It feels semi-redundant to recap a film so steadfastly biographical, but it’s sort of what I do—so here I go!
General George S. Patton is assigned to the North Africa campaign in WWII where he whips undisciplined troops into shape and drives a key victory. From there, his army is deployed to Sicily where they again fight to victory, this time at a high cost. It is in Sicily that Patton ridicules and slaps a soldier with battle fatigue (PTSD); the story makes national headlines and Patton is pulled from the frontlines for the unsavory act. After being used as an unengaged decoy during the D-Day launches, Patton is finally put back in command. He pledges good behavior and drives unreal and history-making progress—gains that would eventually win the war. Back in good favor, he again runs his mouth and loses command once and for all.
The first half of the film was pretty vanilla for me. The opening speech is iconic and the perfect introduction to Patton (and George C. Scott’s brilliant performance). But I politely endured through the next few sequences where we see how brash and one-dimensional Patton can be. And while it was fun to see him ready the troops and win at tank-roulette against Rommel, I was privately wondering where the film was going. That is, until ‘the slap’.
You know, the film lays on pretty thick that Patton is a ‘man out of time’. We see that Patton believes in reincarnation. He has an encyclopedic awareness of military history, sure, but he actually believes that he was present in the battles of the past. But it wasn’t until ‘the slap’ that I understood this fully. Patton is a warrior. A soldier. A motivator. And at those things, he was one of the best. But in World War II (and in every war after), generals had to be more than that. They had to be logisticians. And politicians. And publicists. Patton was none of these things and you can see him struggling with the expectations of a modern general. And struggling with the leadership of those around him who understood this, including Karl Malden’s General Bradley (p.s. Karl Malden is the best!).
I found myself enamored by this conflict. That someone can be brilliant in achieving results but positively naive at playing the game to be put in the position to achieve results. Patton serves as a reminder of how much a crap-shoot history can be. By being one-dimensional, the character reminded me how many dimensions we’re operating in at one time.