MIDWAY

Stars: Ed Skrein, Patrick Wilson, Luke Evans, Woody Harrelson, Dennis Quaid, Mandy Moore, Aaron Eckhart, Nick Jonas, Darren Criss, Tadanobu Asano, Geoffrey Blake, Jun Kunimura, Brandon Sklenar and Etsushi Toyokawa.
Writer: Wes Tooke
Director: Roland Emmerich.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

While the subject matter recounts the political, personal and military machinations of one of the defining moments in U.S. combat history, the truer battle raging on-screen in Roland Emmerich’s Midway is the clash between Oscar-bait war epic and rousingly cornball B-movie.

The German-born filmmaker sets the bar high from Act 1, with a fully immersive reconstruction of the attack on Pearl Harbour, the history-altering event that dragged a bruised and battered America into World War II. In its wake, we are introduced in piecemeal fashion to the square-jawed types charged with resurrecting national pride – Naval attaché Edwin Layton (Patrick Wilson), the intel genius whose knowledge of empirical Japanese ways could not stop the December 7 attack; hotshot cowboy pilot Dick Best (Ed Skrein), who you just know will put it all on the line for his country; Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz (Woody Harrelson), the leader who rallied his men and applied a warrior’s cunning to strike back; and, Admiral ‘Bull’ Hallsey (a cantankerous Dennis Quaid), stoic and blustery as only vintage Dennis Quaid can be.

Midway continues Emmerich’s bigscreen obsession with military heroics and the dynamic of men facing seemingly insurmountable odds against a mighty enemy. Previously, Emmerich’s bad guys have included aliens, sea monsters and the weather; he presents his most human foe yet in the form of the Japanese forces, especially the masterminds behind the Pearl Harbour strike and the everyman soldiers and seaman who followed their orders (the film is dedicated to both American and Japanese casualties).  

Emmerich is a director known less for his nuanced and careful consideration of themes and subtext and more for his ability to make things look awesome when they blow up. To this end, Midway unfolds in a manner that is pure Hollywood disaster epic, with a vast cast punching out none-too-subtle scenes of surface emotion that cut right to the heart of their plight. This kind of structure and plotting is meat and bones for Emmerich, whose work has run the gamut from the ridiculously sublime (Independence Day, 1996) to the sublimely ridiculous (Godzilla,1998; The Day After Tomorrow, 2004).

But the rat-a-tat of Emmerich’s storytelling streamlines the intricacies of naval combat; legitimate tension builds as ships, planes and deciphered codes criss-cross the screen. Although his characters have little depth, they are archetypes that stand for something in the theatre of war, or at least war movies. Emmerich’s affinity for B-movie tropes is matched perfectly with a story of true red-white-and-blue patriotism; he embraces his familiar story beats with a narrative clarity that has been absent in all his past efforts bar the unforgivably entertaining White House Down (2013).

Above all else, Emmerich and his visual effects team have crafted a heart-pounding vision of combat. Whether immersing his audience in close-quarter dogfights high in the sky or imagining the immensity of an aircraft carrier’s destruction, Emmerich’s battle scenes recall the mighty war stories of classic Hollywood lore by way of the technology of today. Some green-screen backdrops look a little tinny, but the ferocity of the Japanese zero squadrons descending upon Pearl Harbour and the steely-eyed vengeance with which the American forces regain the upper hand is thrilling film-making (the pilot’s eye view of dive-bombing a targeted vessel is vertigo-inducing).

Midway is that kind of war movie that captures both elements with an integrity that is hard not to admire. Recounting a pivotal wartime moment, Roland Emmerich has honoured the men who emerged damaged but victorious, as well as those that fought honourably in defeat; in telling the tale, he has made a war film wrapped in patriotism but thrilling enough for the modern American audience. Somewhere between Michael Bay’s cartoonish Pearl Harbour and Christopher Nolan’s pompous Dunkirk stands Roland Emmerich’s stirring Midway, and it emerges as the most watchable of the three.

