Windtalkers

[P. Kerim Friedman]

Hal,

I think it is important to note that this is a John Woo film - famous for
the most beautifully violent Hong Kong films, and that from everything I
read it is really a continuation of themes he developed in earlier film,
rather than really being about WWII or Windtalkers. I haven't seen the film,
but I agree with you that these people deserve more than second billing and
there should be another film made to rectify the situation.

I highly recommend watching the following show on the History Channel:

History vs. Hollywood
Windtalkers

Monday , June 17 11:00 PM-12:00 AM (check listings)

History Channel historians Steve Gillon and Geoffrey Wawro join host Josh
Binswanger for a look at the WWII blockbuster movie "Windtalkers". Featuring
interviews with director John Woo and Nicolas Cage, our panel discusses
Hollywood's portrayal of Navajo code talkers during WWII. The code talkers
used their native language as a basis for a secret code used by Americans
during battle. Surviving code talkers share their experiences and address
how accurately the film portrays the real history. TV PG

I've not seen this, but I've seen other shows in the series and it is very
well made - actually one of the best history TV series I've ever seen, often
very critical. I think the fact that they focus on the "true stories" of war
veterans allows them to say critical things that otherwise would never fly
in TV land.

Also, there was this article in the NY Times about the "true" story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/15/movies/15CODE.html

kerim

On 6/17/02 11:15 AM, "Harold F. Schiffman" <haroldfs at ccat.sas.upenn.edu>
wrote:

