MEDIA: Honor and lies
Eric Mink, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
03/16/2005 Except for people with loved ones in the military, says Sgt. Robert Beatty of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Armored Division, U.S. Army, the war in Iraq is "just entertainment" for most Americans. "A lot of people watched the war" - at first - "because it was almost 24/7 action footage. It's better than any movie. Better than any sitcom. This is real-life drama right here."
But since the end of "major combat operations," Beatty says, "nobody cares."
Beatty offers these observations in a new big-screen documentary called "Gunner Palace." There's a certain war-weary resignation in his voice, but if he feels any rancor about it, it doesn't show. Maybe he has more pressing demands on his energies, like doing his job and staying alive.
Beatty overstates the case, I think. It's not that we don't care; it's that we Americans at a safe remove from the bombs and bullets simply have the luxury of more immediate, more direct topics occupying our thoughts: our families, our own jobs, the Social Security debate, the week's specials at Target, "Supernanny."
We're definitely interested in the big picture, though: Is the American occupation making Iraq more secure and stable? Are Iraqis making progress toward being able to run the place on their own? Has the world become safer or more dangerous as a result? Is the cost - in lives and resources - worth the benefit? When will all our troops come home?
The big picture is of no concern to "Gunner Palace," which premieres March 25 at the Tivoli Theater in University City. This is grunt war, day to day, hour to hour: small-scale missions, tense patrols in vulnerable vehicles, asserting control, expressing regret for mistakes, clowning for the camera and each other, simultaneously spewing military jargon and uncompromising rap, splashing in the pool at a palace - Gunner Palace, they call it - that once belonged to Uday Hussein and always . . . staying alert.
Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein, the film's producers/directors, shoot for counterpoint: Fast-response hunts for bad guys in hyper-dangerous Sunni neighborhoods of Baghdad play against cheerful news reports on local military radio channels. The spin of assorted Pentagon mouthpieces plays against the unvarnished straight talk of the soldiers of the 2/3, as it's known. Firefights play against a trip to the Al Najat orphanage; Lt. Col. Bill Rabena gets a kid to play with a SpongeBob toy - "my hero," Rabena says - and Spc. James Moats, who hasn't seen the son born after he shipped out, tenderly cradles a tiny newborn in his fatigue-clad arms.
The film feels faithful and true, considering the inescapable compression of time, respectful and admiring but never naive. It surely helps that the filmmakers earned the soldiers' trust - and shared the danger - on three separate reporting trips. The first in the spring of 2003, the second in September of that year as the insurgency was muscling up and then again in February 2004, when they found harder men counting the remaining days of their tour.
For all the ways in which the soldiers of the 2/3 and filmmakers Tucker and Epperlein differ - most dramatically in how much danger they face and for how long - I was struck by the shared imperatives of their work: Be honest, be careful, do the job. ...
Eric Mink, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
