A troublesome film goes incandescent
Recently finished watching Fury. It is a strong, visceral, powerful film in its realistic depiction of combat and the horrors of war. To watch it on a tiny little screen while bouncing around in an airplane would be a grave disservice. Glad I was able to watch it on a large screen Smart TV. It’s so intense I had to stop halfway thru it last night. Glad I came back to finish it, too, as, wow, felt mesmerized, even garbled by the chaos of war. One really must be in the right frame of mind to watch this movie set at the end of the war when the Germans were sending out everyone inc little boys & girls & the elderly to fanatically defend their Fatherland from the Allied invasions…& the Nazis killed their own if they wouldn’t fight. The Germans devastated American and Allied tanks. My goodness, what we humans put ourselves and our world thru as a species.
Fury is based not on a true story, but upon a collection of true stories merged into one narrative using real, actual World War 2 tanks borrowed or bought from public museums and private collections. The movie was filmed across 2013 and released in the Autumn of 2014. The actors were put thru a difficult military-style boot camp that proved grueling yet also helped strangers developed a sense of family of sorts. Interior set designs were made for the tanks so sections could be quickly popped out for camera crews to gimbal around to shoot. Apparently the inside of these tanks were too tight to properly film. There were times watching the actors inside their tanks were reminiscent of war movies set inside submarines.
David Ayer was both director and primary writer. Both of his grandfathers fought in the Second World War on opposite sides of the planet. “Tankers,” as these “land submariners” were called, who survived the war were brought in to share their stories with the actors. Books written by armored veterans highlighted the heavy toll of combat and high casualty rates of tanker crews fighting across Europe. Ayer and the actors were successful for the most part in their portrayal of the war.
The strong ensemble cast is a plus. There were, however, some significant flaws. The tank crew, all skilled, wonderful actors, are reduced to emotionally one-dimensional cardboard cutouts devoid of depth. In the heat of battle, perhaps it doesn’t matter. Yet in the heat of battle, it does matter. And this unfortunate hollowness despite the rich, detailed sets and riveting action is reflected into the audience. I wanted to know more about the characters as human beings. As an example, one flaw was the relentless, ugly bullying by some of the cast without demonstrating the complexity of each bully as a full human being. Yeah, we get it, we get it, we do, and it seems unnecessarily overdone.
Also, the apartment scenes with the two German women dragged on and on and painfully on. As the apartment drama felt as if it was some kind of cinematic bridge, hinge, or turning point as it was midway thru the movie, it felt irritatingly weak and meandering. It would have been a stronger, punchier film if it had been half as long. Nevertheless, this movie is a powerful portrayal of the stupidity, ugliness, and senselessness of war at the lowest levels of engagement despite the overarching necessity of war and what it takes to fight.
When Fury first came out, the movie was savaged by film critics. A decade later it’s now regarded as a classic war movie. It’s postmodern, filmed after the World Wars of 1914-1991 with their more heroic takes. Fury hits hard with its brutal, gritty realism, even if some details may not jibe such as controversies around tank-on-tank battles, and it attempts to portray a small crew of individual tankers in the horrific waning days of a world war.
Fury is not a movie that glorifies war. It’s not anti-war either. Rather the film seeks to show war for what it is, Hell on Earth, for those caught up in the violence and terror and horror and camaraderie of the grand drama of it all. Doesn’t matter if war and all its violence is Prehistoric, Ancient, Medieval, Modern, or Postmodern, or from any other time and place. War is war. Fury and fear, rage and terror, survival and sacrifice. Mass death and combat is not pretty and glorious. It shouldn’t ever be pretty. Heroic, perhaps, but not glorious. Heroism is never glorious. Heroism is transcendent.
William Dudley Bass
Monday 5 February 2024
Tuesday 6 February 2024
Shoreline/Seattle, Washington
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