Word: beachings
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...Romanov family--who had come from addresses as diverse as Paris; Oakland, Calif.; New South Wales; and East Sussex--kept a low profile. Those who spoke Russian did so in an archaic St. Petersburg accent that has all but disappeared. Some, such as the mayor of Palm Beach, Fla., Paul Ilinsky, never learned the language. They were restrained in their comments on Nicholas and made no claim to any stake in Russia's political future...
Then there's the memory of those distant days, now preserved by faltering old men. One such, accompanied by his anxious wife and middle-aged children, shuffles up the shady walk edging the military cemetery that stands where the guns once looked down on Omaha Beach, where American troops began the bloody business of liberating Europe in World War II. He makes his way through ranks of crosses, their fearful symmetry broken here and there by a Star of David. Finding the grave he seeks, he falls to his knees sobbing, overwhelmed by that flood of memories it is Spielberg...
...soldiers slaughtered the minute the ramps on their landing boats are lowered; other men clambering over the sides trying to avoid the fire, only to drown under the weight of their packs; the surf turning red with the blood of the slaughtered; some who make it to the narrow beach huddling immobilized yet pathetically vulnerable behind what little cover they can find. A few inch forward, hoping perhaps that being a moving target is safer than being a stationary...
...throughout the battle on the beach (filmed in Ireland using some 3,000 performers), Spielberg and screenwriter Robert Rodat have been introducing us to members of a small Ranger unit commanded by Tom Hanks' Captain Miller, in effect bonding us with them as they pass through this inner circle of hell, feeling their fear, enduring their losses, sharing their weary triumph when they destroy the enemy pillbox that commands their sector. They--we--have done enough. Time now to rest, regroup...
...unprecedented effect of elevating teary-eyed hugs to the same level of cinematic importance as blowing up the Chrysler Building. The emotional climax of Deep Impact, for instance, occurs when Tea Leoni's reporter character embraces her estranged dad as they stand on a windswept Atlantic beach. (Father and daughter then find real closure when they, the Chrysler Building and the rest of the Eastern seaboard are smacked by a mile-high tidal wave.) Armageddon, the summer's other film in the Earth-threatened-by-space-debris genre, ends with Bruce Willis telling young-stud Ben Affleck to "take good...