Jules Crittenden reviews the first episode of Tom Hanks’ The Pacific miniseries on HBO, in light of Hanks recent shameful comments to Time magazine (owned by Time-Warner, which also owns the HBO channel and HBO Films, which co-produced the series). Jules writes:
If “The Pacific” delivers us blissfully out of the opening soap opera scenes and drops us unceremoniously into Guadalcanal, it does so without much of the context that illustrated the forging of a unit and the transformation of young men into warriors that was one of the strengths of BoB. The Guadalcanal scenes are beautifully shot but poorly edited, having the effect of being more of a horrific montage, lacking the impact they could have had, while the lead characters are effectively strangers. For all the nudge-nudge-get-it dialogue and meaningful looks, little effort has been made to put you cinematically into the minds of these young men. I also came away with the sense that the filmmakers are going to carefully balance out every Japanese atrocity with some example of the enemy’s humanity, every dehumanization of young American boys with an American boy’s thoughtful, chin-scratching realization that the hated Jap is just like him. A regrettable tendency to lecture, hector and handhold that underestimates the audience.
Jules adds, “would anyone expect them to bend over backwards to humanize the SS?” Didn’t The Reader, which I watched last week on DirecTV for the first time attempt to do just that? It begins — SPOILER ALERT! — as a sort of pedophilic version of The Night Porter with the genders reversed, then attempts to excuse the former SS guard character played by Kate Winslet for not knowing she was condemning Jews to death because she’s illiterate.
Can you say metaphor, boys und girls? I knew that you could. But as Ron Rosenbaum writes, in a spot-on review of the film last year at Salon:
Indeed, so much is made of the deep, deep exculpatory shame of illiteracy—despite the fact that burning 300 people to death doesn’t require reading skills—that some worshipful accounts of the novel (by those who buy into its ludicrous premise, perhaps because it’s been declared “classic” and “profound”) actually seem to affirm that illiteracy is something more to be ashamed of than participating in mass murder. From the Barnes & Noble Web site summary of the novel: “Michael recognizes his former lover on the stand, accused of a hideous crime. And as he watches Hanna refuse to defend herself against the charges, Michael gradually realizes that she may be guarding a secret more shameful than murder.” Yes, more shameful than murder! Lack of reading skills is more disgraceful than listening in bovine silence to the screams of 300 people as they are burned to death behind the locked doors of a church you’re guarding to prevent them from escaping the flames. Which is what Hanna did, although, of course, it’s not shown in the film. As I learned from the director at a screening of The Reader, the scene was omitted because it might have “unbalanced” our view of Hanna, given too much weight to the mass murder she committed, as opposed to her lack of reading skills. Made it more difficult to develop empathy for her, although it’s never explained why it’s important that we should.
Using extensive and fairly believable make-up effects, the film depicts Winslet’s heavily aged character spending decades in a prison cell rather than confess to her illiteracy. At the film’s climax, after teaching herself how to read — and keeping with the metaphor of the film, presumably beginning to understand the crimes she was involved in, Winslet’s character hangs herself from the ceiling of her prison cell, after first climbing on top of a desk containing the books that she had taken out from the prison library.
As Rod Lurie writes at the Huffington Post, the Reader’s coda adds one final insult on top of the the rest of its facile metaphors, all designed by author Bernhard Schlink to excuse his fellow Germans of their guilt:
The hollowest scene is the one I am sure was intended to be the film’s most redemptive. A grown up Michael goes to see a survivor of the very church burning Hanna was involved with. She lectures him about the camps and refuses the money Hanna has willed to her (though she accepts the tin the money came in). The beautiful Lena Olin plays the survivor. She is well dressed. Her New York apartment is large and gorgeously furnished, her art collection on display.
In the scenes preceding it we see Hanna. She has nothing. She is in bad health. She commits suicide.
So, the SS representative in the film ends up pathetic and sad and, by the way, not guilty of the crime for which she was sentenced.
The lone representative of the survivors is haughty and glamorous — a near perfect (and negative) stereotype of the wealthy European Jew in New York.
Guess whom the audience can relate to more?
So, sure, I don’t have to imagine Hollywood bending over backwards to humanize the SS. I just watched it last week in HD on Showtime.
Related: “Recognize this Photo? Well, Some Professional Journalists Don’t.”
Hanks’ co-producer of “The Pacific”, Steven Speilberg, already has given us “Munich”, so it’s not as if anyone paying attention to what he and Hanks have been doing over the past few years couldn’t see this moral relativism coming from a mile away.
