Embedded with a Field Artillery unit in Baghdad for two months in 2003, documentary filmmakers Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein collected first-hand footage of the lives of American soldiers. The result is “Gunner Palace,” a film that promises to give an unvarnished look at the front lines but does little to further the discussion on the war.
Stationed at one of Uday Hussein’s bombed-out pleasure palaces, the 2/3 Field Artillery has seen its role transformed. From soldiers whose job was to “blow stuff up,” the men and women now patrol the streets of a hostile city. They are policemen in an occupied territory, picking up vagrant youths and introducing Iraqi kids to SpongeBob Squarepants. From their poorly armored Humvees, they’re always on the lookout for snipers and suspicious bags of trash that might conceal improvised bombs.
When not out on missions, they relax in Uday’s swimming pool, fish in his ponds, golf on his putting greens, or kill time writing slam poetry and making music. The paradoxes of modern warfare--from the aqua blue water in Uday’s pool to the horrific nighttime raids of Iraqi homes--are compelling but familiar ever since Larry Fishburne went waterskiing in “Apocalypse Now.”
Taking their cue from Coppola, the soldiers themselves play “The Ride of the Valkyres” when they go on raids. Again and again, Tucker shows the young Americans tearing down doors and busting into family residences, hunting for presumed insurgents and hidden weapons. With their high-tech gear, the soldiers resemble nothing so much as the storm troopers in the “Star Wars” movies, futuristic warriors who enforce the imperial will, hauling off men to Abu Ghraib and leaving behind crying wives and children.
By focusing exclusively on the American’s point of view, the filmmakers shortchange their audience. The film ignores or glosses over the complex realities of occupied Iraq; there is no mention of independent contractors, kidnappings, Shiites, Kurds, or Sunnis. Instead, Tucker and Epperlein accept the soldiers' limited horizon. It's sad to say, but the culture- and shell-shocked 19-year-olds in uniform don't have any profound insights, ultimately shrugging off any doubts with a "shit happens" philosophy and justifying their actions with the oldest excuse in the book: “I’m just following orders.”
“Unlike a movie, war has no end,” the filmmakers solemnly intone. Unfortunately, that’s the unsatisfactory depth of analysis to be found in "Gunner Palace." Neither the soldiers nor the movie are interested in the politics back home that got them into this situation, or the local politics that define it. As much as it may seem that way from the soldiers' vantage point, war is not like the weather; it doesn’t come and go like the sand storms that hit Uday's Palace, but is the result of specific, politically motivated decisions. To ignore them means to live and die at their whim.
