiot and get himself into acting. She was right
I’ve seen one Jolie film having been drawn to none ‘salt’ is vacuous bland flat and boring. It’s her running around acting like a fashion model. It’s a magazine shoot. She has no credibility as a filmmaker and is getting a pass here
Good criticism is a creative activity. It’s an art form. Many times a great critical essay is a lot more worthwhile than the art it’s dealing with.
Here in 18 you quote:
“In one movie, a wimpy grease spot of a guy in his twenties complained that Angelina Jolie “fetishises” Louie Zamperini’s suffering. It must have been a new word he read in a dictionary.”
And you haven’t seem the movie?
I don’t use such terms but I am defending his view. He is right
That anyone should find this movie anything but weird and boring if not bizarre is so strange to me
Jolie did something to you, long ago maybe? Like put you in a locker in middle school?
And it sticks something in the eye of the Japanese who have been desperately trying for some nearly 70 years, to deny their militaristic past and their embrace of the Bushido Code, the way of the Samurai.
Japanese prison camps were among the most brutal the world has ever seen, vastly exceeding even the worst of Abu Graib while under the administration of the US. Probably the same prison under Saddam Hussein much more nearly approached the Japanese prison camps of China, particularly in and near Nanking, but that still fell far short of the totals and the sheer ferocity of the Japanese onslaught.
This is very true; I have the suspicion that the relative lack of libertarian or Christian thought in America's media/arts is tied to the soft sciences being utterly dominated by the ideology of the left. (Though I have no idea which one causes the other, or if they're both resultant of some other causal factor.)
Sounds like a great flick to me.
Sounds like a great flick to me.
If we had invaded Japan, we would have to have killed just about every man, woman, and child in the country. They were preparing to fight using bamboo spears. And our casualties would have been in the hundreds of thousands. Counter-intuitive as it sounds, the bombs saved millions of lives.
Ida Lupino directed seven movies and was busy directing TV dramas way back in the 50s.
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