Miracle at St. Anna

I have a theory about Spike Lee:

As a filmmaker with an historical inability to secure financing, he has no choice but to consider that each movie he makes may very well be his last. With this desperate sense of impending finality, it seems like he feels a compulsion to cram a lifetime's worth of themes, characters, heck...even GENRES into what may be (but never is) his final film. The result? Sprawling, uneven movies with as many lows as highs.

Sadly, Miracle at St. Anna falls into this category. But there is good news, too. Unlike some of his similarly ambitious projects, there is a beautifully crafted little movie hiding in here, waiting for the patient viewer.

At its heart, Miractle at St. Anna is a mystery. An aging postal employee kills a customer with a German Luger. When they search the perpetrator's apartment, they find a Renaissance bust thought to be destroyed by the Nazis. The next 2 and a half hours are spent connecting the how and whys that lead up to these two events.

It's a long road fraught with uneven cinematic terrain. But if you can stomach the beginning (a hoaky send-up to 1940s hard boiled detective movies) and the end (an overly sentimental Nicholas Sparks-ian melodrama that inexplicably takes place on a beach paradise--and no, this isn't giving anything away) there is a gorgeous, finely tuned little movie about love, loyalty, innocence, and faith that is sandwiched in between. You just have to endure the 20 other movies (littered with on-the-nose dialogue, racial stereotypes, and ham fisted politicism) that weave in, out, and around this smaller, sweeter, and more tenderly executed film.

Lee proves that he can direct a powerful battle scene. And he makes some stunngingly brave and artful choices. A three minute, emotionally charged scene takes place in Italian with no subtitles. You know what's happening, but you don't know what's being said. As a result, the emotion of the scene is conveyed in the most visceral way possible. Its immediacy is the stuff of great cinema.

Lee validates his continued relevance and even offers some surprises. I just wish one of those surprises had been a new found ability to edit himself.