Perseverance In The Movie Unbroken

“If you can take it you can make it.” (Jolie, Unbroken). Those are the words of a young Pete Zamperini to his troubled younger brother, Louie, as he encourages him to be involved in track (Jolie, Unbroken). This sentence, despite being only used twice in the film, once by Pete and again by an older Louie imprisoned by the Japanese, summarizes the most prevalent theme of the film. This theme, which is perseverance, is also seen in many other ways in the film Unbroken, directed by Angelina Jolie. It can be seen in the child Louie as well as the older Olympic athlete Louie, but his perseverance is most noticeable and meaningful in Louie during his time in Japanese prisoner of war camps. Through her film, Jolie illustrates the theme of perseverance …show more content…
In two scenes of the movie, Watanabe, as he addresses the new prisoners, gets face to face with Louie and either says “Don’t look me in the eye”, after beating him for looking him in the eye, or asks “Why don’t you look me in the eye?” (Jolie, Unbroken; Coen108). Each time, Louie refused to look his captor in the eye, and instead either looked him in the face, but not the eye, or simply kept his head down (Jolie, Unbroken). However, the third time this idea of looking Watanabe in the eye comes up, the situation is much different. “Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me” Watanabe almost pleads this, during the scene where Louie lifts the beam defiantly over his head, before he loses all composure and begins to mercilessly beat Louie out of rage (Jolie, Unbroken). This idea of either looking The Bird in the eye or not is symbolic of the conflict between these two characters. The first two times this comes up, Louie refuses to look him in the eye, essentially admitting that Watanabe has defeated him. Yet, the third time this happens Louie does look Watanabe in the eye and in a defiant way. Louie looking in his tormentor in the eye is symbolic way of saying “you cannot defeat me”, and it is clear that Watanabe understands this as he repeatedly says “don’t look at me” and proceeds to beat and kick …show more content…
One characteristic he has that ties into the theme is determination. Louie shows this several times throughout his imprisonment. After he was first captured he was sent to an interrogation group before being sent to a camp (Jolie, Unbroken). After days, and possibly weeks, of being kept in a dark cell, he and Phil, the other survivor from the crash, are taken out to the center of camp and forced to strip (Jolie, Unbroken). Once they have removed their clothes – thankfully using camera angles that keep it PG-13 – they are told to kneel down as one soldier appears to be drawing his katana from its sheath (Jolie, Unbroken). Thinking that they are about to be beheaded, both men initially refuse to kneel, but Phil eventually does (Jolie, Unbroken). Louie, on the other hand refuses until a soldier hits him in the leg with the end of his gun, toppling Louie to his knees (Jolie, Unbroken). This simple act of defying what he was told to do also shows Louie’s determination to never give in, no matter what. Another way in which Louie shows determination is while he lifts the beam. Before the moment where Louie raises it high above his head, he struggled to hold it at the level of his head, clearly fatigued and weak (Jolie, Unbroken). However, once Louie begins to lift the beam higher, making the scene into a key point in the story, we can see in his face that he has the determination to