FROM SHOCK TO AWE

Featuring: Matt Kahl, Mike Cooley, Aimee Stahl and Brooke Cooley.
Directors: Luc Côté.
Content Producer: Janine Sagert.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

The heartbreaking journey through Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that many veterans undertake upon their return from combat zones rarely ends on the kind of high note that director Luc Côté offers in From Shock to Awe. As detailed in this alternative-treatment advocacy documentary, more US ex-servicemen and women have died by their own hands back home than on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Returning to feature-length factual filmmaking for the first time since 2010’s Four Days Inside Guatanamo, Côté’s latest offers both insight and answers into a different aspect of military life. The struggle to live with PTSD, to deal with horrific memories and the unfamiliarity of a life that was once familiar, has torn apart generations of soldiers. The production presents this hardship through two struggling heroes - Matt Kahl, an Afghanistan vet having served in the 101^st Airborne from 2007-2011; and, MP Mike Cooley (pictured, top), deployed once to Afghanistan and twice to Iraq.

The first act punches hard in its depiction of the wide-reaching impact of PTSD. These are broken men, their families and communities alien to them. Côté uses both real-time and archive footage to show the shells of their former selves that Kahl and Cooley have become. The ability of respective wives Aimee Kahl and Brooke Cooley (herself a returned veteran with trauma issues) to deal with the psychological disintegration of their husbands for nearing breaking point.

The production follows the men to a wooded retreat, where they endeavor to purge their psyches of despair by injesting the psychoactive brew Ayahuasca. A banned substance in the US, it combines the Banisteriopsis caapi vine with plants containing the compound DMT (dimethyltriptamine) to produce a powerful visionary and healing experience. (Pictured, below; Matt and Aimee Kahl)

Scenes of the men under the influence of Ayahuasca are truly revelatory, their emotional and spiritual healing unfolding in real time for Côté’s lens (and, no, there are no Yellow Submarine-style sequences to overstate the experience). Even more remarkable is the footage of the men several months after the Ayahuasca session. They are transformed, their healing allowing for human connection, ambition and clarity of emotion.

Of course, the treatment makes them criminals. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) refuses to legalize psychotropic drugs for treatment of PTSD in any form. From Shock to Awe allows the recuperative experiences of the men do the hard selling of the film’s message, but the message is clear – soldiers are dying at home and non-traditional treatment can ease the nation’s pain, but bureaucratic governance remains immoveable.

The newfound positivity in the lives of the two men in the wake of the Ayahuasca treatment (and, for Brooke Cooley, therapy under the influence of the similarly-blacklisted MDMA drug) wraps up their story in what could be the feel good film denouement of the year. But the sadness that now haunts them is that so many of their combat brothers and sisters (many of them federal employees and subject to workplace drug testing) live burdened with PTSD, while a treatment exists that could ease their suffering.

SPITFIRE

It is arguably the greatest flying machine in aviation history; an instantly recognizable form that changed the course and ultimately the outcome of the greatest conflict in human history. The development, impact and legacy of the iconic British fighter plane is explored in Spitfire, a documentary by David Fairhead and Ant Palmer that will screen at the 2018 Veterans Film Festival on November 3 ahead of an Australian release on November 15 via Rialto Distribution. Guest columnist ADAM LUNNEY is the author of the new book Ready to Strike, a detailed account of the 453 RAAF Squadron, the Australians who flew Spitfires over the Normandy battlefront. SCREEN-SPACE invited him to cast an expert’s eye over the documentary for an informed perspective…

Spitfire: it’s more than just a word. The feature documentary Spitfire goes a long way towards illustrating why.

It opens with clouds and a blue sky, the English countryside – you’re flying, but are you in the Spitfire, or is it out there somewhere, hunting you? Soon enough the answer comes, as a Spitfire appears from the right. There is no sound but the whisper of air. What comes next is what people sometimes travel the world for. Thousands of people at airshows wait in total silence when they know a Spitfire is coming because a Spitfire is not just a word or a plane – it’s also a sound. Low and distant to start, but then growing, as if the pilot’s accelerating towards you. The combined roar and whine of the Merlin engine is loud and beautiful, then it passes. When the silence returns, you know that was worth waiting for.

The first words spoken in the documentary are from well-known Battle of Britain Spitfire pilot (and author) Geoffrey Wellum: “You can’t fly a Spitfire and forget about it. Stays with you forever.” Through the narrative and wonderful aerial shots blending wartime and contemporary footage, Spitfire doesn’t just tell you about the plane, it shows you.

The soundtrack is gentle. As much as a rousing Battle of Britain orchestral piece can get the blood pumping, these veterans are more contemplative, so the music is soft throughout, while the Merlin (or Griffon) engine is often the main accompaniment.

