Spike Lee has made so many didactic movies in his career that it wouldn't have surprised me if his latest — "Miracle at St. Anna," which looks at a squad of black G.I.s fighting the Nazis in World War II — was yet another. What did surprise me, though, was that this time around Spike decided to mix his didacticism with a splash of fizzy magic realism.
Now those two angles seem about as compatible as black-turbaned sourpuss Ayatollah Khamenei and fun-loving AV queen Maria Ozawa. Magic realism is best known for its fuzzy feel-good vibe and cloying quirkiness (a la "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" or "Chocolat"); didacticism, on the other hand, is known for hammer-to-head point-scoring and strident affirmation of right and wrong (a la "Michael Clayton" or "Valkyrie"). Magic realism relies on coincidence and miracles, didacticism on real-world argument and reason.
Lee tries to split the difference in "Miracle at St. Anna," and the results are a bit of a muddle. Set in Tuscany in 1944 after the allied offensive in Italy had turned into a long, hard slog, Lee's film mixes the war-is-hell realism of "Saving Private Ryan" with the quaint and colorful Italianismo of "Cinema Paradiso."