Sound like riveting stuff it does not. But actually it's a very absorbing film, featuring Brendan Fraser in a performance as Eisenhower that blazes with power (but also a little tortured self-doubt). A couple of times his image on the screen hit me and I thought, "I'm actually looking at Eisenhower." You know, for about two seconds. Alongside him are Andrew Scott (Sherlock, Fleabag, Ripley) as a Scots meteorologist named Stagg, Chris Messina (Julie and Julia) as the American expert named Crick with whom he butts heads, Damian Lewis (Homeland) as a Bernard Montgomery who all but orders Stagg to give the D-Day invasion a rosy forecast and then throws a screaming hissy-fit when the evidence doesn't support that conclusion, and Kerry Condon as Ike's Irish aide, Kay Summersby.
So, Stagg shows up at Ike's headquarters five days before the initial date set for D-Day (June 5) and receives orders to present a forecast by the following morning. Crick, who has advised Ike on his African campaigns, wants to present a calm, sunny outlook based on similar conditions in a couple of previous years. But Stagg is like, "Weather systems don't repeat. We need to go where the data takes us," and the data takes him to a dire forecast that would spell disaster for the invasion. The word "pressure" takes on multiple meanings as these men, and Ike and Monty, and more, feel immense pressure about a gambit that could win or lose the whole war against Hitler's Germany. But also, you know, barometric pressure. Plus, there's a subplot in which the hospital where Stagg's very pregnant wife has gone to deliver the baby gets bombed and nobody can tell whether she survived. Kay rightly tells Ike that if he keeps being too hard on Stagg, he could crack.
Anyway, I drove home from D.L. thinking about how this movie could almost be produced as a stage play, though I couldn't make out how the scenes at the beginning and end – the first revealing that Mrs. Stagg is preggers, and the second revealing her fate and that of their baby – could be told any way but cinematically. Like, the camera can choose to reveal her baby bump only when Stagg turns back for a final look at his wife, before leaving for Whatsit's House; whereas an audience at a stage production will spot it as soon as the lights come up. Likewise, the camera can bring the Mrs. and Stagg Jr. into focus only when Stagg himself sees them, but again, there's no hiding them in a live performance from stage left, stage right and the nosebleed seats. At least some of the audience will know before it's expedient to the storytelling. But between those bookends, I thought, the drama could have played out on a stage ... and now I read that's exactly how this film started out, as a stage play by David Haig.
I'm very honored to have gotten an early look at a movie that, in the U.K., won't be officially released until September. Memorial Day was a good day for it. The gravity of the sacrifices that must be made to fight against world Fascism, and the importance of sparing lives from being spent in vain, wasn't lost on even such a commander as Ike, who also had to put up with a subordinate (Monty) who openly sneered at his lack of battlefield experience. Also, it isn't every day you see a war film in which the crucial turn of the plot happens when, in the middle of singing "All Creatures of Our God and King," a worshiping congregation's ears catch the sound of a rainstorm rolling in. Not to take anything away from the grueling images of the initial carnage on Utah and Omaha beaches, but the turning point of this movie is really when Stagg finally declares Crick's theory to be a load of horseshit and Ike believes him. Well, that and what happens when the two rival weather guys finally put their heads together and give Ike an alternative.
Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) The scene in which Stagg finally raises his voices in front of Ike's general staff, convincing him to call off the plans for June 5. (2) Kay asks Ike if she can drive to the hospital to see if Mrs. Stagg made it through, and Ike says no. And, putting her in her place, "Dismissed, lieutenant." Despite a hint of some tenderness between them (from her to him, at least), the movie doesn't have the bad taste to insinuate that they were actually a thing, and if it came close to lighting that flame, this moment efficiently snuffed it out. (3) The words Stagg says as Ike is about to storm out of the room: "The Germans will never see it." And finally, when asked if he's absolutely sure, Stagg says yes.
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