| Ms Grace
Original articles, please do not reprint without authorization, plagiarism and washing manuscripts are shameless behavior!
In 2012, I read a biography called Indestructible, the protagonist of which was Named Louis Zamperini, who had multiple identities in his life, was a well-known American long-distance runner who participated in the Berlin Olympic Games, became an air force bombardier in World War II, later became a prisoner of japanese prisoner-of-war camp, and became a torchbearer of the Olympic Games many times after the war.
After its publication in 2010, Indestructible was on the New York Times bestseller list for 108 consecutive weeks, and after six months of publication, it sold 1 million copies, and the book also won the recommendation of many authoritative media.
The description in the book "Indestructible" is wonderful... The storyline is touching... A struggle poem that comes back from the dead. —The Wall Street Journal
A legend of victory and redemption, a legend of overcoming adversity with superhuman perseverance, the description in the book is meticulous. — O Magazine (edited by Oprah Winfrey)
From bad teenagers to Olympic runners
Louis Zamperini was born on January 26, 1917 in orion, New York, to Italian immigrant parents, and the family moved to Torrance, a small town of just over 1,800 people in California.
Louis has a stubborn personality since childhood, he is either stealing chickens and dogs, or fighting and causing trouble, which makes his parents a headache, and in stark contrast to Louis, his brother Pete, who is only 20 months older than him, is a well-known and beloved teenager.
In 1931, Louis entered the ninth grade, and Pitt, who was about to graduate, received 10 invitations to the university team, but track and field was Pitt's real strength, and Pitt hoped that his brother would become an athlete as well.
In 1932, Louis competed in a school athletics competition, and he was the last to reach the finish line, which was mercilessly ridiculed by others, but Pete discovered his brother's athletic talent. From then on, Pete lifted Louis out of bed every morning, then rode behind him with a stick and urged him to practice running.
Louis Zamberini in his youth
Louis hated the boring and tired training, but the cheers of the audience during the game made him extremely intoxicated, and under the interweaving of these two ambivalences, he persevered and quickly achieved some results, which made him fall in love with running from then on, and "running out of control".
"Indestructible" is "a World War II story about survival, struggle and redemption", world war II completely changed the trajectory of Louis's life, whether before, during or after the war, louis did everything to make himself survive and better survive, and resistance and redemption are the two spiritual pillars that run through his life.
Although it started involuntary, running was undoubtedly Louis's first struggle with fate, and he also completed the first redemption in his life brilliantly.
In just four short years, Louis set records again and again and broke the records he had set himself, becoming the fastest one-mile high school racer in the history of American athletics, and from a notorious bad boy to a beloved "Whirlwind of Torrance."
Running not only changed the way people thought about Louis, but more importantly, he broadened his horizons, and he had a more ambitious goal in life: to enter the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Louis had been participating in the one-mile event before, but the Olympics were only 1500 meters, nearly 109 meters shorter than a mile, and there were only about 7 months to prepare for the Olympics, under The guidance of Pitt, Louis devoted himself to training, and then he switched to the 5000 meters at the suggestion of others.
After four domestic trials, the 19-year-old Louis became the youngest long-distance runner to represent the United States in the Olympic Games, and under the hard work of sweat, the flower of his dream finally blossomed.
On August 7, 1936, Louis stood in the Olympic 5000m final, but he was inexperienced and the opponent was too strong, Louis only finished 8th, but he only took 56 seconds to complete the last lap.
At the time, for the 5,000m race, if the last lap was less than 70 seconds, it was enough to be a sensation, and Louis's amazing speed was even marveled at Hitler, who was watching the race, and he met Louis after the race and said to him: "Ah, you are the boy who ran on the last lap." ”
Upon his return to Torrance, Louis was greeted with heroic courtesy, and the people cheered for him and rushed to take photos with him. Everyone believed that it would not be difficult for Louis to win the 1500m at the Tokyo Olympics four years later, but Louis did not expect it at the time, and that his second cross-cutting with the Olympics would be decades later.
Louis in the movie
From college students to bombardiers
After the Berlin Olympics, Louis followed in the footsteps of his brother Pete to the University of Southern California, where he attended classes every morning and training in the afternoon. While Louis enjoyed his time on campus while actively preparing for the next Olympic Games, the world had changed dramatically.
After the outbreak of World War II, Pete and Louis enlisted in the army. After graduating from the Midland Military School in August 1942, Louis officially became a second lieutenant and served as a bomber on the Air Force's B-24 bombers. Louis fought alongside his comrades many times, some wounded and some killed, but fortunately, Louis survived each time.
