The images and language of war
Intel Dump inteldump.powerblogs.com
By Phillip Carter
I had the chance to attend a screening of "Gunner Palace" last night at the USC Film School as a guest of filmmaker Michael Tucker. The movie was screened to roughly 400 students in film critic Leonard Maltin's class, and it was followed by a Q&A with Mr. Tucker and Army CPT John Powers, a member of 2-3 FA Battalion ("Gunners") who served 410 days in Iraq with the unit.
To call the movie "powerful" would be an oversimplification. It was that, but it was so much more too. "Gunner Palace" does what no book, no news article, and no blog can do — it makes the soldiers of 2-3 FA come alive for those experiencing the movie, in a way they could only do if they were in person. The movie shows little of the war as we see it on CNN or in DOD press conferences; you don't learn about grand strategy or tactics, or the push/pull of victory and defeat. Instead, what you hear are soldiers' stories — from the privates to the sergeants to the captains to battalion commander LTC Bill Rabena, a colleague of mine from Fort Hood.
For many of the USC students in the audience, this was a rare and important glimpse into the world of the American soldier. On average, I would guess most of the USC students in attendance had little exposure to the military, aside from possibly a friend from high school who went in or a buddy in Army ROTC at USC. I think that's wrong. The only difference between the students in that room and the young men and women in 2-3 FA were their circumstances; but for a little more college money from their parents, I imagine many of the Gunners might have been sitting in that auditorium too. And over the next several years, hundreds of thousands of combat vets will leave the military to rejoin our society, many as college students. We owe to them to understand their experience.
Fortunately, thanks to a rare appeal decision by the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board, "Gunner Palace" will be able to be seen by a much wider audience — including high school kids who might be thinking about a military career. The MPAA had previously given the movie an "R" rating due to heavy use of the "f-bomb". The MPAA's guidelines clearly state that movies using "f-ck" or "motherf--ker" should get the "R" rating. But Mr. Tucker successfully persuaded the board that this movie should be evaluated in its larger context — and that the MPAA should take into account that this is real, not fiction like Saving Private Ryan or other past war movies.
"This was not about publicity. It was about doing the right thing," said Michael Tucker, who directed the 85-minute documentary with his wife and producer Petra Epperlein. The film opens in Washington on March 4.
"What does a soldier say when a mortar round hits his compound?" Tucker said. "You don't say 'golly.'
"This is not about the number of times they use [a particular expletive], it's about soldiers," Tucker said. "The cultural landscape is shifting. You need to keep each film in context. There's nothing we should be ashamed of. These are important words. And this is how soldiers express themselves during war."
Iraq is a f--ked up place. It only makes sense that soldiers would use the word to describe it.
I'm a news junkie, and I have absorbed information from many sources about America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past three years. But "Gunner Palace" stands alone for conveying a sense of how it feels to ride down a highway in Baghdad in an open HMMWV, looking at every bag on the side of the road as a potential IED, never knowing which one might explode. It may be said that this movie is crude, profane, and even obscene at times — but so is war. "Gunner Palace" gives us a brutally honest view of this war from the perspective of our young men and women fighting it, and I can't recommend this movie highly enough. "Gunner Palace" opens on March 4, and will likely be showing at a theater near you. Check it out. |
