Director Spike Lee's latest, Miracle at St. Anna, tackles the experiences of a group of America's black Buffalo Soldiers in Italy during World War II, and is partially inspired -- like the James McBride novel the movie is based upon -- by a Nazi massacre of innocents at Sant'Anna di Stazzema. The notoriously controversial Lee hit Toronto to press-conference it up, and I was lucky enough to be there. Unfortunately, he was on his best behavior -- but no less cogent than we've come to expect from one of the most respected filmmakers of his generation.

Cole Haddon: Miracle represents, as far as I'm concerned, your most mature cinematic achievement yet, more interested in questions than easily definable messages. Can you talk about what you wanted audiences to take away from the Buffalo Soldiers' Italian experience?

Spike Lee: I've been doing this a long time, and I really try to refrain from dictating to the audience. I respect the audience's intelligence too much. People are going to think what they're going to think. I don't want to poison their mind one way or another. How you relate to the film depends on what your experiences are. But we [really] did this for the people who aren't here, not just the Buffalo Soldiers. While we were shooting this film, many times elderly Italians would come up to me and tell me they were children during the war. I met some that were survivors of the massacre at St. Anna [which the movie depicts in gruesome detail]. In particular, one woman came up to me and said she was alive because of Buffalo Soldiers. She broke down crying in front of me. These stories…really drive home the point that this is real stuff. We [actually] shot at Sant'Anna di Stazzema where, on August 12th, 1944, the Nazis -- the 16th Division of the SS -- slaughtered 560 innocent Italian civilians -- mostly women, the elderly, and kids. We shot on the same exact location for two days, and everyone in the cast and crew could feel the souls of those 560 that were slaughtered. So that, for me, couldn't help but inspire me, to push you to know you have a duty to try and get this right.

CH: Most of the Italian characters speak in their own language, and you also used a crew that was predominately Italian. What kind of challenges did that pose?

SL: One of my concerns early on was the language barrier. I do not speak Italian. When my Italian AD was not around, Italian crew members would ask me questions and my answer would always be "due," which is "two" -- which always worked [laughs]. But language [turned out to not be] a barrier, and that was eye opening to me. I've come to realize a lot of these obstacles, divisions, and hurdles we put up, they're self imposed. We do that.

CH: As with all war movies, there's a great deal of violence in Miracle. Can you talk about the internal dialogue you go through as a filmmaker, deciding how far you can go before it becomes gratuitous?

SL: I think it comes down to taste. For me, as a filmmaker, I think I want to show war for what it is. Not pretty it up, which is what a lot of these young kids get from video games. I'll give you an example. [Disney chairman] Dick Cook did not want me to show a baby being bayoneted. I understood that. I understood that perfectly. But I [also] felt that, in a war film, you expect the soldiers to kill and be killed. I wanted to show the effect of war on the civilian population. Most films I've seen [don't show that].

CH: Miracle features some very effective moments in which black Buffalo Soldiers debate the point of race struggle and the idea that such struggle will one day result in the change all hope for. Barack Obama seems to represent that change, that hope. Can you discuss how the two are related?

SL: There's a seismic move this country has made. There are many young Americans who do not have the views of their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents have had. I think people want to demean hip hop, but that's one good thing I've got to say on hip hop -- these young white kids who buy 80% of it, that's changed a whole perception. I think it's going to be these young white kids who are voting for the first time. I don't think the polls [take them into account], and I think it's them that will put Obama over the edge. This film fits in with that hope, in this country finally achieving what the Founding Fathers set out to do.

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