| In the vast and ever-expanding universe of military filmmaking, World War II movies are a dime a dozen. It’s everyone’s favorite war, and directors have been making movies about it since before Victory in Europe Day even took place in May 1945. And among scores of WWII movies, there’s usually a common thread: In order to be accurate, war must be depicted as an ugly affair that forces people to do ugly things. As Union Army Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman once wrote: “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.” But director Tyler Perry does just that in his new movie, “The Six Triple Eight,” taking that notion of the inherent ugliness of war and flipping it on its head. The result is a poignant and powerful tribute to the Army’s first all-Black, all-female battalion, the 6888 Central Postal Directory Battalion, one that explores war as an opportunity to find the beauty in rising above. The women represented in the movie, as they did in real life nearly 80 years ago, face down the ugliness of the world while performing the critical role of processing an entire war’s worth of mail — and they did so with stunning grace. (READ MORE) |
