07 April 2010 (TV Review)

Words by: Mark Linehan

No doubt you will have walked past the billboards, witnessed the adverts on our screens, and sat with your family around the crackling wireless as Sky set about bombarding us with their declaration of war: "Don't miss the televison event of the year!"

On Easter Monday, the enemy engaged and Sky Movies Premiere unleashed the first volley of a series of planned attacks, with two opening episodes of the blockbuster series The Pacific. Based on the lives of troops in America’s 1st Marine Division stationed in the Far East during the Second World War, it interweaves the stories of three marines. These lead characters, PFC Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale), Eugene B. Sledge (Joe Mazzello) and Sgt. John Bassilone (Jon Seda) featured in the battles and wrote their memoirs, upon which, the series is based. It was produced by the same team that brought us Band of Brothers; Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Gary Goetzman. And, as well as HBO, Seven Network Australia became involved as the ten month shoot was located in Queensland and Victoria. It is thought to be the most expensive series ever made Down Under, at a cost in excess of $150 million, which means that creating war is nearly as expensive as waging it for real.

After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour in 1941, which resulted in 2,000 US troops dead, America declared war. This sets the scene for our main characters as they hear the news and rush to enlist (it is believed that the Marine Corps' numbers tripled in six months) and wage war on the Japanese. Real news footage from the time is coupled with a Tom Hanks voiceover and juxtaposed with a talking head of an ex- Marine, a veteran of the battles about to unfold. This is used in the opening episodes, and to good effect, reminding the viewer that they are not watching some simple blood and guts shoot ‘em up, but that these events actually took place. The talking head device is one that featured in Band of Brothers and adds a weight and factual enamel to the story. It is a powerful technique missing from a lot of war movies, Saving Private Ryan included. The documentary style lends the series more purpose than mere entertainment. And, this is what was missing in some previous American forays into the 'war' genre. Gung-ho gun fantasies like Sands of Iwo Jima, where jingoistic John Wayne led a troop of bulletproof warriors to engage the "yella belly nips," served merely to assuage any American fears of vulnerability in combat and functioned as thinly disguised recuitment videos for their armed forces.

However, the landscape of the war movie has changed and after the slew of films that critiqued the psychological damage of war; The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, and the stupidity of it; M*A*S*H and Catch 22, Spielberg and Hanks have developed a kind of ‘post Private Ryan’ attitude to conflict. Even in the first episode of The Pacific we get to see the character Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale) rummage through the backpack of a fallen Japanese soldier. He surveys the photo of a loved one, flicks through a book/diary, and holds a geisha doll, probably given to the dead man by his child. This reflective scene offers the enemy soldier to be more than just a target, or a "duck shoot" as one Marine describes it. As in Band of Brothers, it trys to offer up a less jingistic approach to American flag waving propaganda. The beauty of a ten part mini-series, as in most HBO productions is the gradual character development and slowly building tension.

This progressive intensity, featuring scenes where we see soldiers dealing with the boredom of waiting and sitting around wondering when the enemy will attack and counter balanced with scenes of absolute carnage and ferocity. The graphic violence is there, with grenades blowing people apart, limbs strewn across beaches, bullets flying in and out of legs, heads and arms, but you would not have a true reflection of the horror without these things. Even the actors on set were subjected to a gruelling schedule. In a two week boot camp led by veterans of Vietnam, and the Pacific Wars, one of the cast broke his collerbone, another two of his ribs, but as described by Joe Mazzelo who plays Eugene Sledge one nearly lost his life, “My fellow actor Rami Malek (who plays Merriell 'Snafu' Shelton) almost died when we shot episode six - we ran, couldn’t stop ourselves and slid down a hill. He almost impaled himself on one of the jagged pieces of metal at the bottom. We were very prepared, but it was a dangerous shoot. What Pacific does, like 'Band' before it is for us to see, hear and in some ways feel what it was like for those troops when they first arrived and then as the series continues, what it was that they had to do to survive.

With America now involved in two hugely socially divisive wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan it will be unclear whether they will be able to make a series like this in fifty years time. The Wire creator David Simon attempted it with Genertion Kill, but that featured so many reprehensible characters it was difficult to be inspired by their 'heroics'. Kathryn Bigelow, won huge acclaim and an Oscar for her portrayal of the forgotten everyday heroics/addiction of some troops. But you are still left feeling that they shouldn't even be there in the first place. They now have no clearly definable enemy, so when searching for unquestionable moral valour, WWII is always the old reliable. Cynically it could be seen as army recruitment, but, with war comes great drama, action and characters, and The Pacific tries its best to play down the gloryfying. In the final sombre scene of part two, as the Marines sit around a ship table on their return home a cook informs them, "You guys are on the front of every newspaper. You’re heroes back home." They don’t answer, and just look down mournfully not wanting to be reminded of what they just witnessed.

The Pacific is on Sky Movies Premiere every Monday, 9pm.
 

Mark Linehan

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