Overlooked Movies: They Were Expendable (1945)

"They Were Expendable" (1945) is a terrific film by John Ford and starring Robert Montgomery and John Wayne. It tells the story of a PT boat squad in the Philippines starting December 1941 and moving through the next year. Montgomery is the captain and Wayne the executive officer. The squad starts the picture with five boats (IIRC) and is trying to convince US Navy brass that the PT boat is a good fit for wartime activities, not merely ferrying messages back and forth.

As any student of history knows, the same day Pearl Harbor was attacked, the Japanese also attacked the Philippines. You get a sense of dread during the opening minutes of the film because you know (as well as the audiences in 1945 knew) what was about to happen. As the attack happened, Montgomery ordered his boats out of the docks in Manila Bay, away from Japanese dive bombers. His instincts proved true as his squad was the only boats still operating after the attack. I'm not sure if there were any conspiracy theories about FDR and Pearl Harbor by 1945 (that is, he intentionally kept our ships in port to provoke an attack and, thus, get the US into the war) but you could certainly see Montgomery's actions as such.

A good historical point made in the film was with Donna Reed. Not here, per se, but in the scenes, later in the film, with the officers of Montgomery's crew. When she came to dine with them--she a nurse still dressed in a one-piece khaki suit--the men stared at her googly eyed. You see, once our boys shipped over seas, most of them rarely saw an American woman. As one of the veterans said in Ken Burns' excellent "The War" series, the men sometimes had to be reminded what they were fighting for. When a woman, especially an American, found her way into camp for whatever reason, the men remembered all that they needed to know.

That the movie takes place in the Philippines during 1941-42, I kept thinking "How can this picture end on a good note?" Most of the war pictures made during the war served the dual role of propaganda and moral booster. I was hard pressed to see how they were going to pull this one off, especially as the film wore on and the PT boat squad was ground down, boat by boat and man by man. Montgomery's crew got to see some action, none more perilous than taking none other than General Douglas MacArthur to an island with an air strip and, then onto Australia.

The closing shot of the film with the words flashed on screen and the stirring music are worth the price of the film. According to IMDB, the film was released in December 1945, less than four months after the war ended.

Another historical aspect I appreciated with the film is how the characters operated under the giant machinery of war. Each man knew he was but a mere cog. Some cogs are more important than others and all the characters seemed resigned to their fate. There's a great, yet somber, scene with Montgomery and a superior officer. The officer explains what's what and the meaning of sacrifice (in the baseball sense). The true meaning of his words is not lost on Montgomery, the superior officer, or the viewing audience. Indeed, as the film ends, you don't know the fates of all the characters, something I found perfect for a film like this.

On the back of the DVD case, Leonard Maltin comments that this movie is one of the best all-time war movies ever made. I'm inclined to agree with him.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: "Pi" (1998)

(Todd Mason is jumpstarting the Tuesday's Overlooked Movies (and other A/V) Project started a few years back. I decided to join in on the fun. Check his blog for the complete rundown of today's participants.)

Let's get one thing straight: Pi (1998) is one weird-ass mind trip of a film and it's not for everyone. However, it's one of my favorite indie movie and a dang good SF film.

And Chevy Chase's Gerald Ford can rest easy: there's really not a lot of math in this movie.

Max Cohen is a reclusive, paranoid math genius cursed with headaches who knows--just friggin' knows!--that there are patterns in nature that follow certain mathematical precepts. Here are his assumptions: 1. Mathematics is the language of nature. 2. Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers. 3. If you graph these numbers, patterns emerge. Therefore: There are patterns everywhere in nature.

The thing he's trying to solve is the stock market. He's doing this for the joy of discovery, not for monetary rewards, as he yells at another character later in the film. To help him analyze patterns, Max has built a gigantic supercomputer, named Euclid, in his New York apartment. After a particularly trying day, Euclid crashes but not before spitting out a 216-character number and a single stock pick. Pissed off because the stock pick just can't be correct, Max throws away the printout of the number. Later, he meets with his former teacher and mentions the 216-digit number. The teacher, Sol, gets immediately interested. Max then learns that the stock pick Euclid predicted was accurate...but he can't find the printout.

Soon, he meets Lenny, a Hasidic Jew, who also is into number theory as it pertains to the Torah. Remember the Bible Code from a decade ago? Same thing. Basically, every letter in Hebrew corresponds to a number. Thus, the Torah is both a written document and a large series of numbers from which patterns can emerge. Lenny wants Max's help and he agrees. Add into the mix some shady types (who may or may not be criminal or governmental) and Max is seeing spies everywhere he looks. In order to rebuild Euclid, Max takes from the shady types a new super microprocessor. He turns on the computer and starts analyzing the Torah. Again, Euclid crashes and again it produces a 216-digit number. Since the computer won't let him print, Max starts writing down the number...and finds a pattern.

Here's the key: according to tradition, the true name of God is a 216-letter word. Max's teacher, Sol, thinks that Euclid became sentient and, in that moment, the computer saw the Almighty. Lenny's Hasidic group wants the number because they want to reverse the code and find the true name of God. The shady types want Max to help them do evil things. Max just wants to be left alone.

Filmed in black and white, this is Darren Aronofsky's first film. Most of the tropes and film techniques he uses in subsequent films (Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, The Wrestler) are evident here. To be honest, the black and white noir touches make this film. The paranoia Max experiences is heightened by the shadows and the fear of what truly lies in the darkness. It's brilliant. And there are some genuinely weird moments in this film (a brain in a subway that seems to be connected to Max’s psychosis) that would make Salvador Dali proud. Another noir trait is Max's self destruction as he spirals downward into madness. I make it sound light--it really isn't--but in this film, I love it.

The electronica score by Clint Mansell (in addition to songs by Orbital, Aphex Twin, Massive Attack, and others) adds to the weirdness. Coming out a year before the Matrix soundtrack, this was a major entry point for me to electronica and I've followed some of the artists in the decade since. Mansell later scored the music for the Duncan Jones movie, Moon (2009), and he vividly captured the loneliness and isolation of the lunar surface using only a piano.

I originally saw this film when I was dating my future wife. She hated the film at the time and has successfully resisted every invitation to re-watch the DVD (yeah, I bought it and have watched the DVD at least five times). I think what really strikes home with me is the nature of God as portrayed in the movie and how we humans can get but a glimpse of the beauty and order of the universe (and God?) via mathematics. It's an awe-inspiring concept and is the touchstone for this great film.

Here's the trailer.
Here's the official site (oddly still active 13 years after the movie's release)

P.S. bonus points to you, the reader, if you noticed the time stamp on this post.