For a long time, the Spike Lee joint was a genre unto itself – an occasionally arresting but highly unfocused mish-mosh; with one year’s Girl 6 blurring into another year’s She Hate Me, it was almost as if Lee was making one, long strident movie with the overriding purpose of drawing attention to its essential Spikeness. That changed somewhat with the 2006 release of Inside Man, a more-or-less straightforward take on the heist genre. Now Lee is putting the finishing touches on another film in a venerable Hollywood tradition: a war movie called Miracle at St. Anna.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Lee describes the movie as “a story about faith and what exactly the miracle is, that's left up to individual people - there are several miracles in this film, and I hope people can see them. All I will say is that, having lived on this earth for 57 years, I know that miracles happen.” One of those miracles must be Lee reaching the age of 57 despite being born in 1957, but I digress.
St. Anna is based on a novel by James McBride, which recounts “the deeds of four ‘Buffalo Soldiers’ from the US Army's Negro 92nd Division, who are trapped behind enemy lines in Tuscany, the book is like a Roman mosaic, piecing together different narratives to reveal the complex moral landscape of war.” Lee is shooting the picture at the legendary Cinecittà Studios in Rome and in the actual battle sites in the Tuscan mountains – the first time the director has filmed outside the United States.
“For me, this film is a homage to Rossellini, De Sica, and those cats,” says Lee, revealing an unexpected passion for Italian neorealism. Lee hopes to premiere the film at the Venice Film Festival later this year.