Gunner Palace

The first thing that struck me was that most of the American soldiers portrayed in this documentary apparently were small town guys, with little education and not as articulate as one would hope. They joined the military not out of patriotism, but for imagined adventure. It was the army or community college. I can sympathize with them and at the same time I can understand why the Iraqi people don't like them. They are crass, bullying and overbearing.But they also are willing to take tremendous risks and are sincere in their efforts to bring stability to a country thousands of miles from their own.

The entire Iraqi war seems to be a tragic, confusing mess and where it goes from here, no one really knows. The American soldiers, many just kids fresh out of high school, really want to put in their time and go home. But we know, even if they survive, they will never be the same again.

The first thing I will say about this documentary is that regardless of your thoughts on the current war in Iraq (or the current influx of anti-war film propaganda), this is a movie you should see. The material is presented in a non-partisan manner, allowing for the audience to draw its own conclusions.

The film follows soldiers who call Gunner Palace home. Gunner Palace is one of Saddam's son's abandoned, bombed out, former residences. These soldiers are shown doing their duty on a daily basis, whether that means checking a carelessly tossed garbage bag to see if it's a possible explosive, or doing routine intelligence follow-up by raiding suspected bomb-makers' houses.

Some of the scenes are hard to watch, though the viewer is spared from any gratuitous violence or gore. There are scenes of soldiers spending time with local orphans and introducing them to the finer points of American pop culture, shots of suspected terrorists being brought in for interrogation and footage of local Iraqis being trained by (American) soldiers to defend their own homeland.

Most scenes are impactful simply for their ordinariness—the boredom and repetition that come from keeping the peace and trying to rebuild a nation who, for the most part, doesn't want your help. While the work can be intense, it is also slow and steady, done by many who are just out of high school and outside of their hometown for the first time in their lives.

One soldier makes the remark that though he had idealized army life more as defending his own country on its own land, he is still proud to be a solider, doing the necessary work.

What you don't see on the television news is the soldier's perspective. We all talk about educating ourselves on what is happening in Iraq to our men and women in service; well, here is your chance.

Gunner Palace, a documentary by Michael Tucker that follows the U.S. Army's 2/3 Field Artillery for two months while the cope with occupation duty in Iraq. The title is a conflation of the nickname of the unit, The Gunners, and the fact that they have set up shop in a bombed out palace of Uday Hussein.

I can't find it on the web, but I read a bio that the filmmaker served in the mid to late 80s, roughly the same time I was in the Army. I've latched onto the fact (and I hope it is true) because it explains the tone of the film. When I walked out, I told Jim, who had seen it with me, that this guy wanted to make an anti-war movie, but couldn't quite bring himself to do it.

What we see is as much cinema verities we are likely to get in this politically radioactive conflict. Tucker lets the young troops pretty much be young troops for the camera. They all to some extent (and one in particular a great deal) mug for the camera and utter their doubts, concerns and reveal their conflicts. There don't appear to be many people above the age of thirty, though I find it hard to believe that an entire battalion would be so comprised.

We also see soldier show great restraint in difficult situations. In one scene, a drugged out, dirty and bedraggled street urchin is delivered to a place where he will hopefully find some sort of care. The GIs are careful, almost solicitous of the child, demonstrating a great deal of tenderness when considered in context of the fact that they are in a city where they are compelled to carry heavy weapons and wear body armor.

There is a lot of very scraggly video of nighttime raids. Bear in mind that field artillerymen are trained to shoot high-explosives over the horizon and wreck stuff, not tool around a foreign capital like cops. Again, these young men show tremendous restraint as they round up people suspected of manufacturing roadside bombs and lobbing mortars at their temporary home.

You feel a sense of futility at times as you watch, but a 60 day snapshot of a difficult mission is going to do that. Some of the soldiers make statements that could be found on you garden variety Bush = Hitler website, and it broke my heart. What they are doing is noble and necessary given the condition of the world, though a 20 year old would be hard pressed to put it into proper context. It is a shame for anyone over there doing their best to not feel their due honor.

If you rabidly feel one should speak-no-evil of the war while we are at war, Gunner Palace will irk you or worse. I found it to be sufficiently truthful and sincere to be a must-see. Pro-war and anti-war folk will find inspiration, which may mean it was done just about right.

Remarkable movie.

It really makes you think and want to talk about your own perspectives on the war.

Coming from Seattle, it was particularly moving to hear the director talk about the death of Ben Colgan. He was a local boy and well loved.

This is the most honest representation of Iraq I've seen yet. It must be good since so many other directors are using a similar format in upcoming documentaries. To learn more about the making of the movie, check out the Apple computers website, and Gunner Palace website. I would encourage you to read Michael's diary about the making of the movie, his emails home to his wife and daughter, and the emails from the troops and their families. They are moving.

Great movie, makes you think.

This documentary is well worth seeing for one reason -- more than anything I've seen about the Iraq war, it gives the American soldier's point of view on fighting in Iraq. The news-bites and short glimpses of the war given the American public on television are filtered down so much by the time they get to your screen that you feel like you've seen nothing and gained no insight about what is really going on there. If you have a family member or friend fighting over there, you MUST see this film to better appreciate their perspective.

What this film does not do, however, is provide any sort of an Iraqi perspective on the fighting. Granted, there are interviews with Iraqi informants employed by the American military and and several shots of suspected insurgents being detained, but there is no attempt to show the average Iraqi's point of view about the conflict. In other words, this documentary is a very subjective and one-sided perspective, but it is still very worthwhile.

I went to see it with a friend whose brother is currently fighting over there, and she said it was remarkable how well it captured the soldiers' off-time activities and philosophies about the fighting. Her brother and his buddies had made some video footage of their own and it was very similar in that regard. What the documentary doesn't show, and what her brother's video did show, was the dismembered bodies, the hellish and disorienting firefights, and the horrified, screaming civilians. One should not go into a screening of this film believing that they will experience the war or see what it's really like. One has to be there to understand.