Angelina Jolie Triumphs Behind the Camera in ‘Unbroken’

John Scura

Few life stories exhibit the strength of the human spirit more than that of Louis Zamperini, the Olympic track athlete who went to war in 1941. He survived horrifying ordeals that were detailed in Laura Hillenbrand’s best-selling biography, “Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption.” Zamperini, who died of pneumonia at 97 earlier this year, was headed toward a criminal life in his youth, but his love and talent for running enabled him to attend USC on a track scholarship and then compete in the 1936 Olympics. When war came, he immediately enlisted in the Army Air Force and flew in a B-25 bomber that soon was shot down in the Pacific. Zamperini survived for 47 days on a tiny raft until reaching an island occupied by the Japanese army. This is when his ordeal really began.

Directed and produced by Angelina Jolie, “Unbroken” represents a breakthrough in the career of this award-winning actress. “This has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she says. “I pitched my butt off.” After finally convincing Universal Pictures to get on board, Angelina put on her director’s garb—which she donned only once before on the film, “In the Land of Blood and Honey”—and went to work.

“I jumped into something so much bigger, so it was daunting in a whole different way,” she explains. “On ‘In the Land of Blood and Honey’ I wrote it and it took place in a few rooms. There were certain things to tackle and certainly the politics of it to balance. But getting into ‘Unbroken,” there were two plane crashes and shark attacks and 47 days at sea and three prison camps and the 1936 Olympics and races. You wake up in the morning and you think, ‘God, there’s a way to do that, isn’t there?’ There’s a way to direct races. You don’t just show up at work and cover it this way or that way. It’s something I actually had to really understand. I had to really understand how the bombardiers went in formation, who was where and what happened. It was just so much more. There were days when I didn’t know if we would be able to accomplish it all. We didn’t have that much money and we didn’t have that much time, so it was a new scare.”

Much like Zamperini, Angelina triumphed over her fears and her challenges, including the difficulty of relocating her family to Sydney, Australia, for the months-long duration of the filming. But in the process, she became close to Zamperini. “He’s just one of the most extraordinary people I’ve ever met,” she says. “That’s the ‘Greatest Generation’ and it’s the last few years we’ll have them with us. To learn as much as we can from them is so important because the world has changed so much in their time. During his time, to be of service to your community, to your family and to your country was normal….It’s not just that he’s heroic and that he’s exceptional, but he is of the generation that we must learn as much as we can from in order to make this next generation strong enough.”

‘Unbroken’ is in theaters on Dec. 25.