Gunner Palace Shows Surreal Side of Iraq War
Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The funniest moment of the Iraq war documentary "Gunner Palace" -- at least to the people who are in it -- just may be when a U.S. Army artilleryman shows off his Humvee's scrap-metal armor.
"This armor was made in Iraq. It's high-quality metal," the gunner says, looking into the camera's lens through tinted glasses. "And it will probably slow down the shrapnel so that it stays in your body instead of going straight through."
With an affectionate tap on the vehicle's roof, he turns to a group of fellow soldiers, who are literally rolling on the ground in helpless laughter. This is plainly the best joke they've heard in a long time.
Well, maybe you had to be there.
"Humor is really, really important to these soldiers," said filmmaker Michael Tucker, whose aim was to show the life of average U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The scene generally gets a big laugh when the movie is shown to military audiences. "I think the thing that surprised me and surprises the audiences is how funny these guys are."
There they are, dancing to a Motown tune in bathing suits at the "Gunnerpalooza 4" pool party, drinking bottled lemonade instead of beer. At other times, the film shows them playing guitar riffs or computer games or performing rap lyrics about the war with rhythm beaten on the hood of a Humvee.
Still, "Gunner Palace" is no comedy.
Shot in two month-long stints in Baghdad after the U.S.-designated end of major combat in 2003, it focuses on the soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment -- known as the "Gunners" -- who live in a half-wrecked palace that once belonged to Saddam Hussein's son Uday.
The grand staircase is rubble-strewn, banister-less and marginally safe, but the putting green and swimming pool are in working order and put to good use by soldiers looking for a little rest and relaxation in the surreal world of Iraq.
DEAD DOG BOMB
"I think Mike caught the contrast of the palace, an ornate building half-destroyed," said retired Capt. John Powers, who was 24 when he first went to Iraq and stayed at Gunner Palace. "We have swimming pools and putting greens but that swimming pool was a mortar target ... There's a guy with a mortar tube dropping them over the wall."
In a jittery, cinema-verite style, the film shows the Gunners on patrol, in a Baghdad firefight and on a mission to the Baghdad airport, where they score some much-coveted fast-food burgers. It also shows a raid on a nearby compound where weapons are said to be cached, and a stop at an orphanage, where a U.S. soldier cradles an Iraqi infant as he talks about his own child.
The U.S. military allowed Tucker to live with the troops while he filmed, and the documentary treats the soldiers with respect. But unlike Michael Moore's controversial "Fahrenheit 9/11," "Gunner Palace" does not push any particular viewpoint on the Iraq war, and Tucker said his goal was to document the soldiers' world.
Tucker said he was surprised that civilian viewers detect little violence in the film, which is rated PG-13, after a successful appeal of an R rating. The more restrictive rating would have prevented those under 17 from seeing the film unless accompanied by a parent or guardian.
"They say, 'Well, there's no violence in this movie,"' Tucker said. "And soldiers watch it and they're like, 'Violence is all around you. Don't you see it? Don't you hear it?' ... It's like you're in this really weird soup and it's all around you and the audience is expecting 'Black Hawk Down'."
But Tucker and Powers said Iraq bears little resemblance to events that inspired the 2001 feature film recounting a 1993 U.S. mission where Army rangers were dropped by Black Hawk helicopter into Somalia.
Powers' biggest fear was the makeshift bombs, known as IEDs, that are common in Baghdad.
"IEDs were probably the scariest thing," he said. "They're in garbage bags in a city that's unfortunately full of garbage because there's no garbage pickup. At one point they found an IED stuffed inside a dead dog. You see a dead dog on the side of the road, you don't think bomb."
Powers and Tucker toured the United States for screenings of the film in February before its scheduled March 4 public release in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters
