'Pearl Harbor' shows new faces of battle
By Mike Gordon and Derek Paiva
Advertiser Staff Writers
The young actors who will play the lead roles in "Pearl Harbor" come from a generation barely familiar with the attack that changed the course of history.
Andrew Cooper, Advertiser library photos
Even though Ben Affleck, Kate Beckinsale and Josh Hartnett portray fictional characters in a sometimes syrupy love story, they will likely become the new faces of a battle lost decades before their birth. Regardless of how well it does at the
"Pearl Harbor" brings color, familiar faces and 21st-century special effects to a battle that most people only know through history books and old black-and-white photographs, such as the one at right, which shows the destroyer Shaw being ripped apart during the attack nearly 60 years ago.
box office, for young viewers this film will become the visual reference for what happened that day.
To prepare, the actors interviewed the aging survivors of the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on the Navy's O'ahu base. In interviews Friday, the actors said the veterans' passionate stories charged them with an awesome responsibility: They had to teach as much as entertain.
The media saw the film in a Waikiki preview last week, but Disney will officially premiere the three-hour, $140 million film tomorrow night on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis. A huge sound system will bathe the harbor with the sounds of planes and explosions not heard there in nearly 60 years.
Despite its noble intentions, the film blends a sketchy love story; 43-minute battle scene laden with special effects; and a raid over Tokyo that happened months after the Pearl Harbor attack, probably to end the film on an upbeat note. Scenes of the Dec. 7 attack are loud, confusing and chaotic.
And Islanders will strain to find anything that reflects the experiences of the people who lived here. The only thing that lends a sense of place is the tropical scenery serving as a backdrop to a lot of Caucasian faces.
The attack sent the United States into World War II. In a single morning, it jolted the nation out of isolationist slumber. America was changed forever.
That transformation was not lost on the cast of "Pearl Harbor." As the actors tackled their roles, they felt a need to awaken a generation of movie-goers not much younger than the men and women who went to war.
Hartnett, who plays a young Army pilot named Danny Walker, is typical of many of his generation.
Nearly everything they know about the attack comes from a few pages in a high school history text. To prepare for his role, the 22-year-old Hartnett met with Pearl Harbor survivors.
Their stories touched him.
"They were present from the beginning of the film," he said. "I felt a certain amount of responsibility but I also felt a lot of joy that they wanted to come and be part of this. That made it a hopeful endeavor."
Hartnett saw his character in each of their worn faces.
Andrew Cooper
"You could watch them and touch them and look into their eyes," he said. "They didn't even use words. Everything I needed to make this role work basically came from them."
Josh Hartnett, second from left, who portrays an Army pilot, prepared for the role by listening to accounts of the attack from people who were there.
"Pearl Harbor" is the biggest film Hartnett has been in — he had the lead even before Affleck was signed. In an interview, his manners appear genuine, with a firm handshake and aw-shucks comments not polished by publicists.
Beckinsale, who plays a military nurse in love with Hartnett and Affleck, brought a British perspective to her role. As a schoolgirl, she learned more about the bombing of London than that of prewar Hawai'i.
But knowing it really happened made the role easier, she said.
"I've always felt about movies that are based on real events that the audience has really bought into the concept of the movie before they've walked in," she said. "I think you get that for free, and I think that you then have to really earn it because you know you owe it to the people who went through the real thing."
Beckinsale is polite and proper, a woman who arrives for interviews perfectly put together. Her confession: She swears like a sailor, though not in Disney's summer epic.
Tom Sizemore plays one of the older characters in the film, a grizzled composite of "a few guys" who maintained Army airplanes in Hawai'i before the war.
"I spoke to a couple of survivors and they are grateful for the movie," he said. "They feel forgotten. This generation that we live in now thinks the world started with the Internet. People sit with their mouse and watch 'The Simpsons.' It's kind of grim, you know?"
Sizemore is verbal counterweight to his co-stars — an actor not reluctant to criticize or debate, mostly because it's fun. Since "Pearl Harbor," he's filming his third war movie and has the haircut to prove it.
"The culture right now is at an all-time low," he said. "Thank God for these movies."
Sizemore, who starred in the groundbreaking "Saving Private Ryan," had nothing but praise for World War II veterans.
"This was the greatest generation ever," he said. "We didn't have an army. We didn't have a draft. In three months, we had to go fight Germany and the Japanese on two fronts ... And we fought and kicked their ass."
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer realized the importance of "Pearl Harbor's" message, which reinforced his desire to bring the attack to life.
"There's a whole generation of kids who know nothing about Pearl Harbor," he said.
But from the start, he was straight with the Pearl Harbor survivors who served as consultants, he said.
"We always told them that we were trying to capture the essence of what happened," Bruckheimer said. "We can't be 100 percent accurate. It would just take too long for us to do it."
Asked why he ignored the local experience, Bruckheimer didn't flinch.
"It wasn't their story. It was the story of these three characters and their insular military life. It was never an issue. When you make a picture, especially one as long as 'Pearl Harbor,' those characters kind of tend to disappear anyway."
Still, he considers the blessings of the Pearl Harbor veterans critical, and it has nothing to do with selling movie tickets, he said.
"I hope that they'll be proud to show this movie to their kids and their grandkids," he said. "I hope that they feel that we helped them pass the memory of what happened here on to the next generation."
James King, a model-turned-actress appearing in only her second film, said the cast and crew approached "Pearl Harbor" with pure intentions. They wanted to tell a great story and honor the veterans.
When Disney premieres the movie, with red-carpet arrivals, fireworks and a huge USO-themed party, it all will take place within a few hundred yards of the USS Arizona Memorial. The sunken hull is a sacred tomb to 1,177 crew members.
King doesn't believe that the lavish event is disrespectful to the memory of those who died. Their memory needs celebration as much as it evokes tears.
"We can look at things as just a tragedy or we can see them as tragedy that brought out a lot of heroes," she said. "That's something to celebrate."
