The Atlantic Was Romantic but the Pacific is Terrific

What is it with me and war movies these days? Perhaps I’m a little late to see the connection between HBO’s The Pacific and The Hurt Locker, but I can’t stop trying to understand what I will never full comprehend.

While movies about the Iraq War are tanking in theaters (Green Zone had a dismal opening weekend, and though it won two Oscars, The Hurt Locker did poorly at the box office) audiences and critics seem at least to want to like HBO’s The Pacific - and some genuinely do. Though the mini-series hinges all too often on our collective, cookie-cutter conception of the great generation and the last good war (wholesome, working class Italian boys going to church and sitting down to a lively family dinner before being shipped off, boys just a hair over 18 trying to look cool and then freaking in the face of death) it seems to tap into a authenticity missing from the big blockbuster productions.  Though Hurt Locker entertained as a well-crafted piece of cinema with compelling characters, excellent direction and a solid script, something about the premise lacked authenticity: is this really what it’s like over there? I kept wondering what the bomb squad boys who just came back – maybe with their hearing damaged or without their legs – would  have to say about it.

Perhaps it was the palpable fear, or the cheek-to-jowl comraderie of the fresh-faced recruits, but the Pacific captured me on the first episode (I’ve only seen one so far). Yes, it felt like a Hollywood production, but it also felt like a real story.I don’t think its simply a matter of production. Movies about Iraq simply won’t resonate with an audience until its recorded in the history books. Here’s why:

1) You can’t create a narrative arc for a story that hasn’t finished yet. There is something intrinsically unsatisfying about a movie that depicts a quagmire you and your country are currently stuck in. Films should tell us something about the world, and if they’re about historical events, what it means in the grand scheme of things, not leave us hanging at an unwritten last chapter.

2) Atrocities of the past are whitewashed by time, while the horrors of today are freshly coated with pain and suffering. It is easy to glamourize yesterday’s wars and turn hell-on-earth hardships into Abraham Lincoln struggle-made-me-stronger stories. A nostalgic fog obscures the truth of wars over a half century away. We like to know that our boys died for a reason and justice was on our side. Yet even if one supports the troops but not the war (a strange contradiction I have yet to reconcile within myself) there’s no sense cohesion about Iraq – yet. Time tampers with our vision of the past. Who knows if WWII was a “good” war? The present always falls short of an idealized past.

3) Media coverage and Hollywood depiction don’t mix. We’ve moved onto healthcare and Afghanistan, Tiger Woods and Jessee James.

The truth is, we don’t want the truth. We want heroes that remind us of wars that were simpler and more just, handsome men in uniform, and a story where we know we will come out on top, because then at, least, we can feel that we did the right thing, and justice was served.  Maybe when my grandchildren watch movies about Iraq, they’ll find them satisfying. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to, at least until its over.