Windtalkers is about a hidden aspect of World War II - how Navajo Indians paid a great price in the Pacific combat zone and helped defeat Japan.

Rating: 9/10 (14 October 2013)

W i n d t a l k e r s
Directed by John Woo
The heroism of certain illustrious representatives of the species Homo Sapiens has never ceased to amaze me. Growing up as a boy in Umhlali I had heard people speak with pride of the incredible courage of people like Mahatma Gandhi and Fatima Meer and Alan Paton. I did not know then of the astounding bravery of people like Ismail Meer and Nelson Mandela or H. A. Naidoo or Dr Goonam or the Rev Beyers Naude. Why all this?
I have just seen Windtalkers with Nicholas Cage directed by John Woo, possibly the best war movie I have seen this year. It is certainly up there with GLORY! and Saving Private Ryan. It is a superlative effort and has all the true grit of reality. Woo pays meticulous attention to detail and his camera pays loving homage to the American South West with its stunning landscape and its unearthly vista.
This movie had been panned by certain critics. Since it is a movie about the indigenous American Indian contribution to the war effort against Nippon and since, like most South Africans, I had grown up on a diet of John Wayne and Alan Ladd, I decided that I needed some balance.
I had also seen how some of the critics had panned brilliant epics like Michael Collins, The Patriot, The Legend of Bhagat Singh etc. and I suspected that they had another establishment agenda. So I decided to ignore the critics' comments; and seldom have I been happier with following my own Spirit!
The film depicts both Japanese and American heroism - and American racism. The Navajo volunteered for this War - and there is honour and glory in the movie even though Ben, the one code warrior actually names his son, George for George Washington - it reminded me of a South African Indian who named his son, 'Clive'. He, of course, didn't know the significance of Robert Clive in India's history - and didn't care to know.
One of the American soldiers talks of how his father remembered how the Indians were hunted like gophers and $3 was paid for each Comanche ear that was brought in. The devastation wreaked on flesh and blood by steel and explosive is demonstrated here in all its heart- wrenching reality as human beings behave worse than any force of nature, whether volcano, tornado or earthquake. These soldiers are not supermen, just very human men, trying to survive, trying to win, trying, in the end, to be human beings despite all the terror unleashed upon them by forces outside their control, forces which manipulate them like toys. This is a movie well worth seeing if one is interested in history and the kind of experiences our forebears went through. Victors always write history, but at last something of our own history is being written and shown. In a sense, that means we are winning too. And those uncomfortable with our history will always condemn what we know and what we write.
Review By Deena Padayachee