Dir. David Ayer
This scene in question occurs about an hour into the film. Before this, the film has focused on battles involving War Daddy (Brad Pitt), his crew, and his squadron, against the, overwhelmingly, Nazis of Germany (as opposed to the German army); as well as the introduction of Norman (Logan Lerman) to war, particularly this brutal time of World War 2. But then, in a captured town, we get the heart of the film. After clearing the town with both tank shells, and gunning down a SS leader, War Daddy and Norman search a house, ensuring no soldiers remain. War Daddy enters, finds a German woman, Irma (Anamaria Marcina), and acts aggressively towards her. He, a German speaker, commands her to tell him where the hidden person is. He intuitively knows someone is hiding, and he's right, it's Emma (Alicia von Rittberg) under the floorboards. He orders Norman to shut and lock the door. Norman reluctantly does so.
There is an air of tension that lasts a while. The scene is silent, except for War Daddy asking for some hot water. He kicks a chair, a violent action, so that he can sit down. There is a strong sense that War Daddy could, and indeed might, force himself upon the women, and rape them. Anyone who knows World War 2 history knows that American soldiers regularly slept with German women. At the start of the film, Coon-Ass (Jon Bernthal) tells Norman, as they pass a German women in the muddy deadlands "She'd have fucked you for a chocolate bar". It's crass, but there is an air of both truth and lie.
However, what happens in the scene, is that Irma returns, War Daddy reaches into his bag, her eyes darting to what he will reveal. It turns out to be a box of eggs. Boom, tension gone. We, as are the women, are relieved. It says a lot more though. Eggs are fragile, yet War Daddy has manged to bring these precious items with him through concussive, explosive tank battles, shoot-outs, and among poor food rations. He clearly has wanted these eggs cooked eventually, and now, in the bastion of civilization that is this house, his moment has arrived. It contrasts not only with the environment, but with War Daddy's previous character, as we saw earlier in the scene with the tension of sexual assault , but also with previous events of the film, where he forces Norman to shoot a captured soldier, and rubs his fresh-face in the brutality of war. This isn't wholly true, we the audience know that War Daddy is effected, as we've seen twice so far that when he goes for a cigarette alone, he breaks down. Interestingly, one of these times imprisoned SS soldiers witness this, just as the German women do now.
Norman goes to the piano in the room, as Irma sets the table. Sets the table, in a war-torn town. Norman begins to play a tune, which deeply effects Emma, as this beautiful melody is joined by her singing, in German. This beauty transcends nationality and language, as they all bond over music. Norman, young man that he is, falls for Emma.
Here, we reach the questionable aspect of this scene, one that critics such as Mark Kermode find invalidates the scene. War Daddy orders Norman to take Emma into the bedroom or he'll do so himself. Emma understands despite the language, takes Norman's hand, and leads him to the bedroom. War Daddy believes that as they're both young, they should enjoy themselves, which he tells Irma. Norman and Emma connect quite beautifully, as he reads her palm, telling her of a particular line that means she will have one great love. Again, despite language, Norman's tenderness wins her over, and she kisses him willingly. Now, how willing is this really? Personally, I think their sleeping together is fine. However, I completely understand how some could still consider this rape, as Irma, if she doesn't sleep with Norman would suffer consequences. In the context of American soldiers invading the country, it's appreciated that they will try and sleep with the German women. It's lucky for Irma that her 'rapist' is Norman, who is tender, and doesn't want to commit violence.
Anyway, they sleep together, and return for a meal. The eggs begin to be eaten, at last. Unfortunately, this moment doesn't last long. The crew of the Fury, War Daddy's tank, our main characters enter, drunk. They ruin this tender moment in the hell that is war. They sit at the table, and Coon-Ass asks where his food is, where his eggs are. The crew make fun of Norman for 'claiming' Emma before any of them. (I'm skipping though this as the scene is nearly 20 mins long). He eats the little food that is left, then, clearly annoyed at the treatment of the German women as, well, women. He hands Emma her plate, but not before grabbing her egg and licking it. Emma is trembling for this aggressor, even as he enters the scene, and her she begins to sob. War Daddy, calm, yet with an underlying anger, reaches for her plate, and swaps it with his. It's a solid moment, one that really shows War Daddy respects these women, and is deeply sorry for how brash his brotherly crew are being.
The eggs that he carried with him, remnants of a more civilized time, are spoiled by Coon-Ass. The tenderness both Norman and War Daddy, and both Irma and Emma enjoyed for an hour at most, is gone. The war has returned, not by machine, but by man. These men, the crew of the Fury that have been deeply ruined in their own war by the war, are now the people that ruin the peace. If we want to get really symbolic, and frankly this is definitely reading too much into it, eggs are a symbol of new life. War Daddy protected these items for this moment, where he believed this was the time to begin the post-war peace (symbolically), and it is unfortunately not true. Even in Germany itself, in 1945 a month before the end of the European War, the battle, the war, isn't over. The spoiling of the eggs both shows that war is still present, and shouldn't be ignored, but also that this symbolic peace will be tainted by the past, by the psychologically damaged soldiers of the current war.
I'll ignore the rest of the dinner-table conversation, as the eggs are not prominent. But what is important is that after this 20 minute or so sequence of peace and disturbed peace, we get a short briefing scene of the tanks' future movements, and then the house, again, this bastion of peace in war-time, it shelled. Distraught, Norman, who clearly was infatuated with Emma, runs to the rubble, and we are shown Emma, covered in rubble, dead. The entire build-up of this scene is payed off in death, form war. The spoiling of the eggs by Coon-Ass is synonymous with the destruction of the house by shelling. War cannot be ignored, or avoided, until it is truly over, and even then the influence of this trauma continues in the soldiers. The influence is felt in the robbing of potential love between Norman and Emma, a love that only began due to war, and is ended by war.
It's unfortunate that the remainder of the film decides to devolve into a tank vs. SS squadron battle as it's in this house-bound sequence that we get the heart of the film, and the majority of it's commentary on war as a whole. Fury is nowhere near a perfect film, but it's always amazed me how despite all the films on World War 2, and War in general, we still can have different interpretations and commentaries from different authors and directors (David Ayer here acting as both) that are unique, and expressed in unique ways. Fury is well-worth seeing for the house sequence alone, give it a watch, and see what you think.
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