Film Review: Fury, 2014

I just finished watching this. For the - I think? - fourth time. Each time I watch it, I like it a bit more. The first time I watched it, I just thought the 'macho pose' factor, and the final scene - gunfight on the Sherman corral - were just too much. More on this particular episode later.

In the picture above the cast/crew of Fury are, l-r: Jon Bernthal, Michael Pena, Brad Pitt, Logan Lerman (behind Pitt), and Shia LaBeouf, as, respectively: Grady "Coon-Ass" Travis, Trini "Gordo" Garcia, Don "Wardaddy" Collier, Norman "Machine" Ellison and Boyd "Bible" Swan.

However, with each new viewing I think it's a better film. The ending is a bit, er... no, make that very OTT. But I've gone from finding it merely ridiculous, to enjoying it for what it is, cinematic overstatement. And the characterisation? Well, the macho factor is hard to acclimatise to, and the Hollywood tradition of using 'good ol' Southern boy' accents as a shorthand for gritty authenticity, still irks me. Just less so. [1]

What makes the film better with each viewing are, for one thing, the abundance of little details. It's taken a long time. But these days it's much more usual for WWII movies to depict not just weapons and equipment more accurately, but also combat environments generally, and all the stuff that goes with them; bombed-out towns, refugees caught in the crossfire, behind the lines scenes, etc.

Director Ayers and Pitt, in a muddy camp scene.

And despite the über machismo caveat, the cast in this film are actually pretty good, giving good performances. Watching the extras on the DVD one realises that meeting real WWII veterans, and going to movie 'bootcamp', with genuine military guys on hand to train them, all had salutary and useful effects on the actors. And I think these things help make Fury better than it might, at first glance, appear to be.

Initially I thought some of the actors rather wooden.

On first veiwing I thought it was a pretty dumb film, frankly. Populated by wooden caricatures. But there's a degree of sad truth in the way men gravitate towards defined roles under duress. So the characterisation might not be as two-dimensional as I originally thought. Certainly the mixture of brutality and camaraderie, or the good and bad sides of humanity, as brought out by warfare, aren't easy or comfortable viewing. But in that respect, this film depicts war honestly and authentically.

Two major themes that resonate most compellingly within the film are: the struggle between the degrading animalistic violence of war, and our more civilised compassionate side; and the family like bonds that develop under such extremes of duress. Don 'Wardaddy' Collier is, both literally and metaphorically, the father figure in the tank (and the tank is the family home!). He dishes out tough love, but he earns the respect and loyalty of his crew.

'Wardaddy' in one of his several father figure roles, helping 'Machine' pop his cherry.

'Wardaddy' as bad dad, making Norm' pop a cap in a defenceless Kraut's ass.

In his role as father figure, 'Wardaddy' helps Norman 'Machine' Ellison both gain experience and lose his innocence, in two notable and significant ways: scoring with a pretty German girl, and killing a German POW. Both scenes are really quite troubling, in their own different ways. Some have said they find the interlude with the female German civilians improbable. Well, I dunno... my reading of war diaries (and histories), from conflicts in all eras suggests that fraternisation, all the way to intimacy - both consensual and otherwise - is very normal.

Whilst the moral issues in the film are certainly very complex, even if initially they appear to be handled rather too simplistically, there are technical aspects that military buffs such as us model-makers and wargamers are bound to love. Shot largely in England, they used Bovington's Tiger 131 for the deadly encounter with that famed German tank. How many films are spoiled because of inaccurate matériel? It's clear that Ayers and co really wanted authenticity, probably in all aspects, but certainly in terms of gear. And that really helps the movie.

Bovington's Tiger, 131, is magnificent.

Whilst Ayers tried to avoid CGI, he did use it for tracer round effects

A very moody production shot; location, Oxfordshire!

Shermans, also supplied by Bovington, in action.

Fury takes a hit. Fortunately not fatal.

The final shoot-out with 'Jerry' is brought about when Fury rolls over a mine and loses wheels/track. Their platoon, reduced to just one vehicle from four, after the encounter with the Tiger, is supposed to hold a cross-roads/sector. Given the suicidal circumstances, the seasoned crew want to get out. Jaded old 'Wardaddy' - with shades of a deathwish - wants to stay. Young 'Machine' decides to remain with him, after which the old crew are shamed into staying also.

The claustrophobia of conditions within the tank is superbly conveyed

'Gordo' drives whilst viewing the outside world through a tiny periscope vision slot.

The commander in his turret; looks quite roomy compared to the other crew areas.