Lest everyone become too misty-eyed and romantic we are also reminded that, “You are aware that the purpose of this plane was to shoot and kill. It’s a killing machine.” There is, of course, no point being a fighter pilot if you can’t hit anything. These are just the first few minutes of the documentary, and like a pilot experiencing their first skyward ascent in a Spitfire – you’ll be hooked.

The documentary covers the development of the Spitfire and has the only remaining recording of the man responsible for it: Reginald Mitchell. There is footage from the seaplane races that led to its creation and we’re taken through the war and the evolution of the Spitfire. The story lingers almost a bit too long on the Battle of Britain, before moving on to Malta and Normandy. Here there is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment for Australian viewers. The aircraft having the famous black and white ‘invasion’ or ‘D-Day’ stripes is from our own 453 Squadron, and at least two of the pilots at the scene of the briefing which follows are from the same squadron.  

Throughout, footage is blended from wartime manufacturing and modern assembly of virtually the same equipment – a reminder that they live on, as should the memories of those who built, maintained and flew them. There is something here for young and old, the pedantic and patriotic.

The legend of the Spitfire is said to be a post-war creation. It’s perhaps a way of saying thank you. Already, three of the veterans featured in this documentary have passed away. Marvel at their deeds and words.  How can so many feelings and memories be encompassed in a word? Spitfire.

Adam Lunney holds a Master of Arts (Military History) from U.N.S.W. College at the Australian Defence Force Academy, is a Friend of the Australian War Memorial and a member of the Spitfire Association (Australia). Ready to Strike, his first book, will have its Official Launch in conjunction with the Veterans Film Festival screening of Spitfire at the Capitol Theatre in Manuka, A.C.T. on November 3

Veterans Film Festival ticket and session details are available here; Ready to Strike can be ordered here.

©Content may be re-used in part or full with an accompanying acknowledgement crediting 'author Adam Lunney' and original source 'Screen-Space'.

SGT. STUBBY: AN AMERICAN HERO

Featuring the voices of: Logan Lerman, Helena Bonham Carter, Gerard Depardieu, Nick Rulon, Jordan Beck, Brian Cook, Jim Pharr and Jason Ezzell.
Writers: Richard Lanni and Mike Stokey.
Director: Richard Lanni

Rating: 3.5/5

He was one of the finest American heroes of The War to End all Wars; a unwaveringly stoic soldier who served beside his countrymen, the troops of the 102^nd Infantry Regiment, in the trenches of France against a determined German army. He saw 17 close-quarters combat situations, usually by the side of his best friend, Private Robert Conroy. Upon his return to the U.S., he was lauded as a national hero, met with The Commander in Chief and was rewarded for his bravery by being bestowed the rank of Sargeant, the first four-legged officer in American military history.

Yes, four-legged. This soldier was a Boston terrier, with a short stubby tail, an appendage that earned him the name ‘Stubby’. To coincide with the 100^th anniversary of his nation’s entry into the European theatre of WWI, the spirited all-American mutt has been reborn as a bigscreen hero in director Richard Lanni’s computer-animated version of his dog’s life.

It is fair to say that Lanni’s film is one of the more unusual cartoon features in recent years. A co-production between Ireland, The U.K., France, Canada and The U.S.A., it lovingly renders the period, capturing with an artist’s eye Stubby’s early life in the picturesque Connecticut countryside, his voyage to Europe and, with a particularly evocative sense of location, the trenches of the Western Front. A more stark design palette, recalling classic war film imagery, is employed to convey troop movements and geographical data; in one instance, the menacing shadow of a German ‘bird of war’ descends upon the European front. (Ed: This is a kids film, right?)  

The director is an accomplished war documentarian and for his first animated feature he has drawn as much upon the realism of his factual films as he does the Disney/Pixar model. Parents won’t be expecting to field questions like, “What’s mustard gas, mommy?”, but Lanni’s storytelling doesn’t skimp on the realities of Stubby’s frontline tour. Like all good, similarly straightforward war yarns, there are rifles firing, grenades hitting their marks and shadowy figures lurking in smoky killing fields.

