July 7, 2004

"If you know any politicians be sure to let them know that while they're sitting around their dinner tables with their families talking about how hard the war is on them, we're here under attack nearly 24 hours a day, dodging RPGs and fighting not just for a better Iraq, but just to stay alive"
............................................... Stuart Wilf - April 10, 2004

So ends the first truly great document of the Iraqi War, Mike Tucker's new film, Gunner Palace. It speaks to the war as Tucker wants it to… through the voices of one of the two groups of true combatants, the American soldiers.

Tucker spent two months with the 2/3 Field Artillery aka The Gunner Battalion, who are housed in and operate out of one of Uday Hussein's "weekend party palaces" in Baghdad. Gunfire on one side of the wall… a big blue swimming pool and an ice tea (liquor has recently been banned while swimming) on the other. And four months after the end of "major combat," the 2/3 faces a world not their own, day after day, week after week, through their year-long tours of duty.

The second thing you notice about Gunner Palace, after the quick leap into fighting and absurdity, is the beauty of the images. This looks like a studio feature, even though it is a legit documentary. It is, for all intents and purposes, a Robert Altman movie… except it is 100% real. The elements of all the great war satires is there. Altman's M*A*S*H, Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket and David O. Russell's Three Kings are certainly there. You can almost hear Radar O'Reilly making announcements, see Hawkeye teeing off and feel the self-doubt of men of healing forced to be part of the destruction. Three Kings' understanding that even in war zones, men are just men and behaviors are challenged by morality, even when morality seems in short supply. The second half of Full Metal Jacket, which focuses on urban warfare, turns out to be even closer to truth than we could have imagined. The resonance of the "go to new places and be the first kid on the block to get a confirmed kill" gag that was well worn even when Kubrick used it… and there is a dark power to hearing a soldier recycle it again, as though he was offering it too us for the very first time. The movie also carries some of the poetic feel (though not the actual poetic voiceovers or animal-driven allegory) of Malick's non-satiric The Thin Red Line.

But what is breathtaking about the movie is that in sequence after sequence, we get a view of life in wartime… little stories, well told… that we haven't seen before. Tucker doesn't linger on them. There is not the consistency of narrative that a Michael Moore offers in Fahrenheit 9/11. But then again, while Tucker seems to share the direction of Moore's politics, he has the courage of his conviction and in his effort, shows a real belief in the power of human beings to experience art for themselves and to come up with the right answer that will let them sleep at night. He understands that absurdity does not need a bright light flashed on and that the participants in the absurdity don't need dunce caps put on their heads in order for the audience and those participants to understand the absurdity.

It is, essentially, impossible in this day and age to make a film that looks at the reality of war that is pro-war. Surely, you can still make a jingoistic tale with inhuman "bad guys" in a war zone and great "good guys." But there is little good about war by the nature of the beast. And as I have written before, the notion that by not being dogmatic about attacking the media villains of a war, a person or a film becomes a supporter of that villainy is horrifying.

Gunner Palace is not politics. It is not an opinion about war. It is war. It is men and women living in war. It is a beating heart.

If there is a single documentary that you have to see about the war, it's an easy call… this is the one. There are others worth seeing, but this is yours.

I don't expect that Gunner Palace can be the kind of phenomenon that Fahrenheit 9/11 is. Tucker isn't willing, it seems, to pay the price of relentless self-promotion and spin that Michael Moore has paid to make his film a cultural event. But this movie must be seen in this election year before November if Americans are to have a real understanding of what our soldiers are experiencing in Iraq. And unlike Moore's polemic, Tucker's film really is about these soldiers. There are no crying parents, suffering their losses. That is too easy. That is the "a conservative is a liberal whose been mugged" argument… true, but obvious and not moral. Tucker forces you, as the viewer, to deal with your sense of loss… and equally, your inability to connect the name of one dead soldier, at times, to the parade of human beings who are part of this ongoing drama.

There are those who would see Gunner Palace take the traditional route of indie distribution through the festival circuit and hopefully, into theaters next year. But that is not good enough for this extraordinary experience. Someone at some studio must step up and bring the film out no later than September. There is definitely money to be made here. But far more importantly, it is a chance for Americans to be a lot more responsible in self-educating before we got to the polls in November. It is, for a change, a true public service.

To read more about the film, go to www.gunnerpalace.com.

READER OF THE DAY: JOHNNY PENNSYLVANIA writes: Well I haven't written in a while but after seeing Fahrenheit 9/11 tonight I feel compelled to voice some opinions. First off I won't pull any punches, I'm about as big of a Bush hater that you will find. Mr. Moore does not need to convince me of anything. I will vote for Kerry and encourage everyone I know to do the same. I thought the movie was fantastic but I'll be the first one to say that some of it is probably BS. What is angering me about the whole fiasco surrounding the movie is that some of Moore's critics are making statements that they must know to be ignorant just so they can spin this thing in an anti-Moore or Pro Bush manner.

First off, I saw this film on a Tuesday night, two weeks after it opened and the theater was full to capacity. If people think this film is not going to have at least some effect on the election they are kidding themselves. I live in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. The theater manager told me that pretty much every showing has had a large crowd with many being sold out. People are going to see this movie in big numbers and not just Democrats. In my screening there was a wide range of ethnic and age groups and there was applause throughout the film and loud cheering and clapping at the end. Whatever people in the press think of Moore or the film, it is reaching people in a big way. You can't tell me that you are not amazed that a documentary had made close to 60 million in several weeks and shows no signs of slowing down. This is a phenomenon and while the press screams and yells no one is listening.....they are all at the theaters.

My other problem is with all my fellow liberals and Democrats. I will admit that I don't care if this movie is true. It works and is very persuasive and any film, book, article etc. that makes people not vote for Bush is ok by me and should be embraced by all people who value America's basic rights and freedoms. At the end of the day Bush may not have done all the things Moore says he did but that does not change the fact that he and the people he has surrounded himself with have brought hate, division and a lack of compassion to this country.

Beyond all these issues in Iraq, Bush has proven that he has no room in his version of America for anyone that doesn't subscribe to his worldview. This includes minorities, the poor, gays and lesbians, non-Christians, artists (of all types), and pretty much any other group that deviates from the norm.

Ok I'm done....a special shout out though to Christopher Hitchens.....perhaps the biggest idiot blowhard of them all. A Bush apologist through and through.

I'm looking forward to putting all of this behind us and gong to see some great movies.

I'm excited for many upcoming films including The Life Aquatic, Collateral, and many more.

I hope we can push the discussion away from all this and back to the reason we all have come together in the first place.

E ME: Well…