By EWAN MCDOANLD
Steven Spielberg spoke at the opening of America's National D-day Museum last week. Steve, who has become the poster boy for the baby boomer generation over the past few movies, had some Important Things To Say.
They were all about how the post-war children (who now run everything from the free world to the dairy at the end of our street) have been behaving and have respected the legacy that their parents, or their parents' brothers and sisters, fought and far too often died for.
"The baby boomer generation has been drifting along, redefining itself every few years through music, fashion, popular culture and technology," the director of Saving Private Ryan opined. In which he is quite correct. There is no other way to explain or defend the Peanut Butter Conspiracy, the crimplene suit, Gilligan's Island or the hula-hoop.
Spielberg commended the veterans for what he felt they stood for: "My dad's generation, the greatest generation, wasn't the 'me' generation but the 'us' generation," he said, with his father watching on.
No argument with that. Nor with Spielberg donating his time and more than $US1 million towards the American D-day project (which must be at least 40 years late, for heaven's sake), and giving many more millions of dollars and energy to Holocaust research and memorials.
Where I begin to feel uneasy is the way that Spielberg's version of history will be seen as The Way It Was.
The British - and by extension Commonwealth forces, including our old soldiers - are rightly upset with the way that he is telling the story. In the past few days Chris Smith, their Culture and Media Minister, has joined English film-maker David Puttnam, historians and veterans in challenging the accuracy of several "fact-based" Hollywood films.
The submarine thriller U-571 portrays the States as finding the first Enigma Nazi cipher machine. Britain's Royal Navy captured an Enigma device in 1941, three years earlier than the US, and Britain was first to break the code.
Miramax, producers of many a period piece, plan to make a film of the Colditz escapes, casting American stars such as Tom Cruise and Ben Affleck, even though no US personnel were involved in any escape attempts at the castle.
Saving Private Ryan, hailed in America, has been condemned for downplaying Britain's role in the D-day landings. Though it has some strong, graphic statements to make about the brutality and futility of war, any under-45-year-old seeing it would be forgiven for thinking: "Winston who?" "We shall fight them on the where?"
"One of the things we need to make clear to Hollywood is, yes, you're in the entertainment business, but people see your movies," Smith said. "They're going to come away thinking that's information, not just entertainment. You've got to make it clear where the dividing line lies. If you want to make [thrillers] with Americans doing some derring-do things, fine, but please make it clear the fact is somewhat different from what you're seeing on screen."
Smith said he had persuaded Spielberg to film Band of Brothers, the sequel to Saving Private Ryan, in Britain and respect historical accuracy. Sure, Chris. Like, we're gonna see a big-budget Hollywood movie about the battles with Rommel and they're gonna cast Tem Morrison as the leader of the Maori Battalion and it's not gonna be Tom Hanks and the Marines saving the day? Get real.
British film-makers have not been blameless: Michael Collins, Elizabeth and Shakespeare In Love were not textbook stuff, and how many Kiwi kids have seen Chariots Of Fire and not realised that the bronze medal-winner in that fabled Olympic race was our former Governor-General, Arthur Porritt?
But Hollywood's version of the myth is so pervasive. Kids believe history as she writ is on the big screen. It becomes more so as the veterans of Gallipoli and Normandy become fewer. So I'm with Chris Smith and the Poms. Spielberg and his colleagues are untrue to a lost world. Unkind to the last crusade. Saving Private Ryan, maybe, but not Private Tommy Atkins or Te Moana-Nui-A-Kiwa Ngarimu.
<i>Powerpoint:</i> Don't let the facts get in the way of a good movie
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