Yet in scene after scene is this buoyant, lovable lead character straight out of a Dreamworks-style romp. Stubby’s considerable screen presence and emotional centre comes entirely from his physicality; Lanni foregoes any vocal anthropomorphising, instead providing for his star the best animation his computer artists can offer to create dimensionality. Stubby is every bit the great animated hero, utterly lovable in the eyes of the tykes while also legitimately heroic for the war movie fans. And like many American G.I.’s on duty in Europe, he enjoys some R&R in Paris, a sequence that is as lovely as it sounds.

The human characters are not afforded the same level of artistry; Conroy is blandly drawn, Logan Lerman’s voicing thankfully providing character nuance. Gerard Depardieu does good work as burly French fighter Gaston Baptiste, staying on the right side of stereotype; in voice over, Helena Bonham Carter plays Conroy’s sister, whose recounting of her brother’s friendship with Stubby the basis for the film.

Sgt Stubby’s life was well documented (upon his passing, the New York Times ran a half-page obituary), so there is very little leeway for embellishment in telling his story. Which makes Richard Lanni’s family-themed wartime shaggy dog adventure all the more remarkable, both as a rousing account of one of the most unlikely heroes in combat history and, frankly, as a film that exists at all.

DUNKIRK

Stars: Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance, Kenneth Branagh, Fionn Whitehead, Damien Bonnard, Barry Keoghan, Jack Lowden, Cillian Murphy, Tom Glynn-Carney, James D’Arcy and Harry Styles.
Writer/Director: Christopher Nolan.

Rating: 2.5/5

State-of-the-art filmmaking and showy narrative technique meld uncomfortably with some hoary old war movie clichés in Dunkirk, the latest exercise in borderline bombast from Christopher Nolan. Despite being more aesthetically pleasing than Michael Bay’s garishly executed Pearl Harbour, Nolan’s big film in service of a small story has more in common with that much-maligned war pic than more serious minded award season contenders of past years like Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, Peter Weir’s Gallipoli or Terence Malick’s The Thin Red Line.

The enormous undertaking of evacuating 400,000 allied troops from the French port city as Axis forces encircled them is one of the defining moments of World War II. Nolan sets up the immensity of the event with steely grey vistas encompassing the troops as they wait for their rescuers, their despair growing with each wave of terrifying Stuka dive-bombing assault. These establishing shots offer the kind of scale and artistry that have emerged as Nolan’s stock-in-trade but as his narrative unfolds, it becomes clear the director is not particularly interested in the practicalities of troop withdrawal.

We are led through the shivering battalions by Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), who has survived a tragic opening sequence by outrunning his doomed squad before queue-jumping his fellow soldiers by pretending to be a medic then hiding amongst the wooden structure of the evacuation point to ensure his spot when the boats arrive. These hardly seem the actions of a leading man in a tale of heroism, his thin characterisation further hampered by the scale of the production mounted around him. Tommy is joined by a silent French infantryman (Damien Bonnard) and a brash Brit named Alex (Harry Styles, ok in a role that doesn’t ask much of his developing acting chops), bonded by their survival at any cost instincts.

Tommy’s story is folded into three other sub-narratives that intercut in that non-linear manner by now very familiar to Nolan’s fervent fan base. Mark Rylance is Dawson, a patriotic Brit who, with his sons (Barry Keoghan; Tom Glynn-Carney) is amongst the many brave homelanders that set sail for Dunkirk to help recover his fighting countrymen; Tom Hardy is Spitfire pilot Farrier, who darts back and forth across the skies over the beach with his wingman Collins (Jack Lowden), dispersing ME-109’s and Heinkel bombers with ruthless efficiency; and, Kenneth Branagh who, as the evacuation’s senior office-on-point Commander Bolton, is responsible for much of Nolan’s occasionally clunky expository dialogue.

Nolan’s obsession with his fractured narrative structure perfectly suited his past works Memento and Inception (his best film, by some measure). The mechanism muddled the ambitious but fatally flawed Interstellar and is entirely unnecessary, even flagrantly indulgent, in Dunkirk. The showy, jigsaw-puzzle challenge the storytelling poses undermines involvement, only serving to draw attention away from the plight of his protagonists and onto the storyteller himself; one can picture Nolan in front of a chalkboard strategically plotting his structure with cool academic efficiency. Surely the filmmaker’s insistence upon imposing his favourite device upon all his narratives is edging towards Shyamalan-like overkill (and the inevitable marketplace backlash).

