September 13, 2004
Iraq war film echoes Vietnam
Stephen Collinson, iafrica.com
The Iraq War was supposed to purge Vietnam from the US psyche for ever — but the first combat movie of the conflict is haunted by the heart rending films which charted America's humiliation in Southeast Asia.
'Gunner Palace', a documentary following a US infantry unit's year in occupied Baghdad, does not just refer to movies like 'Platoon', 'Apocalypse Now' and 'Full Metal Jacket' with its thrashing helicopters and electric guitars.
It reveals that the men fighting on after President George W. Bush declared 'Mission Accomplished' partly rationalise their combat experience through their exposure to movies that defined Vietnam for subsequent generations.
"At times it didn't feel like we were making a war documentary," said director Michael Tucker, as 'Gunner Palace' received its international premiere on Saturday at the Toronto International Film Festival.
"For the older guys it was like being in the film 'M*A*S*H.' For others it was 'Platoon' and 'Full Metal Jacket.' You could see it in the way they rode in their Humvees, one foot hanging out of the door."
Gunner Palace is a vast, once sumptuous and partially bombed out residence in Baghdad's Adhamiya district which once belonged to the family of Saddam Hussein. Tucker, who filmed the 2/3 Field Artillery, alias 'The Gunners', on visits to Baghdad last year, exposes the troops' surreal existence.
Inside the gates of Gunner Palace a US army officer lounges in a boudoir where Uday Hussein once romped with his conquests. A GI floats in a pool sipping Snapple fruit juice. Another hones his putting stroke on a golf green.
Hours earlier, those same soldiers, doing a bad job of hiding their terror, patrolled restive streets in thinly armoured Humvee jeeps, fearing rocket propelled grenades and IEDs (improvised explosive devices.)
'Gunner Palace', billed as the first combat movie of the Iraq war, drives home the old maxim that war is 90 percent boredom and 10 percent sheer terror.
"The banal is punctuated by the extreme," said Tucker.
The movie is not a "fly on the wall" documentary in which subjects profess to be unaware of the camera.
In fact, these subjects often lean into the lens, especially during improvised raps, in what appears to have become an essential way of blowing off steam.
"For y'all this is just a show, but we live in this movie," says one soldier, Richmond Shaw, to camera.
Some of the most poignant moments come as soldiers realise that, at least in their sector of Baghdad, they are not welcomed as liberators.
"They really don't like Americans back here," one soldier said to the camera.
Tucker's movie, which critics will complain barely contains a walk-on part for the people of Iraq, lacks the polemic of Michael Moore's anti-Bush 'Fahrenheit 9-11'.
But it undercuts statements claiming success for the Iraq occupation by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld relayed on American forces radio, in an echo of 'Good Morning Vietnam', with scenes of the precarious life of army grunts on patrol.
"To the soldiers it doesn't matter what the date is," Tucker said in a statement distributed at a press screening of his film.
"It's just 'another day in Baghdad' — another mark on the wall. A day where nothing happens is considered a good day."
During filming of 'Gunner Palace' six soldiers and two civilians connected to 2/3 Field Artillery were killed.
"'Gunner Palace' is not my movie. It is for the soldiers, their loved ones and their families. This is their movie, their experience."
AFP
