The heart of “Miracle at St. Anna” resides in the wondrous relationship of a lumbering black soldier and the wan Italian orphan he rescues.
The intelligence in the World War II saga about four soldiers from the 92nd Infantry Buffalo Soldiers Division who find themselves in a Tuscan village ringed by German forces belongs to screenwriter James McBride, whose 2003 novel provides the basis for the movie.
*** 1/2 RATING | War Epic
And the fiery passion of this oft-exquisite work of war and remembrance comes from director Spike Lee.
A maverick who has challenged, chastised and connected with audiences for more than two decades, Lee brings a maturing sensibility and a talent for ensemble performance to a tale that is loving, angry and profoundly American.
The story opens during the 1983 holiday season in New York City. Postal worker Hector Negron (Laz Alonso) goes postal on an elderly Italian man at his window.
In hopes of answering the why of the crime, reporter Tim Boyle (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and two flatfoot detectives head to Negron’s Harlem apartment. They discover his Purple Heart from WWII, his shrine of votive candles and a priceless piece of statuary from a Florentine bridge destroyed by the Nazis.
Negron’s crime and later its prosecution act as introduction and prologue to “Miracle.”
Lee jams in lot of showy filmmaking. But the film’s most winning and muscular storytelling takes place in 1944 when soldiers Stamps, Bishop, Negron and Train are cut off from their company and land in the Tuscan town.
Played by Derek Luke and Michael Ealy, Sgt. Aubrey Stamps and Sgt. Bishop Cummings couldn’t be more different.
They are a study in counterpoint. What’s epic about “Miracle” isn’t merely its wartime traumas. It’s the filmmakers’ rich awareness of African-American variety that makes it grand.
Lighter skinned Bishop is the strident one who takes to task white America and any blacks fool enough to feel they belong. He’s a race-man but his flirtations with town beauty Renata complicate his riffs.
It wounds the more loyal Stamps to admit he feels more free in Italy, in the midst of war, than he does on American soil.
Their arguments about the “isms” — patriotism and racism — become one of the film’s central philosophical debates. Fighting for a country that did not uphold equal rights at home was an issue that still raged during Vietnam.
Alonso’s portrayal of Negron, who is Puerto Rican, skirts Stamps’ and Bishop’s more rigid racial theories.
Omar Benson Miller is poignant as the not-bright but utterly decent Pvt. Sam Train. Train is the original finder of the stone head found in Negron’s apartment. Hitched to his belt it became the god-fearing giant’s awkward lucky charm.
But the boy he finds in an abandoned barn becomes even more significant to his faith.
Shot in Italy, “Miracle” employs a number of native actors. As the fugitive partisan “The Great Butterfly,” Pierfrancesco Favino has the careworn face of a man weary of a conflict that pits partisan friend against Fascistformer friends.
But the true revelation is the perfect innocent Lee discovers in Matteo Sciabordi, the 9-year-old who plays the boy, constantly consulting an imaginary companion named Arturo.
Lee is aware of the necessity and power of the close-up in a war flick. Combat dehumanizes. The close-up reconnects audiences with the individual.
Lee extends this courtesy to a number of German soldiers. A scene depicting U.S. and German infantrymen cursing the race-baiting, piped in come-ons of Nazi propaganda maven Axis Sally is one of the movie’s most riveting.
Perhaps the most subtly powerful moments in “Miracle at St. Anna” comes as the four soldiers look into the camera, then, one after another, walk away.
They aren’t looking at us. They are looking at a piece of Nazi propaganda on a village wall that depicts them as subhuman.
The scene follows a flashback in which a diner owner in Louisiana denies the men service while he feeds a group of German POWs. Four white enemy combatants eat and laugh. Four black soldiers in uniform suffer (not for long) the indignities of the n-word.
“Miracle at St. Anna” begins with Hector Negron watching John Wayne’s D-Day classic “The Longest Day.” We were there, he says absently. The hurt in his voice could not be clearer.
It requires a sophisticated gift to depict the myriad wrinkles of race and identity captured in this addition to the “Greatest Generation” pantheon.
It’s a gift for truths and the reconciliation that can come from them. It’s a talent the at-times publicly contentious director continues to bring to the screen.
Film critic Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com. Also on blogs.denverpostcom/madmoviegoer
“Miracle at St. Anna”
R for strong war violence, language and some sexual content/nudity. 2 hours, 35 minutes. Directed by Spike Lee; written by James McBride based on his novel; photography by Matthew Libatique; starring Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, Omar Benson Miller, Pierfrancesco Favino, Valentina Cervi, Matteo Sciabordi, John Turturro, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, John Leguizamo, Kerry Washington. Opens today at area theaters.
