Gunner Palace makes no bones about it. Opening with footage taken in Iraq on September 5, 2003, the film informs us with subtitles that what we're seeing is, according to Bush's declaration, "minor combat." To the U.S. soldiers, it makes little difference: They're still being shot at, and pinpointing the enemy is a pain and a half. Trained to fight a Russian advance during the Cold War, conditioned to become men who "live to blow stuff up," the soldiers now find themselves having to become a combination of social workers, peacekeepers, and politicians, in addition to being able to shoot back when shot at. Having dismantled a country, they now find themselves having to put it back together again, which strikes most of them as a tad incongruous.
Documentarian Michael Tucker made two trips to Baghdad, where he stayed with the troops in a bombed-out former residence of Uday Hussein's that had been converted into a barracks and renamed Gunner Palace. Complete with three putting greens, a fishing pond, large swimming pool, and the highest ceilings most of the military men have ever seen, it's described by one man as "an adult's paradise," although alcohol is banned, and sex is hinted at in only the mildest of ways (a coed dance at a pool party).
As we vicariously tag along with Tucker on midnight raids of suspected terrorist households, watch soldiers look after abandoned war orphans, see them train Iraqi civil-defense forces and hold up traffic while they check for explosive devices, you may wonder: Why don't we see this kind of thing on the news every night? Undoubtedly, military censorship comes into play, but probably more to the point is the prevailing notion that talking-head shoutfests stacked with pundits bring in the ratings, while actual field reporting costs more money.
Indeed, seeing biased nutcases on both sides of a given issue yell at each other is entertainment, but it'll be an interesting world if we have to start depending on movies for the real story. Donald Rumsfeld recently got into hot water when a soldier questioned him about having to armor vehicles with scrap metal; Tucker's footage proves that this was an issue two years ago, as one soldier demonstrates (much to the amusement of his colleagues) how the new panels he culled from a junk heap will keep the shrapnel in your body, rather than blowing clean through it.
In a notable sign of the times, virtually all the soldiers seem to enjoy freestyle rapping as a means of blowing off steam. One who favors the more traditional electric guitar instead is the film's most notable character, PFC Stuart Wilf, first introduced wearing a T-shirt that reads "My ass stinks like shit" and later seen experimenting with new flavors of macaroni and cheese, putting a mop on his head to impersonate a Sunni cleric, and bonding with an elderly Iraqi dubbed "Basil."
"We both want to fuck," explains Basil.
"Not each other!" clarifies Wilf, who will later suggest, half-jokingly, that his military service might qualify him to be president someday.
Wilf's an entertaining guy, so it's no surprise that Tucker's camera is drawn to him. It is a narrative weakness of the film, however, that none of the other characters comes through quite as well -- when a major death happens off-screen late in the game, we don't feel it, because the deceased hasn't been on camera much. Comrades tell Tucker that they know he had an affinity for the late soldier . . . so why so little background on him? Yes, every death counts, and it's unfair to judge individual casualties as though they were characters in a movie, but one can only consider the loss intellectually, if nothing visceral has been provided.
What may surprise many viewers -- especially those with no direct connection to the military -- is the degree to which the soldiers seem anti-war by the movie's end. Several go on record saying, more or less, that there is nothing that can be gained by taking any human life. Others merely wonder why they spent so much time destroying a country that they now have to rebuild, or inquire as to what exactly will define victory. Though specific left/right political sides aren't taken, Rumsfeld's name starts to evoke derision every time it comes up.
Doesn't seem like we have any good answers for them. But we could start by paying attention to their stories.
