AN EXTRAORDINARY ATHLETE SURVIVES AS A POW OF JAPAN IN UNBROKEN
Louis Zamperini (played by Jack O’Connell) learns how to endure, first as a boy picked on for being Italian, then as a runner who wins in the 1938 Olympics, next as a life raft survivor of an airplane crash in the middle of the Pacific for 47 days, and finally as a Japanese prisoner of war. Similar to this year’s The Railway Man, the film graphically displays Japan’s war crimes in treating POWs, contrary to the Geneva Convention of 1929, which Tokyo never ratified. (Due to Japanese POW camp experiences, many more war crimes were identified in the Third Geneva Convention of 1949.) Based on Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, the film focuses on brutal treatment administered by Mutsushiro Watanabe (Takamasa Ishihara), who was later accused of war crimes and later released without trial, as the military occupation of Japan realized the need to erase bitter feelings when the Cold War began. Observers of the film will be surprised that Zamperini survived all the brutality and suffering but will be heartened on learning that he returned to Japan to befriend Japanese and even played a role during the Tokyo Olympics of 1964 at age 80. However, Watanabe refused to see Zamperini (doubtless out of shame for his repeated misconduct). The Political Film Society has nominated Unbroken, directed by Angelina Jolie, for best film on human rights of 2014. MH