Unbroken
Angelina Jolie (2014)
Angelina Jolie, directing her second dramatic feature, tells the true World War II survival story of a young Italian-American, Louis ‘Louie’ Zamperini. As a nineteen-year-old, he represented the USA in track and field at the 1936 Olympics, finishing eighth in the 5000m. He enlisted in the US Army Air Corps in September 1941; in May 1943, the B24 bomber of which he was a crew member crashed, following a mechanical failure, into the Pacific Ocean. Zamperini and two others were the only survivors of the crash. Floating on a life raft, they drank rainwater as best they could. They caught fish and the occasional sea bird with their bare hands, and ate them raw. One of the trio died after thirty-three days; fourteen days later, Zamperini and the B24 pilot ‘Phil’ Phillips were captured by the Japanese Navy. A prisoner of war until August 1945, Zamperini was repeatedly tortured and beaten by his captors. In his long life after World War II, he became a committed Christian and, mentored by Billy Graham, a well-known ‘inspirational speaker’. Forgiveness was central to Zamperini’s Christianity and he practised what he preached, returning to Japan to visit men who had persecuted him a few years earlier and were now imprisoned as war criminals. Zamperini published two war memoirs. In 2010 a biography by Laura Hillenbrand, entitled Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption, became a bestseller and a prize-winner. When his plane went down in 1943, Louis Zamperini was reported by the American military as missing presumed dead. In the event, he passed away in July 2014, at the age of ninety-seven.
Laura Hillenbrand’s book is the credited source for the screenplay of Unbroken and the authors of that screenplay are a big-name group – the Coen brothers, Richard LaGravenese (whose screenwriting credits include The Fisher King, The Bridges of Madison County and Behind the Candelabra) and William Nicholson (Shadowlands, Gladiator, Les Misérables, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom). Did they all work together or were they involved consecutively – to try and rescue the script? It’s hard to imagine a sensibility less naturally suited than the Coens’ to dramatising the struggles of an endlessly resilient man who, tempered by war, found God. On the life raft, Louie promises that, if God will let him live, he will dedicate the rest of his life to Him. From that point on, the idea of Louie’s being sustained through his ordeals by faith is conveniently unmentioned – until a closing legend on the screen, which explains that he was convinced that his prayers out at sea saved his life. Beyond his family and his sweetheart back in New York, the Louis Zamperini of Jolie’s film doesn’t form any human relationships and the sequences involving these nearest and dearest are both clumsy and perfunctory. A flashback to the Berlin Olympics is particularly feeble. The family listen to a radio commentary on Louie’s race, register disappointment when the voice reports that he’s at the back of the 5000m field, leap in celebration when they discover … what? It isn’t even clear where their boy has finished and impossible to believe that, even in accentuate-the-positive America, the family would go wild at the news that Louie has run a remarkably quick final lap (which allows him to pass some other stragglers). The suggestion that the hero’s stamina on the running track anticipates the qualities of endurance he’ll need to show as a prisoner of the Japanese is crass.
Zamperini and Phillips are held first at Kwajalein Atoll before being separated. (The latter isn’t seen again.) Louie is transferred to the Omori camp in Tokyo and, when this is bombed by American forces in the closing stages of the war, to Naoetsu in Northern Japan. Angelina Jolie presents an offensively skewed picture of life in both Omori and Naoetsu by having Louie singled out for punishment – received at the hands of a single sadist among the guards, the same man in both camps. This man, Mutsuhiro Watanabe, is only a corporal at Omori before being promoted to sergeant and transferred to Naoetsu but, in spite of his modest military status (of which, it’s suggested, he’s bitterly resentful), he appears to have authority that goes unchallenged – and in spite of Watanabe’s increasingly unhinged behaviour. There’s next to no suggestion either that any of Louie’s fellow prisoners suffered comparable violent maltreatment or that the essential structures and conditions of POW camps might have been conducive to sadistic acts or even routines. Jolie’s coverage of the beatings and other punishments meted out to Louie Zamperini is certainly unflinching – so relentlessly explicit that you wonder if a male director might have been more discreet. Part of Kathryn Bigelow’s achievement in The Hurt Locker was to make a war film that was tough-minded but not self-consciously so. The same can’t be said for Angelina Jolie – her poor judgment here reminds you of what used sometimes to be said of Margaret Thatcher: that her political personality – her ‘strong’ leadership – was exaggerated by a determination not to be seen as feminine in the soft-hearted sense of the word. Jolie’s direction is often competent and she’s created with Roger Deakins some impressive war art images. But you’re always conscious of the effort behind those images. You’re rarely swept up in the story enough for the film’s technical accomplishments not to be uppermost in your mind.
The shots of Louis Zamperini at the opening ceremony of the Berlin Olympics are so flabby that only a charismatic movie star face could animate them (someone like Mr Jolie in his youth). I’m not sure that Jack O’Connell has such a face but he’s an excellent actor and, as Louie, he gives another involving, emotionally dynamic performance. He evidently lost a considerable amount of weight here – even though, presumably as a result of the sequence in which the scenes were shot, his emaciation comes and goes. Although I was longing for Unbroken to end for most of its 137 minutes, I was always looking forward to what O’Connell did next. As Phillips, Domhnall Gleeson shows a similar fearless physical commitment. You do wonder, though, why Jolie felt she had to go for non-Americans in both these roles. Others in the cast who make an impression are Finn Wittrock, as the non-survivor of the life raft episode, and Garrett Hedlund, who’s almost too strong a presence for his role as one of the other POWs. The evil guard Watanabe is played by the Japanese singer-songwriter Miyavi. Jolie appears to be suggesting that Watanabe had furiously repressed homosexual feelings for Louie – a message conveyed by Miyavi’s androgynous face rather than his acting.
8 January 2015