Spike Lee: glass houses

A few months ago, Spike Lee verbally attacked Clint Eastwood for not respecting historical fact and leaving black soldiers out of his two-part movie homage to the WWII Battle of Iwo Jima, «Flags of Fathers» and «Letters From Iwo Jima».

It is doubtlessly for this reason – among others – that Spike Lee urgently wanted to shoot «Miracle at Sant'Anna», which was presented yesterday to the Italian press, and which deals with a battalion of African-American soldiers who are caught behind Nazi lines in Tuscany.

Criticism rained down on Lee right after the screening, as descendants of Italian partisans were outraged by an episode in the movie in which one of the resistance members betrays his comrades by letting Nazis execute 560 Italian civilians, a massacre that took place on August 12, 1944.

After admonishing Clint Eastwood, Lee now finds himself on the other side of the argument for the same reasons. In yet another variation on «people who live in glass houses», the black director is sure to find a silver lining in the whole affair: the media circus will be excellent free publicity for his film.