Whilst this segment of the film is, well, speaking candidly, fun, from a shoot 'em up point of view, it's both rather silly, and - partially in consequence of the former fact - morally troubling. It really reminds me of the old Westerns, with the cowboys wasting hordes of faceless Indians. And the double standard in terms of the value of life, between 'goodies' and 'baddies', is only enhanced by the alternation between the constant noise and combat as Germans are massacred, and the moments of solemn silence whenever one of 'our boys' cops it. Whilst this is undoubtedly televisually very powerful, it's also a dramatic conceit that's both morally dubious, and highly unrealistic.

The ending owes much to this sort of thing.

And don't just take my word for this: Bill Betts, a British Sherman tank veteran, admires certain scenes in Fury, such as the Tiger pasting the Shermans [3]. But here's what he said about the end: 'I thought the film showed accurately how tough life could be in a tank, but the final scene where the crew hold out against a battalion of Waffen SS troops was too far fetched. The Germans seemed to be used as canon fodder. In reality they would have been battle-hardened and fanatical troops who would have easily taken out an immobile Sherman tank using Panzerfausts.'

The German cannon fodder, arriving at the crossroads.

This film does have its faults. But, where I would've given it three out of five stars/balkenkreuz after my first viewing, and four after viewings two/three, now, on the fourth time around, I have to confess I love it. And so, to reflect that, whilst my heart wants to give it five, I'll settle for four and a half: I do love it, but it's certainly not perfect. Indeed, it's fairly flawed, in some respects. But I love it nonetheless!

----------
NOTES:

Lafayette Green Pool, the original 'Wardaddy'!

[1] Having said this, I learned, during my online research for this review, that the nickname 'Wardaddy' was in fact the real nickname of a U.S. tank commander. And the 'real' Wardaddy, one  Lafayette G. Pool, was indeed a Texan (he even allegedly wore cowboy boots in preference to army issue boots!).

[2] Here's a short movie about Tiger 131's involvement in the filming of Fury.

[3] Betts also recalled, in relation to the scene showing the execution of a german POW, disarming a 55 year old member of the Volksturm, only to learn later that he was shot. Read the full article here.

Film Review: White Tiger (Belyy Tigr), 2012

The Russian Titles: groovy Cyrillic font!

Wow! What an odd film that was.

I wrote this review some while back. The evening after watching this movie. And I must confess, it left me feeling perplexed. I wasn't always sure what I thought of the film itself, but, a few hours after the credits rolled, I knew that I'd been deeply impressed by the degree to which it got under my skin, and made me think.

The 'Tankist' when discovered... pretty much fried. But not dead.

The bulk of the film appears to centre around a Russian 'tankist', who miraculously survives a German tank attack in which a seemingly invincible phantom white Tiger tank appears from nowhere, destroys a large number of T-34s, and then disappears. Discovered in his burned out tank, our 'tanker' is 90% covered with burns. Several times he's nearly passed over, as already dead or past recovery. But he miraculously recovers, unscarred, but unable to recall his former life/self.

Miraculously healed, renamed, re-recruited, and about to be redeployed.

'Reborn' as Ivan Naydenov (i.e. 'Generic-Russki Found'), he's soon back in a tank. And before long he's selected to command a special prototype souped-up super T34, his mission; find and destroy this mysterious White Tiger. This develops into a bizarre supernatural angle, which is the first and most obvious thing about this strange film that sets it apart from your run of the mill war picture. Indeed, it makes it hard to categorise; I've seen this film variously described online as action, war, fantasy or thriller. I think a better description would be parable.

Naidyov, played by Aleksey Vertkov, in a perpetually calm state following his 'burning', claims he can communicate with tanks, or rather they with him. We first see this in a scene interesting not only for this oddball narrative turn, but because it depicts wrecked tanks that includes a lend-lease Matilda, as well as the expected Russian and German armour.

The Communist military machine, ostensibly anti-religious, inasmuch as Communism itself is purportedly so [1], unsurprisingly, has trouble digesting both the stories of an invincible 'ghost' Tiger tank, and what word of Comrade Naidyov's claims makes its way up the command chain. This aspect of the film culminates in what one might well read as a Russian riposte to the much longer (but no less mythical) American tradition, of the shoot out in the ghost town. Here Naidyov's T-34 does battle one-to-one with the elusive 'Belyy Tigr', the end of which duel I'll not give away, having already indulged in far more spoilers than I'd usually permit myself.

At this point the film rather abruptly changes scene and gear, shifting to the German capitulation, with, I think, Keitel, signing the unconditional surrender. Keitel, Stumpff, and another character, who are, I think, supposed to be, respectively, the heads of Germany's land, sea and air forces, then have a dinner together, and discuss, rather awkwardly, their feelings about the food.

It's all over now.

Signing the surrender.

This abrupt departure from the front, despite the fields of battle being themselves somewhat odd, is not in any way signposted or explained. And then we're plumped back, about as abruptly - I say abruptly, but this film has a slow pace much of the time - into the war zone. Only it's no longer a war zone; Russian troops and German civilians watch columns of German soldiers being escorted Eastward into captivity.

