The Liberator is a feature length animated movie based on the memoirs of Texas born Felix L. Sparks who joined the Army in 1936 during the Great Depression and served for two years as an enlisted man. The film doesn't go into his prewar history, but just to complete that after Sparks was discharged he went to the University of Arizona and then reentered the Army at some point as an officer.
I'm not personally familiar with Sparks' story. It appears that he was stationed for a time at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma (which is something I share in common with him) and that he may have been an artilleryman at one time who moved over to infantry. On that I'm not sure, but he did end up a commissioned officer in the 45th Infantry Division, which was a National Guard Division heavily made up of Oklahomans, including a fair number of Native Americans, but also including other National Guard units in its make up that came from the Southwest. Famous cartoonist Bill Mauldin was in early in World War Two, having joined a New Mexico National Guard unit that was folded into it just as it was being called up, something that was fairly common in World War One and World War Two. Mauldin started off his cartoon career with the 45th Division News.
At any rate, the film portrays Sparks as being assigned a group of hard luck soldiers in a fashion that's heavily reminiscent of The Dirty Dozen. It follows them through the war, starting off with combat in Italy (in reality Sparks was taken from Oran Algeria to Sicily in Operation Husky aboard the USS George Carroll, which was the ship that my coworker who had the office next to me for many years was on during the war). The combat scenes thereafter strongly recall the film The Big Red One, including combat in Italy and later in Germany, featuring the liberation of a concertation camp. Along the way Sparks is given a double barreled Lupara, a sort of short barreled Sicilian shotgun associated with the Mafia. In real life, Sparks was apparently nicknamed "The Shotgun".
The film concludes, fwiw, in a fashion that's very reminiscent of Band of Brothers.
I'll be frank that I was prepared to dislike this film, but I liked it. The animation is very realistic, so after a person gets used to it, it's not distracting. It's pretty clear that real actors were used for the characters movements, and it'd be interesting to know the background reason for that. I suspect that either COVID 19 prevented filming with actual actors, or budgetary concerns simply made this a cheaper option for a film that didn't have a large budget. Another factor may simply be that the plot, while based on real events, is somewhat "light" and it tracks pretty closely to plot elements found in other films, which might say a lot for them actually, as it would tend to show that those details were generally fairly accurate.
All in all, it works.
In terms of historical accuracy, while I've noted several other films that this film seems to lean on, it seems that it tracks pretty closely to Sparks actual history during the war, but with clear exaggerations, particularly as to the origin of his initial company. While I haven't looked into it, the "hard luck" nature of the initial infantry company is a little too close to The Dirty Dozen to really be fully believable, but perhaps I should read the memoir and see if Sparks recalled in that fashion himself. Sparks did command troops in the noted unit during the war, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel by the war's end. Locations seem to be based on actual ones as well.
In terms of material detail, this film is remarkable for an animation. By and large most of the material details are correct, showing that somebody had done a fair amount of research in order to get such details right even though the number of people who would pick up on them is slight. There are a few errors, but they are not numerous.
FWIW, in real life Sparks left the Army after the Second World War and went on to law school, graduating from the University of Colorado's law school in 1947. He stayed in Colorado thereafter and ended up being a Colorado Supreme Court Justice. He retired from military service with the Colorado Army National Guard at the rank of Brigadier General.
The film is well worth watching.
No comments:
Post a Comment