Fury

There's a moment in Frank Miller's masterpiece The Dark Knight Returns where Jim Gordon is talking to the new police commissioner about being at Pearl Harbour. He talks of the perception the world had that the soldiers that day were heroes; men immediately ready to lay down their lives for their country. He follows that up with how untrue it was; how they were not an army, but a scared bunch of young men deathly afraid of dying. But then Roosevelt's voice came through the radio, talking of the immeasurable bravery that the American infantry were displaying in the face of such insurmountable odds. It was a declaration that couldn't be further from the truth, but that didn't matter. Because it projected an image that got those frightened young men on their feet to win the war. Fury opens with a stark image of a man on a horse slowly approaching from the horizon. If this were a Western, this would be our introduction to the stoic hero-of-few-words. But as the horse gets closer, the rider doesn't appear to be dressed in American gear. It's hard to fully discern, but he appears to be German. And sure enough, as his journey continues and the camera pans with him, we find that he's directing the horse through a graveyard of American tanks. It's an image that's hard to digest: the enemy is being framed as the hero moving through dead heroes framed as enemies. It becomes even harder to swallow when the All-American saviour moves silently off the top of one of the tanks to tackle the German to the ground and stab him repeatedly in the face. This is our real hero: a man who weakly slides back into his hidey-hole, where his subordinates yell and cry and curse for the unseen battle they were the only survivors of, bar one of their crew, half of whose face lies splattered on the floor. World War II is still almost universally painted as America's finest hour in our media, and it should. They did a bang-up job of upholding the ideal of freedom. But as the aforementioned Don 'Wardaddy' Collier (Brad Pitt) says, "Ideals are peaceful. History is violent." Fury seems to aim for a different goal than its peers. It highlights the fact that American tank operators were fiercely outmatched by superior German technology, and in doing so, suggests that our perception of them as heroes was false. It was important that they were seen as heroes, because it was an image that won the war, but the reality is that they were not heroic. They were human.

Perhaps the best example of this occurs after one of the film's many skirmishes. Wardaddy has made multiple attempts at instilling in the new blood, Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman), that if he intends to survive, and to uphold his promise to keep his crew mates alive, he needs to kill. Norman's in the deep end, though. He was drafted from a desk job, and killing another human being is not a concept he can even begin to grasp. Why should he? But under Wardaddy's watch, that will not do. A surviving German soldier is found, and brought out in the open to be beaten, tortured and executed. Wardaddy calls it off, and demands that Ellison shoot the man in the back, for he cannot know that he will uphold his promise until he sees him kill. Ellison refuses. "You kill him, or he kills you!" Wardaddy shouts in Ellison's face, as he circles and slaps him. Eventually, he puts him in a choke hold, and forces his hand to grip the six-shooter, a cowboy's weapon of choice. Ellison pleads for Wardaddy to let him go, tears running down his face. A shot rings out, the German drops face first to the ground, Wardaddy lets him go and walks away. The image we're seeing is the hard and strong Sergeant dropping a necessary truth on the green-faced rookie. But the reality comes when Wardaddy walks away from the crowd. He crouches low to the ground, his hands begin to shake and tears well in his eyes, and he has to take a few deep breaths before he can compose himself and get back up. Killing that man hit him just as hard as it hit Ellison. But that doesn't matter, because as far as Ellison and everyone else is concerned, Wardaddy is the hero who kills to keep everyone else alive. And it works. When Ellison next sees German infantry, he doesn't hesitate to pull the trigger, shouting "Die, you motherfuckers!" as he plugs the men with lead. It's false courage, but that doesn't matter, because as far as everyone else is concerned, he's now the hero that they all are. There's what one does when in front of others, and what one does when nobody is watching. Both are crucial to one's identity.

Further illustrating this is a very long scene in the middle of the film, where the American infantry take occupancy of a small town. Wardaddy and Ellison find a woman and her teenage daughter hiding in their home, and Wardaddy takes the opportunity to show some kindness and offer some eggs, so that he and Ellison may have a brief moment of reprieve from the horrors waiting outside. As the woman makes breakfast, Ellison and the young girl share a moment of mutual enjoyment in the bedroom ("They are young, and they are alive," Wardaddy says). The whole thing is taken one step too far though, turning into a warped, hollow and, from the outside looking in, false family portrait. Eventually, the rest of the crew bomb in to crash the party they weren't invited to. Bible (Shia LaBeouf), Gordo (Michael Pena) and Grady (Jon Bernthal) take deliberate and disgusting measures to ensure that Wardaddy's attempt at a small memory of home is ruined. They abuse and humiliate Ellison and the young girl, and recount the actions they had to take during a particularly horrific mission that brought them closer together, concluding by pointing out that Ellison, seemingly Wardaddy's new favourite, wasn't there. Eventually, Wardaddy has had enough, and reacts violently. Gordo is ashamed and says as his voice breaks from the tears, "I'm sorry...I'm just drunk." The alcohol was the only thing that let him project the image of who he really was in that moment, and it's not until much later, when the young girl has lost her life to a German bombardment and Grady and Ellison are alone, that Grady can muster the courage to apologise for his behaviour. "You're a good man. We may not be...but you are." The film regularly takes time to show us behind the curtain, and above all else, I have a strong respect for its courage to suggest that these heroic figures we hold up aren't who we think they are, especially because of the fury (come on, Aaron) that such a suggestion could bring. But what really resonates is the suggestion that follows this, which I'll get to in a moment.

