Father Frank's Rants - FURIOUS ABOUT 'FURY' - THE MOVIE.
Rant Number 606 27 October 2014
FURY
I am furious. About Fury. A disgusting, triumphalist, obscene war movie. Fury wraps itself up in the Stars and Stripes flag and glories in slaughter. Viewing it was a loathsome experience. Like watching the progression of a vampire worm crawling through bloody slime. A critic wrote of the ‘moral clarity’ of WWII for the Allies. Judging by this repellent film, ‘crap to that!’
Five American soldiers inside a Sherman tank battle their way through a devastated, almost lunar German landscape, the fruit of years of Allied ferocious air bombings. The tank’s name speaks volumes. General Sherman’s infamous dictum, ‘War is hell’, was designed to obliterate any civilised restraints and limitations in warfare. Sherman declared total war on the Confederacy, burned down Atlanta and marched his conquering armies through the South with scorched earth tactics. Cruel? But ‘War is cruelty’ – another of Sherman’s pearls – and cruelty is also what Fury is about.
Director David Ayer said that killing Nazis does not raise hackles because it is like killing zombies. But Brad Pitt, the disagreeable hero, speaks of ‘killing Germans’. A revealing line. It gives the game away. This is an out-and-out racist movie. The Nazis are a pretext. The message is that all Germans are bad, inhuman, monsters. Hence they can be slaughtered like flies or incinerated like zombies. And the conquerors do that with great gusto. Deep down, despite the mountains of stinking corpses, if you are the victor ultimately ‘war is beautiful’ – why didn’t Sherman say that?
When Pitt forces a young rookie to shoot a prisoner of war as his baptism of fire, that is just that – a war crime. Critic Frank Kermode opines that Fury is really about Brad Pitt. His stylish haircut, his torso, his butchiness. Pitt the killing machine. A ruggedly handsome one, if visibly aging, granted. Only in aid of…what? Murdering a soldier who has surrendered? A Pashtu Taleban warrior must have better standards than that.
Kermode, along with other right-thinking critics, has predictably baulked at a scene involving women. The conquering US warriors occupy a town. Two Fraulein in a flat are pretty. Pitt condescends to give them a couple of eggs. A girl sings a lovely song – a corny scene tried out in innumerable movies, such as Stanley Kubrik’s powerful anti-war movie, Paths of Glory. (Now, that was a film filled with real moral pathos! Kirk Douglas portrayed an infinitely better type of soldier than Pitt’s revolting Sergeant Collier. How low has Hollywood sunk…) The Americans take the girls to the bedroom…geddit? Of course, PC critics like Kermode have inferred rape. In a sense, what else? What actual choice had a poor starving girl in that situation? At least the Yanks gave food. Russian soldiers in East Germany raped only. As Stalin infamously said about the violation of Yugoslav women: ‘After fighting our soldiers must have a bit of fun…’
Actually, I suspect that on this subject Fury is unfair to the reputation of American soldiers. My parents, who went through tough wartime days in Rome, told me how many women of good family threw themselves into the arms of the Allied servicemen. There was no need of any ‘raping’, in other words, pace feminists. And the liberators were liked, even admired. ‘How tall, healthy and good-looking those soldiers from the New World were, compared with our men!’ someone commented. Of course, Italians are not Germans. Not really worth hating, I suppose…
Shia Le Boeuf, owing to his frequent citations of the Good Book, is nicknamed ‘Bible’. Which presents a problem. Hollywood seems incapable of offering a Christian who is not a psychopath, a nutcase or both. Again, this is a unfair. Because America, with all her faults, 60 years ago was a far more Christian-shaped society than it is now. Not that it made any difference to policy-making but many servicemen knew the Scriptures and wore crosses. Surely they would have thought of their Lord. Jesus Christ, who never killed anyone but was killed for the salvation of humanity. I am naïve enough to believe that occasionally that made a difference – though I admit I am not so sure what that difference is.
‘How would you like it if…?’ A question you can pose to any person who contemplates wrong conduct. It is okay for Yanks and Brits endlessly to refight the two world wars, glorify them in movies and documentaries and anniversaries galore. And feel good about it, of course. They won, didn’t they? But what if it had gone the other way? What if Fury took place somewhere in America? Victorious German or Japanese tanks smashing their way through in Tampa or Bellingham or Bethesda? Or rather, rolling over the debris of those cities? Roasting alive civilians, raping women, butchering POWs? And calling the defenders vermin to be exterminated? How would you like it indeed?
Pitt’s character has a go at some deep thoughts. Like ‘ideals are peaceful, history is violent.’ Hhhmm…This evinces brawn rather than brains. Ideals may not be at all peaceful. Nietzsche’s Superman is an ideal but hardly a Gandhi-like one. Nor is nationalism particularly peace-loving. It is an ideal that moves people to fight – often quite irrationally. History, on the other hand, has had long periods of peace. Men however can tire of peace. A.J.P. Taylor believed that WWI happened partly because Europeans had got bored with peace. Still, peace is the priest’s ideal. One reason why I so dislike this movie.
Revd Frank Julian Gelli
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