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OK, so I was thinking I'd rather be poked in the eye with a sharp stick than go to see Pearl Harbor.But, in the interest of marital harmony (you know how that goes) I went.
Expected to feel every excruciating second of the 10,800 in the movie.
Well I'm a sucker for a cute actress and PH has that one in spades. So I found myself wanting to see more of her (yes, much more) and before you know it I was laughing and crying along with the whole theatre.
Sure, the love story was schmaltzy and obligatory to induce sufficient shocked response to the horrors that followed. But I was also thinking of being young and stationed in an island paradise, with no problems and only the dance on Saturday night to look forward to.
Yup, I guess the movie was formula city, but sometimes that is OK for an entertaining time.
Suspend your disbelief and go for a ride....
Follow Ups:
...by Anthony Lane in TNY: Bombs Away. Read and giggle.clark
clarity and humor rolled into one.
Saw it over the weekend in a packed house. At 3 hours plus, it was way too long. Shoulda been 2:20 and cut some of the love story. Frankly, I didn't mind the love story as much as I thought I would, especially the slapstick stuff with Affleck and Beckinsdale (I especially enjoyed her) when they were first getting together. I thought it was kinda fun. Very innocent and 1940's. When she got together with the shy guy though, booooring! No spark there at all. The overall love story in this was waaaay better'n the Titanic one. In fact, I see almost no correlation between the 2 movies except that theyr'e both about a violent and traumatic experience offset by a love story. I guess people have to compare it to something, but I don't see it.I can't imagine why a Japanese American (or a Japanese Japanese) would be offended or angered by this film. War sucks and surprise is probably the oldest and most effective tactic in war. What's the big deal? It wasn't nearly as filled with the same amount of historicaly incorrect demonizing of American enemies as say "The Patriot" was.
The war sequences were stunning. Extremely impressive stuff. I was especially surprised that the Doolittle raid sequences were covered in such detail. It was probably my favorite part of the movie and I'm surprised that more people aren't mentioning it.
B&B are a good match. Bay's superpretentious artyness offset by Brucky's crass and shameless hype commercialism.
I liked PH way more than I thought I would. See it and make up your own mind.
The theater experience was horrible though. Blown subs popping and rattling all through the war sequences and 3 cell phone calls during the movie within 10 bodies of my seat. People are such morons. At least the guy in front of me wasn't 9 feet tall.
> > I can't imagine why a Japanese American (or a Japanese Japanese) would be offended or angered by this film. < <Frankly, this has me puzzled as well. I am more concerned that this film honor the dead and the survivors of this event by being historically faithful and not turning this battle into an 'amusement park ride' or 'entertaining video game'.
But I spoke with my mother over the weekend and I can only speak for the Japanese American point-of-view of my interned nisei parents. The West Coast internment, triggered by Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, lead to events which both deeply hurt and shamed my parents' families, to the extent that they did not openly talk to me about their experiences until the early-1980's.
My father's family was interned in Poston, Arizona. His father had died a few years before and so he was left to care for his mother and younger brother in that camp. His brother became very despondent and depressed by the internment and one morning he hung himself with his bedsheet in the camp hospital. My father had to cut him down from the rafter and the suicide was regarded by the Japanese community as a dishonorable death and created much shame for my father and his mother. So much so that he never told me about it. I was 28 and visiting my parents when a Time Magazine reporter came by to interview my father for an article concerning the incident. My father refused to elaborate on the story, but the shameful secret was finally out. He died four years ago without speaking about it any further, but he lived to receive his redress.
My mother's family was sent to Crystal City, Texas. This was not a conventional internment camp, but a concentration camp housing people who were considered especially dangerous to the U.S. These included schoolteachers, religious and cultural community leaders (my grandfather). It also included Italians and Germans (diplomats and loyalists), though housed in a separate region of the camp. Thus, Crystal City was the place where the "bad people" were sent and it has this stigma among the Japanese internees of the other camps and the Japanese American community to this day (it was difficult to get a Crystal City exhibit approved by the community and presented at the Japanese American National Museum--my mother is a volunteer docent there). My grandfather, surprisingly, was still a patriotic American who defied the religious leaders and Japanese loyalists in the camp, telling them that Japan only thought of itself and would never be fit to be 'world leaders'. After release from Crystal City, imagine his surprise that his family bore shame from other Japanese internees for being sent to Crystal City, as well as being persona non grata with Japanese loyalists, and being treated as an enemy by most of the rest of the post-War Americans. Both of his sons, too young to fight in WWII, later joined the U.S. Armed Forces. But I think the disgrace and shame killed him slowly. Sometimes there are things worse than death.
I hope this helps provide some understanding of these sentiments. I think films about these painful events should still be made, but I don't think people with deep wounds should see them; they will not heal or relieve their pain.
P.S.--I saw how disgracefully Ben Affleck acted on a British TV interview this weekend and I say: "you're history, bud!" You would think that a person would act with proper respect and decorum during the opening weekend of his biggest movie. Either Affleck has little respect for the subject matter of the film, or the whole film crew was like that (a damn shame either way).
and your post is surely one of them.Thanks for sharing your family's painful personal experiences and history. As a lawyer, I have always considered Korematsu v. United States (the US Supreme Court decision upholding the internment policy) as a blight on American jurisprudence.
Now I have some first-person evidence of the consequences of that decision.
Thank you.
> > Well I'm a sucker for a cute actress and PH has that one in spades < <I agree. Try "Cold Comfort Farm" with Kate Beckinsale starring as Flora Poste (aka "Robert Poste child"), one of the funniest films of the past decade. The scene with Ian McKellen preaching and shaking damnation and hellfire left me in stitches. Rufus Sewell ("Dark City") also made his debut as a 'Seth' in that film.
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