MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA: Prelude to DA 5 BLOODS
TOUCHSTONEBashed and annihilated on release back in 2008, it seems only apt that after the critically acclaimed release of Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods, a film that follows a group of disgruntled war veterans and analyses social constructs of race and patriotism, to revisit Lee's much miss-aligned war drama with new and far better-equipped eyes. Set in the backend of WWII, Miracle at St. Anna follows a unit of Black-only G.I.’s. They are left stranded to wait for the war effort to support them in a small, quaint Italian village – where the German army is slowly approaching.
Throughout, the comparisons between Miracle at St. Anna and Da 5 Bloods are thick and fast. Following a similar narrative of Black G.I.'s in a war effort that does not care about them is clear, for starters, but its the themes and contextual conviction that are almost too close in comparison to ignore. Lee explores the enemy's war efforts of racial manipulation to a very similar effect. During Da 5 Bloods, Lee utilises Van Veronica Ngo's radio and propaganda personality, Hanoi Hannah, as a means of internal emotional combustion to the Black G.I. fighting a white man's war. Lee uses the same technique in Miracle at St. Anna to an equally profound and devastating degree with Alexandra Maria Lara's Axis Sally.
Both characters and arcs are utilised with the same deafening and heartbreaking assessment, of which is made all the more destructive due to the truth that surrounds said propaganda. Renditions of fighting for a broken country and racial oppression are some topics covered, but the darkest aspect is sadly not the statements made but the fact that between the 30 years gap between wars, the same social issues are still prevalent and alive. Granted, Da 5 Bloods explores such heartbreaking sentiments to an even more disturbing degree following forty or so years later after the Vietnam war, with these very themes still rampant and widespread – to an even darker and brutal degree.
It is the recurring theme of fighting to stand tall in both films’ that results in a tragic albeit insightful notion of why? The answer, while undoubtedly multifaceted, can be conveyed into one word: persecution. In either direction, to fight or to resist, the social oppression and racial discrimination persist no matter the outcome. Made clear that even the proudness and esteem of representing and fighting for your country means nothing if your skin has a higher count of melanin. Personified ten-fold in Miracle at St. Anna, when the captured German enemy is given the simplest form of kindness and respect while eating in a southern diner, compared to the Black unit, who are shunned regardless of their worth wearing a military uniform.
Further in the film, this persecution is intensified by means of racial aggression, in which Walter Goggins' Captain Nokes does not believe the coordinates given by the unit and proceeds to bomb the unit's position, killing multiple of his own troops. Nokes leaves the unit to rot in the small village until they find a German prisoner. A position that a white unite would not have been placed in. Similar in Da 5 Bloods, Lee explores this persecution – not only within the war effort but internal struggles of having to accept these aggressions as a way of life and, with that, the internal combustion of both ideology and non-acceptance of racial oppression.
The four lead Miracle at St. Anna's characters succumb to these themes, in which they defy orders from Nokes while on the verge of the German invasion — standing up for their pride and race yet ultimately falling on their shields in a devastatingly beautiful and ironic fashion of fighting for those without a voice. The four central characters of Da 5 Bloods have an eerily similar path and arc, and while both sets of characters go out in a blaze of glory, they fight not only for their respective freedoms, both literally and metaphorically, but each set piece is a strong personification and allegory for each fight that has come before it. Lee, however, does not resort to a simplistic action set piece but moments with undoubtedly deeper meanings that surround them.
Lee, in both features, puts emphasis into each set piece with a clear depiction that each of these tragic ends could be avoided. Granted, they are years – if not decades – of brewing hatred from two sides, but they are put into that position due to manifested social discourse from a range of political, societal and economic pressures by a larger enemy: a sleeping lion of a fascist government. It would be ridiculous to suggest that the likes of Nokes is simply a racist due to the aforementioned parameters. However, the ignorance of Nokes is an element that should not be ill-considered. Seeing this side slowly rip apart due to the colour of skin and fighting between themselves during a war that brought most of the world against a fascist dictatorship in Miracle at St. Anna is a tragic realisation of racial hatred and ignorance taking precedent of a common enemy that wants to kill them both.
More so in Da 5 Bloods, Lee's film has the four Black characters pitted against a legion of disgruntled Vietnamese rebels, who have the right to a chest of lost gold used by the USA as an aim of reparations for the Vietnam war. Again, in the moment, Lee asks the question of who has the right to own the gold, with the characters – on either side – going as far as dying to protect it. Nevertheless, both have far more common ground than they wish to admit, with the U.S. government responsible for each of their respective torture before, during and after the war effort. That being said, it is the above mention of persecution that lingers. The U.S. politically, socially and economically has let an entire race of people down from the moment the slave trade commenced with zero acknowledgement of the fact. It is an enemy that has suppressed the voices of MLK and Malcolm X with bullets, yet the likes of David Duke and Richard Spencer are given a platform with a microphone. Levelling Black Lives Matter and Antifa as terrorist groups yet failing to deter Alt-Right racial hatred groups and acknowledging the real issues of domestic terrorism.
A common theme of Lee's work is his thematic repetition. The usage of treadmill dollies, returning acting partnerships, his ongoing collaboration with composer Terence Blanchard. However, these are surface level. It is primarily the fight and cause of his features that offer the most interesting insight. Granted, as mentioned above, Lee's films, throughout his filmography, are a grappling dichotomy of social pressures and racial anguish. Nevertheless, Lee explores a noticeable range of these issues with an often enlightening yet brutal degree of honesty. In the end, it is the system that pits people together. It is the system that radicalises hatred when people want peace. Miracle At St. Anna and Da 5 Bloods both showcase the same side of the same coin at different points of the fight against persecution. Lee showcases this in all its multifaceted behaviour with nothing being clear cut and evident as the description above provides.