Unfortunately, what threatens to derail this stark and brutally honest portrayal of humanity in war is how "movie" much of the narrative is. The idea that this humongous series of events and character arcs occur over the space of 24 hours is really hard to believe. Let's go through a few. It's 1945, and the Allied Forces are well and truly on their way to victory, and a desk clerk who has never seen combat has been drafted to co-pilot a tank. Within the space of an hour or two, that desk clerk goes from vomiting after seeing half of a man's face plastered to a wall to running and gunning with the best of them. In less than 12 hours, a tank crew is the sole survivor of a battalion after a skirmish, move into another battalion, and become the sole survivor of that battalion after another skirmish. Minutes later, they roll over a lone landmine in the middle of a crossroads, where there just so happens to be a group of 300 SS soldiers making their way towards them. It's simultaneously frustrating and satisfying that everything in between these awkward story beats is so good, and this final act is no exception. It's already being misinterpreted by many, which is a shame, because it makes the film's point better than any other moment. 300 SS are on the march towards them, and the tank's tread is busted. Up until now, every action they've taken has had survival, however brutal, or cowardly, or necessary, at its core. But as they're trying to work out where they can hide, Wardaddy has a change of heart. "I'm staying," he declares, and after a moment of protest, his crew decide to stay as well. It's so uncharacteristically heroic of them that many have seen it as the film back-peddling on its point to deliver a traditional, heroic, Hollywood climax. I humbly disagree. There's no denying that the decision to stay and man a doomed assault outnumbered and outgunned projects a decidedly heroic image, but don't forget everything the film has said up until this point. In this moment, Wardaddy hears his own version of Roosevelt's Pearl Harbour speech, and sees an opportunity to be the hero that the world sees him as. He's not a hero. He's trying to be one. And in his crew's eyes, they see Roosevelt, and they stand up in support of the fact that in this moment, reality is secondary.

Fury's final image gave me much pause for thought. The camera gives us a top-down view of the titular tank, starting with an extreme close-up and gradually receding until we can see the carnage that these "brave few" wrought. Innumerable German bodies lie in a ring around one battered American tank. What a great photo for the papers. What an image it sends. But it's only that: an image. The crew of Fury held their ground well, and in that they had a brief moment of heroism, but eventually the reality of their situation circled around them and one by one they were picked off. Grady catches a rocket with his stomach. Bible pokes his head out of the hatch, weapon and battle cry at the ready, but gets shot in the eye before he can get a single word out. A grenade falls into the tank and goes unnoticed for a second too long, and Gordo reflexively hugs it to protect his crew. Wardaddy catches three sniper bullets in the chest and arms, and falls back into the tank as the remaining SS advance. Ellison knows death approaches - literally, in this case. "I want to surrender," he says. "Please don't," Wardaddy replies. "They'll torture you bad and they'll kill you bad." Ellison begins to cry. "I'm scared." Wardaddy looks at him with empathy. "I'm scared, too." He tells Ellison to get out of the tank through the bottom hatch and hide. As far as the SS are aware, Wardaddy is the only man left. Ellison gets out just as the Germans throw two grenades through the top hatch, digs a hole for himself beside the tread and waits. As the Germans celebrate their victory, a light is shone on Ellison. Up until now, the German army has mostly gone faceless: the obscured, hidden evil hiding in the grass, or behind a window, or inside of a tank. In this moment however, we see a face in full profile, and it's a young German soldier, roughly the same age as Ellison. The two stare at each other for a long moment, both looking incredibly fearful, before the soldier switches his light off and walks away. The two shared a moment. They were both projecting false images of bravery for the sake of their men, and in that shared recognition, they allowed a shred of true humanity. When the coast is clear, Ellison crawls back into the tank to say goodbye to his crew. Eventually, some American infantry find him and he's on his way home. "You're a hero," one soldier says to him as he pats him on the back. But we know that's not true. Ellison isn't a hero. He just looks like one. But that's what matters. We were in the tank with those men; we know how it really went down. But the world doesn't, and it's here that I get back to the film's subsequent suggestion that I held off on earlier. The world only sees that final image: pure evil stood up against to its dying breath by the righteous good, and the lone war hero who survived the ordeal. And though it may seem that Fury is humanising these people in order to say that they aren't heroes, in reality, it's humanising these people in order to accentuate their heroism. The crew of Fury stared death in the eye with fear in their hearts, to show the world that they were brave, and sure, and true. It may not be true, but for all the world knows, it is. That is all. Oh, and Fury's really good and you should go see it.