St. Anna not nearly as captivating as it tries to be

One of the reasons that Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing works so well, is that it is a film that doesn’t necessarily require the type of dialogue that constantly preaches at us. Lee can implement great stretches of dialogue in which the African-American character can go to great lengths to question the Italian American character for his hypocritical view of race relations. Lee uses scenes like this not as much to heighten the tension (the film brilliantly does that without always requiring dialogue), as much as to push the story along. While it may be unfair to compare a film like Miracle at St. Anna with a film like Do the Right Thing, given the nature and history of Lee’s work it seems inevitable. Maybe that’s why in the back of my mind I thought that St. Anna had a lot to live up to, and why ultimately I was disappointed that it didn’t.

St. Anna opens up with enough deep-seeded intensity to rival any crime thriller in recent memory. A black postal employee whom the audience has met only a few frames before, unhesitatingly shoots a man standing in his line. It’s a scene that the film arguably doesn’t need and will soon get lost under the sea of far too many plot lines in the minutes to come. Nonetheless, it sets up the media’s investigation of this reclusive old man, the vastly expensive ancient Italian artifact hidden in his closet, and his story of the second world war told through the eyes of the group with whom he experienced it with: The all-black 92nd infantry division. The group soon finds themselves trapped near a small Tuscan village when one of the soldiers risks his own life to save a young Italian boy. From here the story texts many different turns, going round and round in countless directions before it finally falls haphazardly at the audience’s feet nearly 2 ½ hours later.

The biggest crime Lee commits is that the story’s central characters are much too uninteresting to spend such a significant amount of time with. The multiple plot lines meander every which way, never offering even a remotely satisfying pay-off. To be sure, the film has several great scenes to boast as well. The action sequences employ the stark realism we have come to expect in war films since Saving Private Ryan first “unglamorized” war 10 years ago. The sequences involving race issues are often-poignantly yet prophetically displayed. In the first glimpses we get of the film’s leading character he is watching an old John Wayne war film in which the Hollywood cast is predictably all white. He can be heard muttering to himself, “we fought that war too”. The film is so uneven however, that most of the messages that could speak volumes get shuffled under the mixture of over-blown plot and poor execution. St. Anna tries to be important, and while at times it calls us to change, it lacks the prophetic element that truly causes us to question.

2.5/5