Spike's war story: 'Miracle at St. Anna' recounts tale of black soldiers in World War II

OVER MORE THAN two decades of directing racially charged movies ("Do the Right Thing," "Jungle Fever," "Malcolm X") Spike Lee has become such a lightning rod for controversy, many people will not be able to see that his new work, "Miracle at St. Anna," is really an old-fashioned World War II film.

German soldiers, Italian resistance fighters and a platoon of brave Americans.

The only difference is that these American soldiers are black.

Based on local author James McBride's novel and screenplay, "Miracle at St. Anna" tells a story of the Buffalo Soldiers, black men drafted to do a first-class job liberating Europe from the clutches of Hitler and Mussolini while being treated as second-class citizens back home - soldiers more appreciated in the villages of Italy than in the segregated diners near their training bases.

Some have seen Lee's movie as a response to Clint Eastwood's all-white "Flags of Our Fathers" and others have seen the film as a metaphor for Sen. Barack Obama's presidential candidacy, patriotic African-American trailblazers who fight twice as hard to convince their countrymen they're both Americans and patriots.

But as is usually the case in Hollywood, the release of "St. Anna" has less to do with Eastwood and Obama than it does with the vagaries of filmmaking.

"I wasn't really expecting to do this film," said Lee, sitting in a Four Seasons suite at the Toronto International Film Festival two weeks ago. "There were two other properties I was attached to that both were the property of Imagine Entertainment - Brian Grazer and Ron Howard. I did 'Inside Man' for them. One was about the L.A. riots that was written by John Ridley and the other was a biopic about the Godfather of Soul, James Brown. And both of them I was unsuccessful in getting the budget. I had offers to do those films but the money, I thought, was short.

"I was just ready to do my next film and this film jumped to the head of the list."

How Lee came to "St. Anna" was also serendipitous.

"[The book] was on my wife Tanya's shelf, in her office," Lee said. "I needed something to read and the spirit told me to take that book off the shelf. True story.

"I knew [McBride's] first book, 'The Color of Water,' but not 'Miracle at St. Anna.' Upon finishing it, I knew I wanted to do this film. . . . That was four years ago."

Lee told McBride he was interested in adapting the novel, but didn't give him a timetable. " 'Inside Man' came about and I shot that," he said, "then Hurricane Katrina happened and I shot 'When the Levees Broke.' "

So when his L.A. riots film and Brown bio collapsed, Lee began immersing himself in war, meeting with surviving Buffalo Soldiers and heading off to Italy to work with actors and crew who spoke little English.

To capture the flavor of Italy he was inspired by the neorealist directors Vittorio de Sica and Roberto Rossellini and such as "The Bicycle Thief," "Open City," "The Miracle of Milan," "Shoe Shine" and "Paisan."

To capture the flavor of war, Lee worked closely with military adviser Billy Budd. "I'd never shot a war sequence before," he said. "Billy worked on 'Band of Brothers' and was key to making that stuff work on screen."

He put his actors through two weeks of boot camp (the German and American armies separate) for a pair of reasons. "One was for them to be more believable as soldiers on screen," he said, "and the other was for them to bond."

And when his actors weren't fighting, they were learning. Lee said.

"There were various sessions where we watched documentaries, watched movies. They were given many, many, many pounds of paper which consisted of articles and reference stuff - information they would have at their fingertips if they wanted to use it to help them form their characters."

The result is a very different type of Spike Lee film, but Lee sees it as something bigger - a chance to shine a light on history rarely taught in schools.

"The Buffalo Soldiers are very happy we made it," Lee said.

"These are wonderful, dignified American patriots and heroes who for the most part have not gotten their due," he said. *