I started out this discussion at least marginally condemnatory of Mr. Hanks’ comments, but I’ve wound up a defender of at least his miniseries. These Hollywood types make comments like this all the time. Back when Saving Private Ryan was out, and Spielberg endorsed Clinton for reelection, George Will (not typically a movie critic) favorably reviewed the movie, referenced Spielberg’s endorsement, and then opined that Spielberg didn’t understand his own movie. I don’t think that’s quite correct; my guess is that he understands the movie just fine, he just didn’t understand Clinton.
So Hanks and Spielberg make this miniseries on the Pacific. It’s modeled on the miniseries Band of Brothers. That miniseries was based on a book by the late historian Stephen Ambrose, but since there’s no comparable book from Mr. Ambrose or anyone else on the Pacific War, the producers decided to use three different books (two memoirs and a biography) to frame their narrative. The two memoirs are famous: Robert Leckie went on to a distinguished career as a popular historian of various aspects of the war in the Pacific after writing Helmet for my Pillow, and Eugene Sledge’s With the Old Breed is considered by many to be one of the best-written memoirs of the war. I would concur, arguing only for the skill of William Manchester’s Goodbye Darkness…but Manchester only served on Okinawa, and the book is halfway to being a history of the war, among other things. Sledge’s book concentrates more on his experiences.
Nothing in what I saw in the first episode last night reinforced the concerns the author of this article raised that the Japanese would be unreasonably humanized, or their actions excused. These things happened: soldiers would find Japanese corpses carrying photos of family members, then watch as one of the Japanese wounded killed the corpsman who was trying to help him. Since the point of the series is to show you what it was like for these guys, imagine the horror of that, happening repeatedly. There’s another scene, late in the first episode, where a single Japanese soldier, a survivor of a night attack on the Marine position, steps out into the open in a humiliated rage, throws his hat to the ground, and begins screaming at the Americans. His friends are all dead, and he clearly wants to join them, but according to the strict rules of warfare they should try to capture him. However, one of his comrades has just killed two corpsman who tried to help him, so the Marines are in no mood to take prisoners. So a bunch of Marines begin to taunt him, yelling things like “Where’s your Tojo, now?” while shooting at him with an intent to wound him, rather than kill him. One of the main characters of the story (Sgt. John Basilone) puts him out of his misery.
The point is this: as unpleasant as it appears, these things happened. I agree that emphasizing one thing over another is bad, because you can leave the impression that the Americans were all war criminals, or the Japanese blameless. However, the episode I saw last night didn’t do either of those things. Instead, it showed a reasonably full cross-section of occurences from the early part of the Guadalcanal battle. We’ve defeated the first Japanese counterattack (presumably Ichiki) and the second episode will no doubt include Edson’s Ridge and the aftermath. The first battle scene was pretty well-done (you couldn’t see much, because it took place at night; but then again, you shouldn’t be able to see anything, because it took place at night). Be interesting to see how the rest of the series goes.
Ed, with respect, I’d be wary of linking to Rosenbaum.
Yes, his movie and music reviews are still sane, but for greater politics…
Well, his most recent PJM post has him jumping into the “Tea Parties are racist” pool.
Though to be fair that’s saner than when he claimed that the Tea Parties are to blame for any future increase in autism cases.
Yes, really.
Don’t forget Oliver Stoned; Stone throws W. & McCarthy in with History’s Greatest Monsters (besides Jimmy Carter, I mean).
The Hollywood Reporter:
“Stalin, Hitler, Mao, McCarthy — these people have been vilified pretty thoroughly by history. Stalin has a complete other story. Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any single person. We can’t judge people as only ‘bad’ or ‘good.’ Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and its been used cheaply. He’s the product of a series of actions. It’s cause and effect … People in America don’t know the connection between WWI and WWII … I’ve been able to walk in Stalin’s shoes and Hitler’s shoes to understand their point of view. We’re going to educate our minds and liberalize them and broaden them. We want to move beyond opinions … Go into the funding of the Nazi party. How many American corporations were involved, from GM through IBM. Hitler is just a man who could have easily been assassinated.”
“Obviously, Rush Limbaugh is not going to like this history and, as usual, we’re going to get those kind of ignorant attacks,” said Stone, who also also compared the experience of sympathizing with war criminals to making his “W” movie about George W. Bush. “I’m trying to understand somebody I thoroughly despised.”
Stone also warned that the same military industrial complex forces that he’s explored in movies such as “JFK” and in “Secret History,” are now corrupting Barack Obama. …….
Eastwood did that sister movie to “Flags of Our Fathers” which was Japanese-sympathetic, much like James Bradley’s follow-up “Flyboys” about Bush Sr. and Chi Chi Jima atrocities. Bradley’s latest history blames Teddy Roosevelt for the Pacific War, having coddled the Japanese.
Meh.