As Dynamic As Its Topic

Rating: 10/10 (9 November 2015)

This film is neither a biopic nor a conventional war movie. It is too sprawling and narrative to be the former and too sweeping and Victorian to be the latter. Wikipedia describes it as an epic biographical war film, which I suppose its technically accurate. But it sounds like some description an English teacher would give, one that is not quite appropriate for what is one display here. It is too sweeping, too emotional, too driven, too dedicated to channeling the primal sophistication.
From a critical standpoint, perhaps the greatest achievement of the film is how it shows the over-the-top character that is Patton without bias or framing. It shows the man as he was and how he saw the world. The people who like Patton come out of this movie thinking that it wanted them to like him. The people who don't like Patton come out of this movie thinking that it didn't want them to like Patton. Of course, really it is neither. It is somehow faces left and right without stopping staring straight ahead.
I would say that Patton is one of those people whose lives just beg to be put on screen. He is basically what you would get if you combined the high points of the arrogant jerk character and the typical protagonist and blew it up tenfold. There are characters in film that are made to be unbelievably over-the-top but they don't come close to Patton. None of this is meant as an insult, by the way; he seems to transcend reality, bringing truth the old axiom, "The difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." He saw life as his story; yes, kids, if you think the world revolves around you, one day, you might be the greatest general of your time.
But seriously, he believed himself to be the reincarnation of every great general in history, including the aforementioned Napoleon and Alexander the Great. He lived for war; it allowed him to rise to what he felt was his destiny. It is poetic that he died not long after the German surrender.
What I'm trying to say is that the film reflects the man. This film is not light or fluffy about war or Patton, but it is not a hyper-realistic Saving Private Ryan-type movie either. It is as if Patton is a lead actor on the world's deadliest stage. As it should be.
The only times the camera moves off Patton are the battle scenes. And even then, could you really say that they moved off him at all? Patton is battle. If anything, they moved off his outer frame and into his heart. This is the kind of man who would fight forever and never find it boring.
I find it interesting that the screenplays for this and Apocalypse Now were both penned by the same man, Francis Ford Coppola. There are many similarities between the films; if you don't think that Colonel Kilgore was channeling at least some of Patton's energy, you did not watch the same movie that I did. Of course, Patton is a more complex character/person, but I can certainly imagine him saying something along the lines of, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." Both films also dive into the heart of war in a way that few others do. It is not portrayed in exactly the same way in both, but some of the basic elements are the same. Think about it. Take a normal war movie. Likely as not, the environment is portrayed like a deadly lion stalking its prey. There is nothing wrong with this: in fact, one of my all-time favorite films, Saving Private Ryan, goes this route. But those sorts of films have been done a million times and you need to be outstanding to not be a blip. Coppola's vision, on the other hand, is unique.
The lion does not chase its prey. It charges towards it with eyes of insanity. Most war films have a deathly feel. Coppola's give off the impression that they are revoltingly, horrifyingly alive. He focuses more on the insanity so present in war than its morbidness. As a result, his films feel more interesting, and in a perverted way, more realistic. There are very few directors who could pull that off. He is one of them.
For that matter, there are very few people who could convincingly play George S. Patton. George C. Scott is one of them, and not just because his name kind of looks like Patton's. He was the sort of rebel that really doesn't exist anymore, couldn't exist anymore- just like Patton. He also produced the sorts of results that are nigh-impossible to replicate- just like Patton. The casting is topped only by the execution. I do not just believe his performance whenever I watch it; I give up to it. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for this role; though, in true rebel fashion, he turned it down.
This movie took home a whole slew of Academy Awards, and rightfully so; I would have been angered if it didn't, and not just because it's a good movie. 1970 was a terrible year for film; the second best movie released that year was likely either Love Story or Airport, two movies that I like well enough but are not all-time great movies in the least. Keep that in mind every time someone says how terrible movies are nowadays. This film towered over the cinematic year like Patton himself towered over any war theatre he took to.
Goodnight.