[On November
26, 1942 the great Casablanca
premiered in New York. So this
week I’ll AmericanStudy that film and four other wartime romances!]
On the uses and
abuses of history in Michael Bay’s most serious blockbuster.
First, let’s
stop for a moment and acknowledge the basic impressiveness of the fact that the
director of Bad Boys (and sequels), Transformers (and sequels), The Rock, Armageddon, and the like made a historical epic about the Pearl
Harbor bombing and its World War II aftermaths. Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan came out in July
1998 (three years prior to Bay’s film) and so I suppose would qualify as a
summer blockbuster, but it was Spielberg, and the post-Schindler’s List and Amistad
Spielberg at that—nothing surprising about a historical epic from that guy. But
from the man who’s probably currently in production with both Transformers 4 and Bad Boys 3? Again, worth noting and, at a baseline level, admiring.
Moreover, it’d
be pretty silly to critique Bay’s film for making a friendship and a love
triangle central to its plotlines. After all, that’s the nature of the
genre I’ve elsewhere dubbed period fiction—works of art that set universal
human stories against a backdrop of (often) impressively realized historical
moments. While those of us who care deeply about the histories themselves might
be frustrated that such works relegate them to the background, it would be just
as possible to argue the opposite: that works of period fiction help modern
audiences connect to their historical subjects through engaging and accessible
human characters, stories, and themes. After all, none other than the godfather
of historical fiction, Sir
Walter Scott, could be said to have done precisely that in the creation of
characters like Waverly
and Ivanhoe. Yes,
I just compared Michael Bay to Sir Walter Scott, and I stand by it.
On the other
hand, I would argue that if a piece of period fiction is set in wartime, it
owes its audience at the very least an equally compelling and affecting portrayal
of war: Saving Private Ryan, whatever
its flaws, certainly offers that, especially in the opening sequence linked
above; Gone with the Wind, more flawed
still, is nonetheless at its best in depicting the Civil War and particularly the destruction of Atlanta.
Thanks to its sizeable budget and state-of-the-art special effects, Pearl Harbor is able to include an extended depiction of that
bombing, among other battle sequences—yet to my mind (and you can judge for
yourself at that link and the follow-up part 2) it fails utterly at capturing
any of the brutalities or terrors, or any other aspects, of war. The problem
isn’t that the director of Transformers
is making a wartime historical epic—it’s that the wartime historical epic
doesn’t feel noticeably different from any other action film in his oeuvre.
November Recap
this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other wartime romances you’d highlight?
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