Tag: World War II

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Film Features Film/TV

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas takes us back to Germany at the outset of World War II. The film’s protagonist is Bruno (Asa Butterfield), an 8-year-old boy who’s smart, brave, and adventurous but mostly confused by what’s going on in the world and at home. His father (David Thewlis), a high-ranking SS officer, has taken a promotion that relocates the family away from Berlin, to the Polish countryside. The family’s change in scenery mirrors another, much more sinister one: the moving of the Jews into a concentration camp.

Bruno’s bored in his new setting, especially because his mother (Vera Farmiga) forbids him from exploring the woods behind the home. Bruno can see a strange sort of “farm” through the trees, where the “farmers” wear striped pajamas. He befriends a boy about his age named Shmuel (Jack Scanlon) on the other side of the fence. Bruno’s emotions are a swarm of conflicts, and what truths he’s told by his parents and tutor (Jim Norton) don’t align with what he’s seeing with his own eyes. That the lies come from his own father and that his mother is increasingly upset compound his predicament. His sister, Gretel (Amber Beattie), is no help: She embraces Hitler Youth to such a degree that she even has Nazi posters on her bedroom wall like they’re pin-up Tiger Beat heartthrobs.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is rated PG-13 and is based on the YA novel by John Boyne. What’s happening in the film is no surprise to adults and probably isn’t for most young teens. It’s as brilliantly effective a movie about the Holocaust as I’ve seen. A pile of discarded dolls masterfully metaphors the real atrocities, but the film eventually literalizes — it has to, really — for Bruno and the audience what genocide looks like. The horror is so massive it’s hard for any adult to comprehend it — as we have been trying to do for seven decades and counting — so I’m not sure what chance a kid would have.

The 2008 film was originally marketed as a Holocaust movie for younger audiences. Thirteen is probably about right for the youngest viewers. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas completely destroyed me. I don’t know that I would recommend it for anyone Bruno’s age.

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Film Features Film/TV

Battle fatigue settles in on Spike Lee’s WWII epic.

Like Douglas MacArthur’s old soldiers, World War II movies will never die. Unlike those old soldiers, however, WWII movies won’t ever fade away as long as audiences express anxiety about current global conflicts. From They Were Expendable to The Thin Red Line, the classic American war films elucidate moments of courage and bravery that remain moving and important even though the idea of fighting such a clear-cut good-versus-evil fight now seems impossible to imagine.

Within the last year, though, a more complex treatment of World War II has yielded remarkable results. With last year’s Black Book, Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven critiqued traditional notions of wartime heroism within the context of a survival story that also emphasized the roles of women during wartime. And Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 Army Of Shadows, which was re-released last year, looked into the high cost of doing the right thing for a left-wing cause. Miracle at St. Anna, Spike Lee’s new attempt to tell a true war story, should have been a welcome addition to those remarkable works, since the conventions of the genre play to Lee’s strengths at dramatizing larger-than-life figures grappling with thorny, unwieldy social and historical issues. So why is his new film such an interminable, unfocused, ridiculous mess?

For starters, Lee’s plot and characterization scarcely qualify as archetypal, much less original. The film follows a quartet of black Army soldiers (a Cynic, an Uncle Tom, an Assman, and a Simpleton, of course) who rescue a young Italian boy and eventually hide out in an Italian village. This story is told with none of the visual daring Lee brought to previous fiction films such as 25th Hour and Inside Man. Speaking of visuals, the gruesome battle sequences owe everything to Steven Spielberg’s flawed but potent Saving Private Ryan. But not even Spielberg would batter the audience with music the way Lee brandishes Terence Blanchard’s overblown score while the bullets and bodies fly.

Miracle at St. Anna’s most memorable, audacious scene is more befuddling than breathtaking. It occurs when one of the soldiers flashes back to a Louisiana diner where he and his fellow grunts were refused service by the redneck proprietor. They later return to the diner and force the man to serve them by baring their rifles and essentially holding up the place.

What the hell’s going on in this scene? Why does Lee hold the image of the crestfallen soldiers and link it to the racial stereotypes displayed on Axis propaganda posters? Is he condemning the violent reprisals of this group, or is he praising them for wresting their dignity back from the wicked oppressor behind the counter? Such confusion is momentarily diverting, but its vagueness is nothing like the rich ambiguity of Lee’s best work. And it’s symptomatic of the film’s incapacity to show or tell us anything new about combat, race, history, or spirituality. War films are hell. When will they end?

Miracle at St. Anna

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Book Features Books

Mission Accomplished?

The year is 1944, and the setting is Italy. A group of American G.I.’s are on a reconnaissance mission near Cassino — their mission: to learn the whereabouts of the German army, which is retreating north.

One day, the battalion meets up with a farmer’s cart pulled by a donkey, led by two boys, and loaded with straw. The boys are ordered away, and a sergeant named John Glick instructs his men to overturn the cart. Out fall a German officer and a woman. The German uses his Luger to shoot two of the Americans, then Corporal Robert Marson kills the “Kraut.” Sergeant Glick turns his carbine on the woman, who is shouting in German, and he fires a bullet into her head. End of story? No, start of story in Richard Bausch’s new novel, Peace (Knopf).

But peace — inner peace — is not what Marson and two of his men — Saul Asch and Benny Joyner — find as they climb a nearby hill in search of German presence in the area. Down below, they’d witnessed the killing of an unarmed woman. Do they report it as murder within their own ranks? Or do they just keep their mouths shut and do their duty: reach that hilltop and return with a report?

