Unbroken: Of Breaking Promises

     Two stars.
     If I had not read the book, I would have rated Unbroken higher. The problems with this film are two-fold, one practical, the other Hollywood's unfamiliarity with spiritual matters.
     As for the practical problem: There is simply too much story for a feature film, and thus Jolie and her screenwriters, including the gifted Coen brothers, predictably focus on the action elements: the Olympics, the air battles, the castaways, the prisoners of war.
    The spiritual matters problem is the greater one and dovetails with the first: Apparently, because of the time constraint, the thread which holds Louis Zamperini's story together -- that of his hard-fought spiritual redemption -- is handled with a series of text cards at the end of the movie.
     A storyteller's first duty is to theme, not story. In fiction, anything goes so long as the events advance the theme. In non-fiction, however, the facts which illuminate the theme are disrespected at the filmmaker's peril.
     The theme of Zamperini's life is his spiritual journey, not his physical one. Thus, Louie's adventures in the War merely serve to put him on a spiritual path, and the most powerful moment in the book -- in which he floats in an otherworldly calm sea where he has a spiritual epiphany about the beauty of creation and his place in it and then makes a solemn promise to God that he will never forget Him -- is the key moment upon which Louie's spiritual theme turns and it begs the question of his entire life: Will he keep his promise?
     The events that follow are important only to the extent that they advance this theme. Unfortunately, the greatest test of Louie's life was not being tortured at the hands of a sadist in a Japanese POW camp; it was him forgetting his promise to God after the War, when life was relatively easy. Zamperini's basic toughness and resilience voiced in this oft-repeated refrain, "If you can take it, you can make it," served him well during the difficulties he faced adrift on the ocean or imprisoned as a POW, but after the War, his physical strength could not keep him on his spiritual path. He descended into alcoholism, abuse of his family, and foundered in a Sargasso Sea of directionless despair. And when he finally gave into his wife's patient entreaties and attended a Billy Graham revival, he put up his greatest fight yet, resisting God's still, small voice.
     Yet when he finally hit bottom and finally opened his heart, Louie received God's strength and finally got back on his path and fulfilled the theme of his life.
      I wish that portion of Louis's journey had been in the film. It would have powerfully demonstrated a fact of which we're all aware: that a man's greatest strength is not holding a railroad tie over his head for a half-hour on pain of death. It's having the courage and resolve to find God  and, once found, learn His will for our lives and do our part and keep our promises to Him.
     That these crucial elements of Zamperini's story were glossed over is why Unbroken, while a fine film, will not be a classic like A Man for all Seasons or The Mission or It's a Wonderful Life.
     All in all, however, given the enthusiastic atheism of director Jolie and her screenwriters, the film is nevertheless fairly faithful to the source material... up to a point. And that is the point: they forgot the theme and focused instead on the story.
     But the air battle sequences are astonishing.