Do we really need another movie about D-Day? Isn’t the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan pretty much the defining portrayal? What is left?
Before getting to my main point, I would actually like to see more about the British and Canadian landings at D-Day. But I digress…
There actually are more stories about D-Day that need to be told. The story did not begin with soldiers leaping out of landing craft into a hail of bullets, as important as that story is. The recent movie Pressure helps to fill in this gap.
People interested in the Second World War may know that D-Day was supposed to happen on June 5, 1944 but actually took place on June 6. Why the delay? Pressure tells us.
June 5 was the planned day and it seemed to all the planners to be the ideal day. Any later and the elaborate Allied plans of deception would be discovered by the Germans. The only thing that was unknown was the weather, an important consideration when attempting a cross channel invasion.
Dwight D. Eisenhower had traditionally relied on his meteorologist Irving Krick, an American who had never led him astray. However, Winston Churchill had recommended a Scot named James Stagg. Stagg ended up getting the senior position.
What Eisenhower and his staff needed was for Stagg to tell them that June 5 would be sunny and a perfect day for crossing the English channel. Stagg, however, was less interested in saying what was desired and more interested in the truth.
I love the title of this movie as Pressure is a wonderful play on words. Of course it is about pressure systems that control the weather. But is also about the pressure of leadership. We see Stagg under tremendous pressure, knowing the weather would be bad but also knowing how important the invasion would be.
Pressure also gets into the stress that Eisenhower was under. Almost every scene involves him lighting a cigarette, which is historical as he relied on nicotine and caffeine to get him through the pressures of leadership. In this movie, we see not Eisenhower the hero but Eisenhower the human.
I loved this movie. It totally captured my attention.
Both Brendan Fraser as Eisenhower and Andrew Scott as Stagg are incredible. But it is not just them. It is the entire cast. It also includes Damian Lewis, who played Richard Winters in Band of Brothers, playing much less likeable Bernard Montgomery.
I find myself still thinking about this movie and the leadership lessons found in it. It is a movie rich with meaning, all the more so because it is true. You do not have to like war movies to appreciate the excellence of Pressure.
