In my opinion, the 2008 film Miracle at St. Anna is Spike Lee's most transformative film. It is a story about four Buffalo soldiers in WWII. They seek refuge and shelter in a small Italian village and eventually form bonds with the people living there as they try to survive the occupancy.
Although Lee has an impressive number of diverse films under his belt, this seems to be an outlier. As a fan of Lee's films, I wouldn't have guessed that he'd want to make a war film. When I first saw this film almost six years ago, I was glad that he did it.
Somehow, Lee finds a way to integrate the very themes of his other films into this one while maintaining the look and feel that many other American war films have established. Miracle at St. Anna contains themes about race, love, and survival, much like Do the Right Thing or Jungle Fever. I think this film is the most transformative because Lee was able to take an established genre, the war film, and put his own stylistic mark on it. Also, Lee accomplishes so much in this film. He shows how Black soldiers were treated in the second World War while simultaneously depicting the absolute resilience and bravery of United States Buffalo soldiers.
Lee does this a lot. Whatever genre he dabbles in—be it romance, drama, thriller, crime drama, or his upcoming horror-comedy Da Sweet Blood of Jesus—he always makes his own mark.
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