When you put your hand into a bunch a goo...

Timing is everything.

Here’s something I never thought I’d say, but I was in a military mood on Monday night. Having spent much of the weekend with Roméo’s Dallaire’s devastating Shake Hands with the Devil, I had spent many hours trying to adjust my thinking to the politics and military maneuvers Dallaire describes in his book. I was already thinking about artillery and infantry and leadership issues. I think I was in the right head space to watch Patton (1970), though let’s be clear here: Roméo Dallaire and General George S. Patton could not be more different, both in personality and leadership style.

I carried baggage with me into Patton. My expectation (and first impression) was that Patton, being a decorated and much-ballyhooed war hero, was someone to be admired – at least by the gung-ho American audience who regard this film as a classic. I didn’t expect him to be my hero necessarily, but I certainly expected that he would be hero-like, possessing some qualities I would admire. However as the movie got underway, I became more and more aware that Patton was not only a bastard (which was no surprise of course), but that he was also a bit of a fool: glory-driven and arrogant. In fact, the Patton on-screen seemed to me to be no hero at all. Despised by his men and tolerated (barely) by his peers, Patton was a wild card that no one seemed to have much tolerance for. The early scenes were a bit of a struggle for me, as I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be identifying with or admiring Patton (in which case, the movie was failing) or simply marveling at George C. Scott’s spectacular performance. I chose the latter.

Let’s talk about the good stuff then. Patton – by way of George C. Scott – is a wonderful character, a full-bodied performance and a great many things that I didn’t expect: a poet, a student of history, and a fiercely spiritual man who believed strongly in reincarnation. I particularly enjoyed the assessment that he was an anachronistic Romantic warrior forced to lead troops in the 20th Century. But of course, that’s entirely right. Even 60 years ago at the height of the biggest war in history, he was starting to become dangerously outdated, a relic of a different type of warrior. Imagine with me the surprise then that the balls-out, war-loving General, who was already out of fashion by the end of WWII, would likely fit in better with this year’s president’s agenda than any in the last 6 decades. I don’t want to stymie this review with politics, but with the climate of the world today, it’s tough to watch a war-movie without thinking about the real wars going on in the world. And watching Patton in an early 21st Century context is probably a pretty similar experience to watching it in 1970 (when another widely unpopular war was deep underway.) I can’t help but think that even as Patton’s behaviour is thrown up on the screen for scrutiny, there are some (active) military leaders that might admire him and overlook the critique.

Patton was written by Francis Ford Coppola, which seems a little funny. The reason being is that Patton’s swaggering battlefield bluster reminds me so sharply of Robert Duvall’s Colonel Kilgore character from Apocalypse Now. In that film, there’s a scene when Kilgore surveys the battlefield, elbow on one knee (just after the "smell of napalm" line) and observes that, "someday this war will be over." The burden of the line is that without the war, the true warriors (like Kilgore) will not be able to survive. Patton is another of these doomed characters. There’s a melancholy throughout the last act of Patton (after Hitler’s forces are defeated) when Patton realizes that, by winning the war, he has also destroyed his own sense of purpose. He grapples with the idea of starting up a new war right away (against the Russian allies – prophetic, no?) but resigns himself instead to the fact that he’ll never be in another world war. That realization drains him. And maybe that also goes some distance to explain the war-mongering leaders in the world today: where would some of these men be without their wars? [I’m getting further from the point here, but it reminds me most of that classic Looney Tunes cartoon where Elmer Fudd finally kills (or rather, thinks he kills) Bugs Bunny. Depression sets in for him immediately.]

So then. That’s the good…

The purpose of this blog is a little funny. After all, I’m watching and writing about movies that have already (in most cases) proven themselves to be classics. Thousands of words have already been written. Some of these movies have books written about them. I’m not really telling you anything you don’t already know if I say that a movie is good or isn’t good. Case in point: Patton won 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, so there’s no point trying to tell you that it isn’t an accomplished movie. Instead, this blog is really about my impression of the film, or better yet, answering the basic question: did I like it?

The truth is no, not really.

I’ve grappled with this question a little bit, because when I don’t like a movie, I always like to know the reasons why. I’ve been running through a list of ideas. Was it perhaps that I’m not a big fan of the war movies after all? Patton is about little else other than a revered general launching an invasion. But then I remembered my affection for Apocalypse Now, Band of Brothers or even Saving Private Ryan (and more recently, Barry Lyndon) and I concluded that not to be true at all. Big explosions are the bee’s knees. I love war movies as much as any genre and look forward to more of them in the Monday line-up. Perhaps then, could it be that the main character was so unlikeable? But again, there are so many movies that I adore with unsympathetic leads that there’s no point in even trying to pack together a list. That’s not an issue for me at all. Bring on the bastards. Was the movie less than meticulously performed and directed? Absolutely not. Again, who am I to pick apart an Academy Award-decorated picture like Patton? The movie was perfectly great.

Nah, it just seemed to me that there were a handful of things that prevented me from completely enjoying the film. Chief among them: the stiff and spare battle sequences, that seemed more akin to an A-Team episode than a war epic; the portrayal of Patton’s war-time nemesis, the British Commander Montgomery, played so much like a panty-waist as to seem like a retired Monty Python character. Really, the movie just didn’t take off.

So let’s leave it at this. I don’t know what it is exactly, and I’m not going to call is a misfire in the Monday Project (because I certainly expect to feel cool about a good many titles in the 500+ list that are queued up to go.) It was a fine experiment.

But by Good God, let’s hope George C. Scott shows up again.