All the characters and all the villagers are involved in another battle scene fought in the village's steep pathways and steps. Both fire fights are choreographed with immediate visceral effect. The story of the bond between Train and the boy Angelo seems like material for a different movie. Yes, it involved me, but it seemed to exist on the plane of parable, not realism. It involves a shift of the emotions away from the surrounding action.
The acting is superb. Omar Benson Miller not actually as tall as the movie makes him seem feels responsible for the boy because he saved his life, and the two form a bond across the language barrier.
Matteo Sciabordi, in his first performance, is a natural the camera loves. I can imagine an entire feature based on these two, but I am not sure this story, seen this way, could have taken place in the reality of this film. Another scene I doubted is an extended one involving a dance in the local church, with music playing loudly, GIs standing illuminated in an open doorway, just as if they weren't behind enemy lines and the hills weren't possibly crawling with Nazis.
The romantic developments during that scene would have seemed more at home in a musical. In a sense, the scenes I complain about are evidence of Lee's stature as an artist. In a time of studios and many filmmakers who play it safe and right down the middle, Lee has a vision and sticks to it.
The scenes I object to are not evidence of any special perception I have. They're the kind of scenes many studio chiefs from the dawn of film might have singled out, in the interest of making the film shorter and faster. But they're important to Lee, who must have defended them. And it's important to me that he did.
When you see one of his films, you're seeing one of his films. And "Miracle at St. Anna" contains richness, anger, history, sentiment, fantasy, reality, violence and life. Maybe too much. Better than too little. Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from until his death in In , he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
Adapted from the novel by James McBride, Miracle is inspired by actual events. But a filmmaker like Samuel Fuller could probably have made it work. As usual, Lee captures visually forceful images, especially in the battle scenes. After 20 years of moviemaking, he still possesses that rare gift, a formidable eye. Unfortunately, he also still usually drops the narrative ball when he tries to say Something Significant, making Miracle less than it should have been. Miracle At St. McBride…can deliver the cauterizing power of anger without the corrosive effects of bitterness….
It just might turn out to be balm for a wound that has so far stubbornly refused to heal. Margaret S Saunders maggiesaunders gmail. Ashley Garland AGarland penguinrandomhouse. Books Miracle At St.
Purchase Book. Following the huge critical and commercial success of his nonfiction memoir, The Color of Water, McBride offers a powerful and emotional novel of black American soldiers fighting the German army in the mountains of Italy around the village of St. Anna of Stazzema in December This is a refreshingly ambitious story of men facing the enemy in front and racial prejudice behind; it is also a carefully crafted tale of a mute Italian orphan boy who teaches the American soldiers, Italian villagers and partisans that miracles are the result of faith and trust.
Toward the end of , four black U.
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