History as Pop-Up: Imax “D-Day Normandy 1944″
Imax image
Winston would be appalled.
After all, it was he who said, “Never was so much owed by so many to so few.”
His poetic turn of phrase in praise of the RAF victory during the Battle of Britain, indeed anything even remotely approaching it, is sorely missing in this flat farce.
Ready for a big screen epic I felt instead that I had just sat through a 60′s era high school film strip except they didn’t charge nine bucks back then.
How Did They Do It?
The first week of June 1944 is among the most dramatic in history with democracy in the balance.
The Allies had placed their apples all in one very loaded cart and some, Churchill among them, feared an upset on the well defended Normandy coast.
The stage was set for extreme tension and drama.
But not in this film.
It is instead a bland recitation of facts and not even the best ones.
Every aspect of the high wire act faced by Eisenhower and his troops has been miraculously bled out so that all is left is a barrage of not so special effects and the omnipresent flaming battle map.
Yawn.
Pop-Ups
I wasn’t kidding.
There are five “chapters” to the story, each one introduced by a child’s pop-up book highlighting the role of the bulldozer, tank, jeep, deuce and a half truck and the C-47.
The greatest invasion in history is trivialized as a pop-up toy box in a failed attempt to be clever for whom?
A ten-year-old?
At least you could tell how long you had to go till it was over by guessing the number of pages left to turn.
History as Irony
The Normandy Invasion is the story of good fortune, coincidence, irony, luck and missed opportunities.
The improbable weather delay forcing a logistically maddening and risky postponement is never even mentioned.
Nor is the German dawdling during the night of the 5th examined when against all the evidence they managed to convince themselves that it was a raid-in-force.
And Hitler’s control of the best Panzer divisions and the disaster it led to was inadequately explored.
Ike’s relationships with his generals, “Brad” and “Monty” among them, is similarly ignored in favor of a very big, and very boring, picture.
Glory Versus Gallantry
Glorifying war is a perilous exercise.
But an event like Normandy can only be summed up and brought to life by examining personal acts of courage and sacrifice that make the cost and terror real.
No such moment or example is in the film though history is full of them.
Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.
Who can forget 56-year-old Theodore Roosevelt, Jr, the only general (and oldest soldier) to land with the troops on D-Day hobbling up Utah beach with a cane for support?
Or the ships in Destroyer Squadron 18 at Omaha and Utah who saw the troops pinned down short of the beach and nosed up just short of them to take on and defeat the Germans with their forward 5-inch guns?
Destroyer Emmons
Imax “D-Day, Normandy 1944″ fails because it is an 8,000 flyover, in fog.
And it’s not even the fog of war.