Spike Lee Eyes World War II Movie About Black Soldiers

The always controversial Spike Lee has another movie planned, this one about black soldiers during World War II. What exactly attracted Lee to the project? Um, because it’s about black soldiers fighting in a war overseas while they were still being segregated by Whitey back home? I mean, come on, that’s drama, baby! Lee says his film will be primarily based on James McBride’s novel “Miracle at St. Anna”, which is about a group of soldiers from the 92nd, all-black Buffalo Division fighting against Nazi occupation in Tuscany, Italy, and the friendship between one of them and a six-year-old Italian orphan.

Lee has never shied away from taking America to task for its racist past, and why should he? It’s really a damn shame what America did to blacks back then, even going so far as to segregate the military into black and white troops.

But of course, then Lee has to go American bashing in this interview and call World War II “the last just war”, meaning, of course, that he doesn’t think all the other wars since has been “just”. A lot of people in South Korea would disagree with you there, Spike.

But he added his new film would not be a propaganda work celebrating only the U.S. soldiers who liberated Europe from Nazi occupation.

“A lot of German soldiers were not faceless evil with no humanity, but simply men fighting on the wrong side: they too were tired, hungry and wanted to go back home.”

I know, Spike, we would never expect you to do anything even remotely pro-American. As-if.

I’m still looking forward to the movie, though, if only because Lee, despite being an oftentimes loudmouth midget, is nevertheless a very good filmmaker.

UPDATE

The Hollywood Reporter’s got more details about Lee’s film, to be called “Miracle at St. Anna”. The plot concerns three U.S. soldiers who venture between the German lines and the squadrons of predominantly black U.S. divisions in World War II in Italy in order to rescue a fourth soldier.