As in past efforts, the director relies upon a dense soundscape to throw a blanket over his plotting, leading to the now familiar “I can’t understand what they’re saying!” comments often associated with his work. Muddying up the mix is an overblown score by Hans Zimmer, which determines every scene, however intimate, must build to a crescendo, leading to series of ‘big moments’ that the narrative does not earn. By the time the director reacquaints himself and his audience with the benefits of a more conventional denouement, any investment in the character’s journey has long since dissipated; scenes of ‘big emotion’ in the third act feel capital-C ‘contrived’.

Where the film soars is as an aerial spectacle. Recalling the thrilling dogfight sequences of Guy Hamilton’s 1969 wartime classic Battle of Britain, cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema and editor Lee Smith capture the nerve-shredding experience of life as a Spitfire pilot, the planes and the airmen afforded the kind of exhilarating hero-worship that is sorely missing from the rest of Nolan’s chilly, unaffecting opus.

STALINGRAD 3D

Stars: Mariya Smolnikova, Yanina Studilina, Thomas Kretschmann, Pyotr Fyodorov, Sergey Bondarchuk, Dmitriy Lysenkov, Andrey Smolyakov, Aleksey Barabash, Heiner Lauterbach and Oleg Volku.
Writers: Sergey Snezhkin, Ilya Tilkin.
Director: Fedor Bondarchuk.

Screening courtesy of the 2014 Russian Revolution Film Festival.

Rating: 2.5/5

As David Ayer’s Fury, featuring Brad Pitt and a tank full of combat movie stereotypes rolls through Australian cinemas, so to does Russian cinema’s own equally grand and cornball World War II melodrama, Stalingrad. Despite some stunningly realised technical work, Fedor Bondarchuk’s action-packed opus creaks under a rigidly antiquated narrative that bears a far closer pedigree to Michael Bay’s fanciful Pearl Harbour than Steven Spielberg’s gritty standard-bearer, Saving Private Ryan.

At US$30million (and with Columbia Pictures international distribution arm attached), it is one of largest production’s ever undertaken by the Russian film sector. Yet scripters Sergey Snezhkin’s and Ilya Tilkin’s dialogue and drama never come close to matching the visuals crafted by Bondarchuk’s production design team. Topped-and-tailed by an expensive Japanese earthquake sequence so as to create an unnecessary flashback device, audiences are then plunged into Stalingrad 1942, specifically a section of the city that has been cut-off after the German troops ignite vast fuel supplies (the sight of Russian troops bursting through walls of flame, fully ablaze and impervious to pain, gives an early indication as to the purely cinematic degree of heroism to be expected over the next 2 hours.)

Holed up in the crumbling remnants of a once opulent tenancy are five rugged, chummy Russian soldiers, led by the scowling, war-weary Gromov (Pyotr Fyodorov). Much like the societal cross-section represented by Pitt’s tank-crew, Gromov’s men are all types yet act as one; they find one more thing to bond over in the form of 18 year-old Katya (Mariya Smolnikova), a doe-eyed and determined lass who also happens to be a crack-shot with a telescopic sniper’s rifle.

The German forces are represented by Kapitan Kahn (Thomas Kretschmann, Europe’s hammiest leading man; see Dario Argento’s Dracula 3D), who keeps the pretty blonde peasant Masha (Yanina Studilina) hidden away to rape at his whim while also falling in love with her, and Khenze (Heiner Lauterbach), the bald tyrant of a head officer, who spits out some of the film’s unintentionally funniest lines (“These damn lice can’t even let a man die without making him itch.”)

Battles scenes are suitably brutal, as befitting one of the most bloody conflicts in modern military history, but are shot in such purely cinematic terms they barely suggest the real-world horrors soldiers from either side would have faced. Slow-motion hand-to-hand combat, complete with CGI blood-splatter (ala, 300) and ‘bullet-cam’ (ala, The Matrix) are used and re-used; one sequence, in which the Russian’s bounce a shell off a tank hull with pinpoint accuracy, is just plain stupid.

The director lathers his brave infantrymen in a warm, nationalistic glow, which is admirable but also detrimental; so one-dimensionally heroic are his band of brothers, audience connect as they would with a ‘James Bond’ or ‘Indiana Jones’ type. One should walk away exhausted and deeply moved by the courage these men displayed in the face of a tyrannical force. Instead, Fedor Bondarchuk's bloody battle epic celebrates the excesses of war cinema far more effectively than it does the heroism of his countrymen.