Louis Zamperini's life was full of drama, Hollywood naturally did not let go of such a good script, Universal Pictures quickly bought the film and television adaptation of the book, the film of the same name was released on December 25, 2014, with Angelina Jolie as the director and Jack O'Connell as the male lead.
As you can know from the release date, Universal Pictures has great hopes for the film "Chong Ao", although the male protagonist is not very famous, but the production team is luxurious, the script is written by the Oscar-winning director Coen brothers, and the gold medal cinematographer Roger Deakins is in charge of the film.
Fans familiar with Roger Deakins should know his photographic standards, "The Shawshank Redemption", "Blade Runner 2046" and other films are by Roger, "Indestructible" kicks off in a fierce air battle, and the air battle is interspersed with Louis's memories of his youth, and the excitement of the beginning of the film firmly grasps the audience's attention.
B-24 bomber
However, Louis was not always so lucky, and in May 1943, while on a search mission, Louis's Green Hornet had an engine failure and had to land (crash) in a certain area of the sea. There were 11 people on board, but only Louis and pilot Phil and tail gunner Mike survived, but then they faced a more serious survival challenge.
The "Green Hornet" did not contact the US military before the crash, which means that no one knew about the crash, and no one knew that Louis and the other three were still alive, and in the absence of rescue, they had to do everything they could to save themselves, and two submarines, a few pieces of chocolate and a small amount of fresh water were the few supplies for the three people.
Roger Deakins' cinematography is so impressive that he has been nominated for 15 Academy Awards for Best Cinematography and won 2 times. Roger was very dedicated, and he believed that the shots shot in front of the green screen lacked realism, so he insisted that all shots should be shot live on the spot, rather than using post-color grading.
"Indestructible" is one of Roger's Oscar nominations for Best Cinematography, and under his lens, whether it is the Three Louises who endure the storm or their fight with sharks, it is full of poetic beauty, unforgettable.
However, from the overall plot point of view, the content expressed in the film is still lacking compared to the books, and the portrayal of Louis and his companions for 47 days (marked as 45 days in the film) at sea is only superficially stuck on the exquisite picture, without digging deeper into the inner world of the characters.
Faced with a lifeless future, the first person to break down was Mike. The chocolates were military food for soldiers to meet from time to time, and they ate only two bars a day to maintain basic survival needs, but the morning after the crash, Louis found that Mike had eaten all the chocolate, and he understood that Mike was doing this out of fear, so he did not criticize him too much, but the weak-willed Mike became the only one of the three who lost his life at sea.
In Louis's boyhood, his brother Pete once said to him: "If temporary pain can be exchanged for a lifetime of glory, then this pain is worth it." ”
It is this sentence that accompanies Louis's hard training year after year, and it is also this sentence that supports Louis through 47 days of sea drift, he has to take care of Phil with a head injury, to appease the psychologically broken Mike, and to use his courage and wisdom to catch various fish and small sharks to fill his hunger.
I think the most detailed of Louis's struggle with fate is that he paints a vivid description of every dish that his mother Louise made to his companions, which slowly evolved into a ritual and was performed three times a day, so that Phil and Mike later knew Louise's cooking very well, and whenever Louis left out anything in his narration or the description was inaccurate, they would immediately correct it.
Eating is one of the basic physiological needs of people, Louis not only uses this way to achieve the purpose of painting bread to fill hunger, but also expresses his hope of survival, and more importantly, he stimulates the survival desire of his companions in this way. Unfortunately, because of the limited space of the film, this part of the content is only skimmed over in the film, and it is not shown too much, and the text in the book can make people feel the strength of Louis's heart and the strength of his will more than the pictures in the movie.
This game with nature is the second struggle and second redemption in Louis's life, and on a spiritual level, Louis wins because he and Phil survive, but in practical terms, he and Phil lose completely, because it is a group of Japanese soldiers who find and save them, Louis and Phil have just come out of the tiger's den and into the wolf's den.
Roger Deakins
From U.S. lieutenant to Japanese prisoner of war
After being captured, Louis and Phil were first held at Kwajalein Atoll, then transferred to a secret interrogation site in the town of Grand Boat, and then moved to separate prisoner-of-war camps, where they did not contact each other again until the end of World War II.
Louis was taken to the Omori POW camp, which was headed by a corporal named Hiromitsu Watanabe. Watanabe was a psychopathic and moody fellow who often beat prisoners of war for no reason, but then went back to apologize in tears, but this confession lasted only briefly, and soon he would launch a new round of beatings against prisoners of war.
