Paradox Soldiers – A Lesson For Miracle At Saint Anna

Besides films and books, war re-enactment is a vastly popular activity these days and has become an intrinsic part of history education in schools.

However, film remains the most readily available form of history education since it is cheaper, albeit the exorbitant popcorn prices, more entertaining and less time consuming and in general, available to a wider audience. This is possibly why historical films generate so much heated debate.

Another bone of contention particularly about WWII historical films has to do with their parochial nature. There’s simply not a single re-enactment of Black History in schools in America or Europe, certainly just a glimpse of Black History in the American High School Texts. If for example, we are lucky, we can to take a few African/African-American History classes in college, and that’s if we’ve escaped the smooth broadway to prison for the long and thistled road to college. Films then remain the major form of history education for many who can neither afford the college education nor make the time to read.

For this reason, Spike Lee went off on Clint Eastwood. He took his jabs at the ancient Dirty Harry, criticizing his films for their failure to properly represent the African-American soldier’s experience during WWII. The criticism was well-meaning but whatever ensued was a disaster.

With a $45 million budget, Miracle At Saint Anna run for 2 hours and 46 minutes, capturing only $9 million back from its first investment. Why? Even more disheartening, not many African-Americans patronized it. In fact , many more, in millions, African-Americans trooped to see Madea Goes to Jail. To this end Spike Lee was bitter and understandably so. But is it surprising?

Everything Spike Lee does, except for putting his name on Vodka Labels across Harlem NYC, I attempt to watch. He’s quite a filmmaker. The Auteur! His brilliant films such as ‘Do the Right Thing’ or the ridiculously great The 25th Hour, and even his nightmares in the form of Bamboozled or perhaps Girl 6 were painfully impressive, nonetheless.

So what happened with Miracle At Saint Anna, 2008? Let’s take a similar movie, such as, Paradox Soldiers, 2011.

Paradox Soldiers, or to give it back its original name My Iz Budushchego 2, is a historical film about ‘The Encirclement At Brody’ – a battle that took place in the Ukraine between 14th and 22nd July 1944 – part of a prolonged campaign by Russian commander Marshall Konev and the 1st Ukrainian Front that encircled 45,000 German troops of the 8th Army Corps.

Boring? Yes!

But in this movie, two Moscovites who have an interest in war re-enactment are followed. One is a Professor in World War II history and the other is a Seeker, someone who specializes in finding artifacts on battlefields, identifying and verifying their authenticity. Previously both men had been victims of time travel and gone back to 1944 where they met a nurse called Nina with whom the Professor was madly in love and wanted to bring back to the future, but who was apparently killed heroically trying to rescue a wounded soldier in an artillery barrage.

Anyhow, the Seeker finds photographic evidence that Nina actually survived this bombardment and the duo decide to head across to the re-enactment of the Encirclement Of Brody to see if they can manage to travel back in time again and find her.

I didn’t mind watching this. It was a great film! Check it out on DVD when you can. The plot does not in any way take away from the real history the movie sought to tell. In fact, it enhanced it; it garnished it so charismatically that you had to watch it. And you learn.

Perhaps the structure and plot of Miracle At Saint Anna are evidence of Spike Lee’s style 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 lo and behold, doesn’t he stick to it?

The scenes that threw me off in Miracle At Saint Anna are not necessarily evidence of any special perception I had. Not at all! They were the kind of scenes that many studio chiefs from the dawn of filmmaking might have singled out, and in the interest of entertainment, made the film shorter and faster.

But for whatever reason, they seemed important to Spike Lee, who must have defended them to death. And it’s important to me that he probably did. Only this time it went terribly wrong.

Nevertheless Miracle at St. Anna contained his peculiar filmmaking style and richness, anger, history, sentiment, fantasy, reality, violence and life, but it was too much! Quite far from entertainment. It made me feel that Spike Lee could not decide between writing a book and making a documentary. His ‘Miracle At Saint Anna’ was probably an after thought and perhaps a long shot at entertainment.

Directors: Oleg Pogodin & Dmitri Voronko
Writer: Aleksandra Shevtsov
Cast: Aleksei Barabash, Semyon Belotserkovskiy, Dmitri Dyachuk.
Date Released: 02/21/2011