Major Fedotov, left, briefs Naydenov, literally in the field.

Finally, in the person of Major Fedotov (Vitaliy Kishchenko), an NKVD officer whose role renders him as an intermediary for us, the bewildered audience, we are reconnected with the original narrative thread. Fedotov visits Naidyev, who, as ever, is communing with his beloved tanks. In this case his own. Doing some maintenance. The exact content and outcome of this short scene, which is the key to unlocking the films more obvious metaphoric meaning, I'll leave unsaid.

Strangely, this doesn't feel at all like a film nearing its end, at this point. But it is. Only there's one more bizarre left-turn before the credits role. And this one, despite no references to supernatural tank type business, is perhaps the weirdest of them all: in a massive and very grandiose setting, Hitler explains his actions, reasoning, and vision of the future, to a shadowy character sitting opposite him, who doesn't speak, and whose identity is not made clear.

Karl Kranzkowski as Hitler.

This last development hits the viewer powerfully, as we all know - or ought to - that at this point, in properly chronological narrative time, Hitler is dead. This is not a film that - up to this point, at any rate - has used flashbacks or a backward narrative. Giving Hitler, literally, the last word, is a daring, provocative, even shockingly powerful ploy. Once again, there's no signposting or explanation. 

At surface level all this might be, or might appear to be, simply a resurgence of the old superstitious face of Mother Russia. Stalin himself rallied Russia around such ideas, in contradiction with the strict dogma of materialist Communism. And this is an aspect of this film that roots it in a decidedly indigenous Russian tradition. It's nowhere near as oddball-arthouse as, say, Tarkovsky. Yet it does have something of that dream-like quality.

Flaming tanks!

In stark contrast, it seems to me that, by and large, mainstream Hollywood style filmmakers attempt to make any meaning their films might have - beyond being product produced for entertainment - idiot-level obvious. Does director Shaknazorov have a higher regard for his audience's intelligence? Or is the meaning of this film, and in particular the key final scene, simply more obvious to Russian viewers?

Panzer Battles, in the edition I bought (for 50p!).

Funnily enough I also finished the Eastern Front section of Mellenthin's Panzer Battles memoir the very same evening I watched this. In that book the German general concludes his post-WWII musings on the relation between Europe and Russia in a way that does make interpreting this final scene potentially much simpler and clearer: 'we require an indomitable will to protect Western civilisation from the clutches of the Soviet Hordes.' That sentence would slot into Hitler's final monologue in this film very neatly.

Spoiler alert: perhaps I shouldn't show this...  but...

The juxtaposition of supposedly irreligious Communism with ghostly tanks, and a living 'tankist' who seems more medieval than modern, and even the invocation of Darwin - here used in a very bizarre attempt to reconcile supernatural goings on with rational understanding, by inferring that the odd events depicted are simply a natural outcome of the conditions of war - are challengingly uncomfortable for me, a Westerner brought up as a Christian, but who has rejected all religious dogma.

Fury this is not!

But, if one considers this film not literally, but as myth or parable, and we then start rooting around for readings and meanings, it does, I feel, get really quite interesting. One thing's for sure, this is an altogether different beast from Fury! And, strangely enough, although the latter never invokes such otherworldly ideas, nevertheless, White Tiger, for all it's mystical weirdness, is - rather bizarrely, perhaps? - on planes of a philosophical sense of truth, if not literally, a much more realistic film.

This is the cover of the DVD I bought.

One of the Russian DVD covers.

Well, in conclusion, a mighty strange film. But very watchable and thought-provoking. It's well made, despite some oddities, such as Tiger that isn't quite what a Tiger should be (well, it is a ghost Tiger!), and some heavy Russian seriousness in the acting that Western viewers might find veers towards the hammy. But for the most part the actors are actually excellent. I particularly liked Naydenov himself, and his two crew members, Kryuk and Berdyev.

The action in the film is far from being the central or only point of the movie. But it is nonetheless excellent.  Of particular note is the sound the  tanks make when they fire. Especially so the white Tiger, whose gun going off has a powerful and yet menacingly spooky sound. Rating this was really hard. In some respects this is a five star film. But it's not entirely consistent, and it's so damn weird... so I settled for four out five.

Naydenov's crew, Kryuk and Berdyev.

I'd be interested to hear what others who've seen the film think!

----------
NOTES:

[1] Like fascism, Communism has itself been likened to a religion, for its fervour, absolutism, and the rituals, orthodoxies and hierarchies (priesthood!) that go with it. And, just as in 1812, religion and superstition proved useful in fanning the flames of patriotism and nationalism.