Word: lees
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...that's a familiar test, or trap, in a Lee film. He loves to twist a picture out of shape, daring the audience to keep up with the abrupt shift of moods, the wagging finger of the director. And if you start arguing with Miracle at St. Anna, that's O.K. with him. Spike Lee has always loved a good fight...
Allen and Scorsese have their Oscars. Lee has never been nominated for Best Director. Granted, he's not quite in their league, though he loves zippy tracking shots as much as Scorsese, and the New York Knicks as much as Allen. But Lee is a producer of genius, and not just in his self-marketing - which, don't knock it, is a boon to someone who's essentially an independent auteur. He chooses provocative projects, gets big stars when he needs them, makes vigorous, good-looking films and does it on half a Hollywood budget...
...money is on the screen, and so are his prickliness and passion. Tender, angry, unafraid of mixing comedy and sentiment, Lee's pictures bulge with so many ideas, they're hard to contain. Sometimes he holds them together through sheer nerve, as in the loopy racial satire Bamboozled; in other films, like Do the Right Thing, the story eventually explodes in the moviegoer's face. All the audience can expect is to be lectured, hassled and entertained...
Within each Spike Lee movie, a dozen different films are fighting to get out, and the best one doesn't always win. Miracle at St. Anna lugs its central narrative around much as Train does the statue head. And just as he rubs it for good luck, so Lee hopes the bonding of slow, sweet, huge Train and little Angelo - a kitschy mix of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and Charlie Chaplin's The Kid - will propel audiences through the screeds on racism and the disasters...
...Anna, Lee and McBride have laid on so many miracles, the moviegoer runs out of patience. The film goes for broke and in the process breaks. It's too much and not enough. One could find a perfectly good movie, of normal length, by watching St. Anna on DVD and skipping the awful chapters to focus on the terrific ones...