Film "Gunner Palace" "uncensored look at America’s young soldiers in Iraq

[G_j]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/apr2005/gunn-a23.shtml

An uncensored look at America’s young soldiers in Iraq
Gunner Palace, directed by Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein

By Joanne Laurier
23 April 2005

Four months after President Bush declared an end to “major combat operations” in Iraq, in May 2003, American filmmaker Michael Tucker began filming a remarkable documentary about the members of the US Army’s 2nd Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment. For two months, in the fall and winter of 2003-2004, Tucker was unofficially “embedded” with the Gunners, comprising 400 troops billeted in one of the late Uday Hussein’s palaces in Baghdad. Tucker and his German-born wife, Petra Epperlein, edited 100 hours of footage to craft the 85-minute documentary.

The movie’s tag line reads: “Some war stories will never make the nightly news,” clearly referring to the US media’s self-censorship, misinformation and Pentagon-generated propaganda that passes for coverage of the Iraqi war. One of the most suppressed aspects of the coverage—which Tucker attempts to address—is the plight of the American military rank-and-file.

A newscast airing Donald Rumsfeld’s comments that “Baghdad is bustling with commerce” opens the film, juxtaposed against a very different visual reality in Adhamiya—a largely Sunni section of northern Baghdad. One soldier sarcastically calls what American troops are engaged in as “minor combat,” mocking Bush’s overblown May statement. Homemade bombs and ambushes are endemic.

Gunner Palace’s narration explains that many members of the troop come from small towns “that read like an atlas of forgotten America.” It is clear in the course of the film that the soldiers are primarily young “economic conscripts” caught up in a war they don’t understand and for which they are not prepared.

..more..

edit to add the film's website: www.gunnerpalace.com

[PardonMe]

1. I saw this book.

It looks to be excellent.

[Kerrytravelers]

2. HAve you seen the film? I"m not paying to watch of freeper cirlce jerk

but if it tells the true story of what is going on over there, I'd possibly be interested.

[stray cat]

3. Supposedly it doesn't make any side absolutely happy

so it sounds pretty nonpartisan to me.

[EarlG]

5. I've seen it

It's worth seeing. We advertised it on the DU home page for a little while when it opened.

It's about as non-partisan as it gets, the majority of it is the soldiers telling their stories in their own words, there's not much narration. It certainly gives a more truthful picture of what's going on over there than you'll get by watching the news.

[G_j]

6. thanks for the "review"

That is helpful. It does sound worth watching.

[western mass]

4. Rather than "uncensored", I'd say "unedited"... (thumbs down)

I didn't sense anything particularly objectionable about the filmmaker's politics (he seemed to be at pains to play it middle-of-the-road). His talents as a documentary maker, on the other hand, are pretty questionable if Gunner Palace is any indication.

Deadly BORING. Poorly edited, lack of a coherent narrative. The footage is mostly uninteresting, with lots of filler (ie a marine riffing on his guitar interminably). Events that get at the intensity and (dare I say) drama of the situation mostly happen off-screen, recounted second-hand while you watch footage of soldiers standing around or riding in trucks. All of this with a soundtrack of rock & rap blaring in the background--shades of a wannabe Apocalypse Now Iraq (it seems like an annoying affectation after a while).

I've seen decent reviews of this. I can only guess that it's because the media blackout has been so complete that people are dying for any scrap of footage from Iraq. The mundane stuff in this film is the sort of thing we SHOULD see in clips on the evening news. Strung together, it didn't make for a particularly enlightening or interesting documentary, sad to say.

[walldude]

7. I'm in the middle on this one

Which I guess means the movie was pretty non-partisan. I agree with some of Western Mass's post, the film was pretty boring, but I think that can be attributed to what footage he was allowed to get out of Iraq. It was nice to see some of what actually is going on there, but there sure seems to be alot missing. What the movie looked like to me was "Cops Uncensored in Iraq". Guys crusing around Iraqi cities busting down doors and talking smack. You see a couple limited firefights but thats about it. There is also an obvious lack of the horrors of war. One of the guys the movie follows around dies, but you only hear about it in a voiceover. It's kind of a mass market approach to documentary filmmaking.

[Kerrytravelers]

8. Thanks to everyone for their honest opinions of the film. Much appreciated