Under the Geneva Conventions, officers were exempt from slave-like labor in prisoner-of-war camps, but Watanabe cut their rations in half. Louis and the others went to find Watanabe Theory and were beaten, and Watanabe later asked the officers to clean the toilets and clean up the excrement in exchange for food.
As a well-known long-distance runner who participated in the Olympic Games, Louis received Watanabe's "special attention" and suffered far more beatings than anyone else. If Louis resisted even slightly when he was beaten, even if he instinctively covered his face with his hands, it would anger Watanabe, so whenever he was beaten, Louis could only stand and do nothing.
In November 1944, Louis gave a speech through Radio Tokyo's "Voice of the Postman" program to the effect of reporting to his family that he was safe, but because the broadcast was conducted under the supervision of the Japanese military, Louis could only say against his will that he was in good health and was not injured.
Later, Louis was asked to come to Tokyo Radio again to speak, but this time the manuscript he had written himself was replaced, and the Japanese gave Louis some unfriendly remarks to the United States, and if Louis followed the script, it would mean that he had betrayed his country from then on.
At this time, Louis learned that he and Phil had been sentenced to death as early as the time of Kwajalein Atoll, but a Japanese officer believed that Louis's status as a well-known athlete could be used for publicity in the future, and also considered that if Phil was executed, I was afraid that Louis would not cooperate in the future, so the two of them escaped the disaster temporarily.
At this time, Louis had two paths in front of him, one was to choose to betray his country and live a relatively comfortable life in a foreign country, and the other was to return to the prisoner of war camp and continue to endure inhuman torture, and Louis chose the latter without hesitation.
During the more than 700 days of captivity, Louis suffered a double torture of body and mind, but he did not choose to bow to fate, but won the third struggle against fate with his strong will, and also completed the third redemption of his life.
The book "Indestructible" has 5 chapters, 3 of which describe Louis's experience in World War II, of which the chapter "Prisoner of War Camp: The Indomitable Years" is the focus of the entire book, which not only restores the inhuman torture suffered by nearly a thousand prisoners of war, including Louis, but also records their indomitable resistance.
In loading, unloading and transporting goods, PRISONERs of war took advantage of various opportunities to steal sugar, canned food, etc., and then exchanged them with each other, sometimes generously to sick prisoners of war. 90% of prisoners of war suffered from dysentery when they were starved, ill- and warm-clothed, and forced to perform heavy physical labor for long periods of time, the stolen food saved many lives and made them feel that their dignity had been restored.
From the time they were imprisoned in the town of Big Boat, Louis and the others began to plan escapes many times, but because the conditions were not mature enough, the plan could not be implemented. Unfortunately, some of these wonderful contents have been hurriedly brought in the movie, and some have not been mentioned at all, giving people the feeling that watching movies is not as enjoyable as reading books.
Combing through the Oscar's list of winners, it is not difficult to find that the Oscar prefers World War II-themed films, such as "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan" have received multiple nominations and awards, and the film version of "Indestructible" has obviously been built by the production company into a "Rushing Olympic Proposition Composition" with high hopes for gold, but it has been counterproductive.
From this movie, you can see the shadow of many classic films, Louis's boyhood practice of running plot is easy to think of "Forrest Gump", his and his companions at sea drift and feel very similar to "The Fantasy Drift of the Young Pi", but these two parts are limited in space, although it feels familiar with other movies, but the look is not too bad.
The most controversial content of this film is the scene about the prisoner of war camp, which is relatively bland on the whole, just blindly repeating the suffering, but does not really reflect the inner meaning of "indestructible".
To make matters worse, watanabe and Louis were originally a purely oppressive and rebellious relationship, but the film became a kind of imaginative "same-sex friendship".
Playing Watanabe is the Japanese singer Ishihara Takaya, compared to the archetypal characters, Ishihara Takaya's appearance is not fierce enough and the eyes are too ambiguous, whenever Watanabe played by him looks at the prisoner of war Louis, not only does not feel Watanabe's perversion and cruelty, but also produces a strange effect of overflowing emotion, it is easy to think of the World War II + same-sex theme starring David Bowie and Ryuichi Sakamoto "Merry Christmas on the Battlefield".
"Indestructible" is actually a good subject that can not be sought, but unfortunately there is too much content to express, but it does not really grasp the point, resulting in the ingredients that were originally a delicious feast, but finally became a tasteless, abandoned chicken ribs, this film only won the 87th Academy Awards 3 technical awards nominations, and finally no grain.
