Miracle at St. Anna: Another Spike Lee film scrutinize
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Loading ...October 2, 2008 by admin
This time Spike Lee has directed a phenomenal movie that represents us in a war that many of us realized that we ever existed in or ever received credit for. This movie created a lot of controversy by the parties and countries involved and the buzz around Hollywood before the movies’ release was that it was going to be an historic movie and we will want to see it. But once again many of us choose not to be part of that history or didn’t care for it.
We certainly did not expect other races to go out and see a Spike Lee movie were the main characters are black. I also noticed that this movie did not get your usual big to do promotion and perhaps that may be one reason most of us did not know anything about it, but once this movies makes its way to DVD, I highly recommend you all take a look at it. It’s a part of history that was ignored and a part of history that all of us need to know about.
Here’s the complete story from Timesonline.co.uk
It is a story that underpins Italy’s postwar democracy: the honor lost under Benito Mussolini was regained through the struggle of the partisans and their help for the Allies. Now the partisans are fighting for their reputation after a new film by the director Spike Lee which, they say, insults the memory of the Italian Resistance during the Second World War.
Miracle at St Anna retells the story of the massacre of 560 civilians – including women and children – in August 1944 by SS troops as they retreated northwards in the face of the Allied advance.
The film, which highlights the role of African-American soldiers in the war, suggests that antifascist partisans indirectly caused the atrocity by taking refuge in the village and then abandoning the residents to their fate.
It even shows a partisan named Rodolfo collaborating with the Nazis. This runs directly counter to the accepted Italian version of events, which is that the slaughter was not a reprisal but an unprovoked act of brutality and that the hunt for partisans was a pretext.
At a press screening in Rome, James McBride – the black American author who wrote the novel on which Mr Lee’s film was based – said: “I am very sorry if I have offended the partisans. I have enormous respect for them. As a black American, I understand what it’s like for someone to tell your history, and they are not you.
“But unfortunately, the history of World War Two here in Italy is ours as well, and this was the best I could do . . . it is, after all, a work of fiction.”
Mr Lee, unrepentant, said: “I am not apologizing.” He told Italians there was “a lot about your history you have yet to come to grips with. This film is our interpretation, and I stand behind it.”
He added that the film, which follows the fate of four black GIs, was intended “to restore the voice of black soldiers who fought in the war”. He said that “not all Italians” had admired the partisans, many of whom fled to the mountains and left civilians to face the Nazis. “I have not invented anything,” he declared.
Giovanni Cipollini, the deputy head of Anpi, the partisans’ association, said the film was a “false reconstruction” and a “travesty of history”. Didala Gherarducci, the secretary of Anpi at Viareggio, said that her husband died in the massacre and she had written to Mr Lee to tell him that his “false” version of events “weighs on my heart like a stone”.
The film has already been released in the US to a mixed reception; in its first week it took only $3.5 million (£2 million) at the box office. Mr. Lee said he made it to counteract war films such as Clint Eastwood’sLetters From Iwo JimaandFlags of Our Fathers, in which black US troops were not prominent.
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