Truth be known, we didn't go to Pressure, the movie, because I'm a history buff. We didn't go because my father-in-law walked over D-Day beaches two weeks after the first wave of Allies, nor did we go because a Lakota woman I knew took precious amounts of her time to tell me her story, a nurse, right there in the middle of action that took place two weeks or so after the invasion. Nor did we go because my mother-in-law lost a fiancé on Omaha Beach just after he walked into the channel and departed the landing craft.
We went for a pretty crappy reason, really--because we were bored. The local theater was offering Pressure, a movie I'd seen advertised featuring a portly Eisenhower (who wasn't skinny) in full uniform at a beach all too reminiscent of a half dozen truly memorable beaches, stories about D-Day, this one, strangely enough, about the weather. I'd like to say we went for some truly noble reason--after all, I'm a registered WWII buff. One of the major motivators was sheer boredom on a holiday weekend--and Pressure, strangely named, was on the big screen right here in town.
We looked, we found, we went, and we loved it. Number me among those who find it hard to say what I just did--how can anybody love a war movie? Okay, talk among yourselves, but I did.
Let me take the edge off that claim, I really liked it, okay? It's hard to say you "loved" D-Day or anything connected with the carnage on Normandy's beaches. But I remember what the theater looked like where I sat through D-Day, the first of the really big shows. Band of Brothers has a permanent place in my memory, and, of course, Saving Private Ryan is wholly unforgettable.
It's hard to know where I'd put Pressure (the pun is adorable, but silly--absolutely nothing about D-Day is "adorable") in the list; what I'll say unequivocally is that what we saw on Saturday night earned a place in the best of the D-Day films. I was captivated the entire time, even though there's far less blood than there could have been, far less carnage, far less battlefield ugliness than anyone human would like to see.
Pressure doesn't glorify action, it sets up heroism where it dwells most abundantly, with decisions that have to be made in every battle and almost always determine at least something of ultimate battle outcome. In Pressure, it's the decision of the weatherman: is the ocean going to be on the side of the Allies, or is it going to arise in defense of the defenders already set up and in place for a battle just about everyone had to know would determine the outcome of what Hitler jump-started in Poland.
Does it glorify the carnage? War movies can do that, but Pressure doesn't. The battle itself is horrifying and bloody, as was the invasion; but the conflict between one man's determined vision of the weather--what it might be--on June 5, the day plotted for the invasion against the immense pressure created by months of American troops in England.
One man says no, and that one man's refusal to reshape his forecast makes all the difference. He's the protagonist of the story, but the movie doesn't cast him as hero. Instead, it's the paunchy Allied Supreme Commander with the sad comb-over, a warrior America chose to call Ike, who chose to believe the scorned forecaster who told him to wait.
Which he did. It's likely, the movie claims, that the Allies waiting on June 5 made all the difference.
The praise for Pressure hasn't been all that glorious, but I say seeing it on the big screen is worth shelling out the bucks for a ticket or two. In my estimation, Pressure is really a great story, very much worth getting up off the couch and back in the theater.
We did. It was terrific!