On the left is the Watanabe prototype
From prisoner to Olympic torchbearer
"Indestructible" is a thick book, the Chinese edition has a total of 397 pages, in fact, the best choice for filming this book is to adapt it into a miniseries of about 10 episodes like "Company of Brothers", but adapted into a film of more than two hours, naturally there are trade-offs, which leads to the last chapter of the book, "After the War: The Road to Redemption", which is not filmed at all, and only a few lines of subtitles at the end of the film to make a simple explanation of Louis's post-war life.
After The end of World War II, Louis returned to the United States to reunite with his family, and he met Cynthia, a wealthy woman, who fell in love and soon married, and later moved to Hollywood.
However, Louis did not live a happy and happy life, he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, a disease that has not yet been completely cured in medicine, the patient is irritable, insomnia, easy to be frightened, and the spirit is prone to high tension.
For four or five years after the war, nightmares in the prisoner-of-war camp haunted Louis, and he often dreamed of him being beaten by Watanabe, and those terrible experiences could not be shaken off, and even once Louis thought that he had strangled Watanabe's neck, but suddenly woke up to find that he had almost killed his pregnant wife.
The shadow of war destroyed Louis's life, and his inability to concentrate on training led to the deterioration of his old illness caused by a foot injury during training, and his dream of returning to the field was dashed. Louis constantly paralyzes himself with alcoholism, he easily clashes with people, and the marriage once struggled on the verge of collapse.
On a cold autumn morning in 1950, when Louis returned to Japan, he went to Sugamo Prison and met more than 200 prisoners, who were the guards in the prisoner-of-war camp, And Louis saw many familiar faces, but did not find Watanabe.
When he learned of Watanabe's suicide in despair, Louis's heart changed dramatically, but this transformation was not simply based on the joy of learning the news of Watanabe's death, but more importantly, Louis found that he could calmly talk to these people who had abused him before, and he used to have a palpitation even when he heard Watanabe's nickname "Big Bird", but now he could talk to people about Watanabe's death.
Four struggles and redemptions against fate ran through Louie's life, but this last one was the most difficult. When he was young, he trained hard, Louis had the support and encouragement of his brother; during World War II, he suffered many hardships, but he always had companions to fight with Louis; and the post-war life experience was different, this was Louis's struggle with demons, and he could only rely on himself to get salvation.
In fact, it can also be considered that the news of Watanabe's death is a kind of spiritual victory method for Louis (the actual situation is that Watanabe lived in anonymity until he was 80 years old), but it cannot be denied that Louis took the initiative to reconcile with the past, and only by bravely facing the past can he completely let go of the past, from the moment he returned to Japan, Louis walked step by step to the road of rebirth, and also opened his heart knot little by little, until he completely got rid of the shame and helplessness of being tortured in the prisoner of war camp.
After the rebirth, Louis traveled around the world with great interest, he used his own personal experience to encourage those who suffered setbacks, and the remuneration for speeches not only to maintain the needs of life, but more importantly, under the sponsorship of some caring people, Louis established a "victory youth camp" that was not for profit, and he rescued countless rebellious teenagers, which became the greatest cause in Louis's life.
Later, Louis's injuries were basically healed, and he fell in love with skateboarding in his ancient years. Louis also served as the Olympic torchbearer in 5 different competitions, intersecting with the Olympic Games again in another capacity.
In his later years, Louis Zamperini and director Angelina Jolie
Write at the end
Louis Zamperini passed away in July 2014 at the age of 97. Louis didn't wait for the release of the movie "Indestructible", but this can not be regarded as a regret in his life, because his previously published autobiography has touched countless people.
It is worth mentioning that although the author of this book, Laura Hillenbrand, has not experienced war, she has experienced life tribulations that are not inferior to her own characters.
Laura was diagnosed with "chronic fatigue syndrome" at the age of 19, and patients with this disease spent most of their time with fatigue and weakness in their limbs, and were too weak to leave home. It can be said that Laura has an incurable disease, because the cause of this disease has not yet been determined, so no effective treatment has been found.
However, in this case, Laura remained optimistic, and she overcame her physical obstacles to continue writing, publishing two bestsellers, "The Rushing Age" and "Indestructible", both of which have been adapted into movies and have received multiple Oscar nominations.
In order to complete "Indestructible", Laura conducted as many as 75 telephone interviews with Louis, and her extraordinary experience with the protagonist Louis in the book is undoubtedly the most perfect interpretation of the four words "indestructible", if a person can overcome himself, then he will eventually overcome all the difficulties in the world!
Laura Hillenbrand