> I have a question for people who know Navajo: how authentic is the usage
> by the various actors playing the roles of Navajo code-talkers
> (windtalkers) in this recently-released movie?  Beyond that, how authentic
> was the depiction of the training of code-talkers?
>
> I was extremely disappointed that this movie didn't show the process of
> development of the code, the role of the Navajos themselves in the
> development and training, and other interesting sociolinguistic issues.
> What this movie showed was white folks doing the training, with a
> classroom situation that looked really inauthentic, either for language
> learning, code training, or whatever.  There was also a lot more focus on
> Nicholas Cage and his various heroics than on the role of the language.
> (For people who haven't seen this movie and intend to, be forewarned that
> there is an immense amount of combat footage, carnage, death, destruction,
> an unbelievable decibel level of explosion sounds, and about two minutes
> of actual Navajo language use.)
>
> Thanks,
>
> Hal Schiffman
>
>
> <title> Windtalkers </title>
>
>
> Nytimes,  June 14, 2002
> <center><h2>
> Of Duty, Friendship and a Navajo Dilemma
> </h2>
> By ELVIS MITCHELL
> </centr>
>
> In "Windtalkers," the director John Woo is meticulous in melding his own
> intimate style into the cliches of a large-scale war movie, paying homage
> to all the tired conventions of the genre. But it's an honor that these
> cliches don't deserve. We expect more from this director, who has almost
> single-handedly saved the action movie from exhaustion by grafting the
> yearning heartbeat of classic musicals to the leathery skin of wanton
> gunplay.
> <p>
>
> Driving the plot is the tension between Sgt. Joe Enders (Nicholas Cage)
> and Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach), a young marine who along with other Navajos
> is being trained to transmit information from the battle front, because
> their native language is a code that cannot be broken by the Japanese.
> They're called codetalkers or windtalkers.
> <p>
>
> Ben's training supplies the picture with one of its few departures from
> the worn collection of such chestnuts as the eager young marine's tearful
> departure from his wife and infant son as he's shipped off to camp.
> <p>
>
> Mr. Cage plays the hoary role of the grizzled sergeant assigned to
> shepherd a novice through the crucible of battle. He appears in a prologue
> that's pure Woo: a butterfly floating above a still pond that becomes
> murky as a streak of blood is introduced to it.  Here Joe is fighting in
> the campaign against the Japanese in the Solomon Islands. He is caught in
> a battle that takes the lives of all his men. As the lone survivor, he
> uncorks a soul-scream before he is nearly killed himself. With the aid of
> a sympathetic nurse (Frances O'Connor), Joe tricks the Marine doctors-- he
> had inner ear damage--so he can return to combat.
> <p>
>
> By now Mr. Woo's martial lyricism has itself become a cliché. His
> particular brand of action filmmaking has been so thoroughly appropriated
> by other directors--the interiors of movies including "Black Hawk Down"
> and "We Were Soldiers"--were selected from pages of the John Woo scrapbook
> that he seems like an imitator for simply indulging in the heightened
> violence that was once his sole province. <p>
>
> Mr. Woo has always taken the requisites of action filmmaking seriously:
> his standoff with two men jamming guns into each other's temples was a way
> of taking slow-motion carnage as close to the principals as possible and
> putting the audience right in the middle of it. He offers such a scene
> here, with Ben and a Japanese soldier aiming rifles a centimeter from each
> other's foreheads.
> <p>
>
> Because "Windtalkers" is about contradictions--including the one that
> marines charged with protecting the codetalkers were also ordered to kill
> them rather than let them be captured, to protect the code--the movie
> seems to be pitched to the director's strengths. Mr. Woo's lyrical guy's
> guy pictures have been about the conflict between friendship and duty as
> well as about men unable to get through to each other. <p>
>
> Recognizing what duty may force him to do, Joe doesn't want to become
> friendly with Ben and warns another marine, Ox (Christian Slater), not to
> pal around with Ben's fellow Navajo codetalker Charlie Whitehorse (Roger
> Willie). And there's the house bigot, the low-wattage Chick (Noah
> Emmerich), whose taunt is that the Navajos look just like the Japanese.
> "Windtalkers" has its own Navajo problem because it gives short shrift to
> the real dilemma: imagine becoming an elite marine during World War II
> only to be baby-sat.
> <p>
>
> "Windtalkers" invents an angle kill--the Navajos if necessary to prevent
> their capture, an act not known to have happened--and ignores the more
> compelling truth, that the Navajos are prevented from being front-line
> troops in the same war in which a Native American helped raised the flag
> at Okinawa. How do you prove you're a patriot if you're treated like a
> second-class citizen? <p>
>
> Given the knee-jerk patriotism of recent war movies, it's discouraging to
> see "Windtalkers" evade pertinent facts that could have recast the
> doubled-edged issues of racism and loyalty and made them relevant to
> contemporary times. The director is choosing to walk away from his
> long-standing interest in duty versus loyalty as a dramatic motif, one
> that has made him a nonpareil action director instead of just an
> accomplished stunt coordinator.
> <p>
>
> If "Windtalkers," which opens nationwide today, often succumbs to the
> standard "Greatest Generation" plot elements that have tainted World War
> II films since "Saving Private Ryan," Mr. Woo shows he's easily Steven
> Spielberg's equal at large-action sequences. He shifts from his specialty
> of staging shootouts in enclosed spaces--something he choreographs with
> the confidence of a Bob Fosse--to recreating key battles in the Pacific
> campaign. He shatters the quiet with thunderous assaults and gives us a
> grunt's-eye view of soldiers handling the smoldering just-fired shells
> ejected from the cannons. <p>
>
> One riveting moment comes when Joe's unit, behind the lines, is hit by
> misdirected American fire. In these scenes Mr. Woo displays an ability to
> startle without resorting to the bad-taste horror-movie shock employed in
> "Private Ryan." His fastidiousness keeps the action clear and easy to
> follow, even during the momentary confusion of Joe's men trying to evade
> the misdirected American fire. Some of Mr. Woo's attempts to wrest
> "Windtalkers" away from the obvious are just plain bizarre: the
> Swedish-born actor Peter Stormare, playing the gunnery sergeant Hjelmstad,
> often sounds like a windtalker in need of translation himself. As he
> bellows out orders, it's hard to tell exactly what he's saying.
> <p>
>
> Other speech patterns work far better. Mr. Beach's Great Plains drawl
> balances sweetly against Mr. Cage's Bay Area drawl. Mr. Beach's quick
> smile and likability has to do a lot for the film, as Mr. Cage is limited
> to heavy-lidded suffering with a been-haunted-by-a-million-screams sorrow.
> Mr. Cage lets a welt of purplish scar tissue covering his jawbone do his
> acting for him; he's become so minimalist as an action star that he may
> not even appear in his next film. The most notable thing about his work
> here is that he doesn't flinch or blink when loosing machine-gun fire at
> the enemy; he's developed calluses on his eyelids from pulling the trigger
> so often in past action films.
> <p>
>
> Mr. Cage's presence is such that we still want more from him. One of the
> last watchable performances he gave was in "Face/Off," his first film with
> Mr. Woo. The actor is not banking his fires here; he's dousing them. We
> can only view "Windtalkers" with the same shaken detachment that
> characterizes Mr. Cage's Joe Enders, wishing that the codetalkers' real
> story, a little known and fascinating chunk of American history, had been
> given its true dramatic import.
> <p>
>
> "Windtalkers" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult
> guardian) for strong language and blazing, unforgettably rendered
> battlefield violence.
> <p>
> WINDTALKERS
> <p>
>
> Directed by John Woo; written (in English and Navajo, with English
> subtitles) by John Rice and Joe Batteer; director of photography, Jeffrey
> Kimball; edited by Steven Kemper, Jeff Gullo and Tom Rolf; music by James
> Horner; production designer, Holger Gross; produced by Mr. Woo, Terence
> Chang, Tracie Graham and Alison Rosenzweig; released by
> Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures. Running time: 134 minutes. This film is
> rated R.
> <p>
>
> WITH: Nicolas Cage (Joe Enders), Adam Beach (Ben Yahzee), Peter Stormare
> (Hjelmstad), Noah Emmerich (Chick), Mark Ruffalo (Pappas), Brian Van Holt
> (Harrigan), Martin Henderson (Nellie), Roger Willie (Charlie Whitehorse),
> Frances O'Connor (Rita) and Christian Slater (Ox Henderson).
>
>
>
>
>
>

--
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
P. Kerim Friedman

kerim.mail at oxus.net
http://kerim.oxus.net
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^