Days of rain turn to a nighttime of sleet, then snow as the three men ascend in “deep stillness” and “black quiet.” An old man named Angelo is serving as guide over the steep terrain, but Marson isn’t sure Angelo’s to be trusted. Marson isn’t so sure about a lot of things. That German officer is the first enemy soldier Marson’s shot dead up close. Nausea plagues him; emptiness haunts him. Even his prayers ring hollow, but he says them, sincerely, in the rote way a Catholic can. At 26, Marson, at least, is worldly wise.

Asch? He’s a 23-year-old Jew from Boston still haunted by the sight of an American tank (and its occupants) on fire in North Africa. One thing he’s sure of: his and the entire unit’s guilt in the killing of that German woman if Glick’s conduct goes unreported.

And Joyner? He’s a walking string of obscenities — against Asch, against the war, against the world in general, you name it, in Joyner’s words, “fuck it” — but he’s tormented by an itch that is, in fact, a case of nerves ready to snap. He’s a Michigan farm boy of 19.

This one tense night, all three men — Marson, Asch, and Joyner — struggle on and argue, numbed by the wet and cold, uncertain of what they’ll find and more uncertain of their safety. Are they to take Angelo at his word? Are they to avoid a possible attack? And are they to survive their return downhill — one of the men the target of a sniper, another turned sniper himself? And once returned to the battalion, what’s Marson to do with Angelo’s fate? At the close of Peace, it’s in his hands.

The story is in good hands. This is a short novel, and Bausch writes with the immediacy required — whether he’s describing the raw weather and difficult terrain of Italy or the harsh terms and ugly realities of life in wartime. But those are outward signs. Bausch charts Marson’s reflections with comparable economy and narrative force.

Peace then: yet another lesson in storytelling from this nationally recognized writer, holder of the Moss Chair of Excellence in creative writing at the University of Memphis.

Richard Bausch will be signing and reading from Peace at Burke’s Book Store on Thursday, May 15th, from 5 to 7 p.m. The reading begins at 6 p.m. For more information, call the store at 278-7484.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters to the Editor

Best of Memphis

Once again, the Flyer‘s “Best of Memphis” issue has both entertained and infuriated me. I realize that polling is an imperfect art and the (sometimes) lowest common denominator will determine the winner. And yes, I like Huey’s hamburgers.

But seriously, how can a multi-million-dollar golf course such as Spring Creek Ranch possibly be tied (for third-best golf course) with a goat track like Overton Park? And how can a pedestrian “Italian” restaurant like Pete and Sam’s possibly be in consideration for “Best Italian” in the same garlic breath as Ronnie Grisanti’s?

I could go on: “Best Service” had Texas de Brazil first, followed by Chick-Fil-A??? Holy crap! That’s just insane. And Mud Island Amphitheater winning third in “Best Place To Hear Live Music”? Yeah, like what, twice a year?

I know the Flyer doesn’t have any control over the voting, but, people, please — show some common sense!

Ricky Gardner

Memphis

I want to know how Geoff Calkins and Wendi Thomas win “Best Columnist” every year when the Flyer offers us such stellar and superior talents as Jackson Baker, John Branston, Mary Cashiola, and Bruce VanWyngarden?

Haven’t you people ever heard of stuffing the ballot?

Mary Warren

Memphis

War Ethics

As I watched the excellent PBS Ken Burns series The War this past two weeks, I was struck how American expectations and standards seem to have changed since World War II. Think about what President Bush is reviled for in Iraq.  

Under an order signed by Roosevelt, well over 100,000 U.S. citizens — mostly based solely on their race — were sent to concentration camps and much of their property was stolen. For years after Pearl Harbor, Americans weren’t told the extent of our losses in men and ships. GIs in Europe, three years after we got into the war, had such lousy equipment to fight in winter, they were stealing from the German dead to try to keep from freezing.

The Allies killed 35,000 German civilians in one night in one city. A million Japanese civilians were burned out of their homes in one day in one city. German Army prisoners were executed out of hand, and an experienced U.S. soldier protesting this was warned he might get shot too.

“Intelligence failure” hardly seems an adequate term for the massive surprise military attack on Pearl Harbor after FDR had been in office for years. Of course, the U.S. in 1940-’41 had a military smaller than Romania’s, years after Germany and Japan were arming to the teeth.

If you don’t like Bush, fine — there’s a lot not to be happy with. But maybe think about what you accept without reservation in one president before you curse another.

Herbert E. Kook Jr.
Germantown

Air America

Because I still mourn the loss of Air America Radio, I am writing in response to the letter from the gentleman in Germantown (“Letters,” September 27th issue) and his reference to a “disgruntled” listener (and the three other listeners).

There were actually a lot more than three listeners and would probably have been many more if we had been made aware Air America wasn’t going to be available in our area. He mentions “hate,” and I won’t say there wasn’t some in evidence, but I guess it was just the wrong flavor for him, because I didn’t hear it directed at homosexuals, minorities, pro-choicers, Jews, Muslims, Catholics, or war protestors.

The “bile” being spewed was more directed at those who were perceived to be failing in their duty to protect and defend our Constitution and to respect our country as a nation of laws. How can dissent be un-American? Is that not what created this country? I would ask the gentleman, and anyone else, if you had been around in 1776, would you have stood with the king or the colonists?

Linda Cowart
Germantown

Iran and the U.S.

I keep hoping the damage the elected heads of state of Iran and the U.S. can do is reaching its limits.

It is a sad commentary on democracy when an “Ahmadina-Bush” is chosen. For my part, I vow never to vote for a Republican again, as I did in several races in the last general election.

Let’s send a message and work to take back our country from the election thieves of 2000!

Greg Williams

Memphis