September 08, 2004
Gunner Palace
Sean Farnell for TIFF
"How many people can say they're combat veterans? I'm nineteen years old and I fought in a war."
PFC Michael Commisso
The United States Army's 2/3 Field Artillery unit - a.k.a. the Gunner Battalion - is based in the late Uday Hussein's Al Azimiya Palace in Adhamiya, the most volatile area of Baghdad. The 2/3's commander sleeps in Hussein's massive circular bed; soldiers sip Snapple in his pool; they practise on his putting greens. It is, the commander jokes, an "adult paradise."
Gunner Palace is the first movie about the most recent invasion of Iraq. One remarkable feature of this fascinating documentary is the way other war movies resonate within it - Three Kings, a suite of Vietnam films (Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, Apocalypse Now) and even M*A*S*H are evoked, sometimes in subtle ways, other times more insistently. "For y'all this is just a show, but we live in this movie," raps one soldier. This is another crucial aspect of Gunner Palace: the opportunity it creates to hear the voices of the men and women serving in this war and to witness the daily danger and drudgery they must endure. There's been much rhetoric and propaganda, but have we truly heard directly from those at the service of the current American regime?
We have now. Filmmaker Michael Tucker travelled to Iraq four times between June 2003 and February 2004. An army brat himself (his father left for Vietnam on his first birthday), Tucker fell in easily with the Gunners, sidestepping the media managers that have so distanced us from these soldiers and their stories.
Pop culture pervades the experience, as it tends to in war movies: Tucker follows teams named Tombraiders and Roughriders on patrols as, "Cops"-like, they bust down doors to apprehend blacklisted Iraqi civilians. Electric guitars and freestyle rap provide a self-generated soundtrack, the soldiers appearing at their most expressive through riffs and rhymes. Even though Iraqis are mostly on the margins here, the collision of cultures provides some of the most compelling and complex moments in Gunner Palace.
- Sean Farnel
