Torah! Torah! Torah! (1970)

Directed by: Richard Fleischer, Kinji Fukasaku, Toshio Masuda | 146 minutes | action, drama, war, history | Actors: Martin Balsam, Sô Yamamura, Joseph Cotten, Tatsuya Mihashi, EG Marshall, James Whitmore, Takahiro Tamura, Eijirô Tôno, Jason Robards, Wesley Addy, Shogo Shimada, Frank Aletter, Koreya Senda, Leon Ames, Junya Usami, Richard Anderson, Kazuo Kitamura, Keith Andes, Susumu Fujita, Edward Andrews, Bontarô Miyake, Neville Brand, Ichiro Ryuzaki, Leora Dana, Asao Uchida, George Macready, Norman Alden, Kazuko Ichikawa, Walter Brooke, Hank Jones, Rick Cooper, Karl Lukas, June Dayton Ron Masak, Jeff Donnell, Shunichi Nakamura, Richard Erdman, Hiroshi Nihon’yanagi, Jerry Fogel, Carl Reindel, Elven Havard, Edmon Ryan, Toshio Hosokawa, Hisao Toake

Truly authentic, truthful historical films are rare – at least when they are not documentaries. Most of the time, filmmakers – quite understandably – want to package the actual events in the most appetizing way possible, in bite-sized chunks that don’t feel as dry as the history books in which the information is normally presented. Not infrequently, however, this also means that fictitious things are inserted, and sometimes the history turns out to be just a context for a romance or melodrama on which the film floats. Such a choice can turn out quite nicely, as in ‘Titanic’ or the Dutch ‘De storm’, but often it is bad news. ‘Pearl Harbor’ is an example of this last possibility. What this film revolved around was a sluggish, melodramatic, love triangle, using the attack on Pearl Harbor and the surrounding events as mere spectacle, amplification of tragedy, and kitschy postcard beauty. How different it is with the movie ‘Tora!Tora!Tora!’ which has the meticulous, balanced approach of a documentary and makes no attempt to provoke false sentiment. It is a relief to see a film about a historical, political theme, without it really taking sides. It’s also unique to have the two warring nations each direct their own part of the film and merge it into an organic co-production. In ‘The Longest Day’ there were also parts recorded by Americans and British, but they were all on the same side. The film is also reminiscent of Clint Eastwood’s brother films ‘Letters from Iwo Jima’ and ‘Flags of our Fathers’, which told the same events from both the American and Japanese point of view, but those films had the same director. In short, ‘Torah! Torah! Torah!’ – “tora” is the Japanese code word for (torpedo) attack – is a special project (which might have been even more special if the original director, Akira Kurosawa, hadn’t been prevented from shooting). But as admirable as the integrity and detail of the film(makers) is, these qualities do not automatically make for a more fascinating film.

A drawback of the practical form of docudrama the film takes is that the events are presented too dryly and emotionless, and that the politically correct treatment of the different sides of the story and the lack of heroes and villains makes it difficult to identify you as a viewer with someone. Of course it is interesting to see how the attack on Pearl Harbor eventually came about, but even in this area the film cannot justify its epic length of 2.5 hours. Especially since the reason for the attack, or rather the inaction of the Americans, can be traced back to a bizarre bureaucracy and internal miscommunication of these Americans. It takes almost an hour and a half to communicate this laxity to the viewer. An intercepted Japanese message is misinterpreted. Or it is interpreted correctly, but because someone has not indicated that priority should be given to the letter/memo, the letter remains on the pile for too long. And a lot of things go wrong because it’s Sunday, and hardly anyone from the American side is at his workplace. The Japanese don’t want to win this way either. Commander-in-Chief Yamamura finds almost with tears in his eyes that the Americans had only received the Japanese declaration of war (nicely so) after the attack had started. He also fears that all they’ve done now is to awaken a sleeping giant, a thought that history has painfully confirmed him in.

Although there is little interesting from the American side, substantively or psychologically, the Japanese side of the story still offers some depth, especially in the person of the aforementioned Yamamura. This new Commander in Chief stands behind the mission, but is not only interested in clattering weapons and American blood. Even when everyone is ready and ready to drop the bombs on the American fleet, he informs his men that if a peaceful solution is reached, the mission will be called off. Because, he states, based on his personal experience (he studied at Harvard), “Americans are a proud and just people.” They are words that you will not soon hear from your enemy. Fortunately, this voice from the Japanese camp, which provides some diversity, keeps the film just barely bearable in terms of content in the too talkative first half.

The day of the attack takes up the entire second half of the film and is the part that finally grabs the viewer’s full attention. The background projections using the blue screen are sometimes a bit too clear and amateurish, but often enough as a viewer you sit breathlessly watching the airplanes pass by against the background of beautiful mountains, fields and seas. The sense of horror that can be seen on the faces of the Americans suddenly overwhelmed by the falling bombs is palpable, and it is clear that Michael Bay looked closely at this film as he developed his own interpretation of this tragic day. put American history on celluloid. The approach to the airport, the way the torpedoes fall… it sounds familiar more than once. But this time, the attack on Pearl Harbor is not just the setting for a cheap love story, but the event that has been anticipated all along. If that run-up to this point had known a little more emotion or (on both sides) more depth, ‘Torah! Torah! Torah!’ become a true genre classic.