Gunner Palace (2004)

A documentary directed by Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein

Since I haven't posted anything for a long time, I am going to put up an article that was published in an abridged form in the San Francisco Observer.

Here it is in it's entirety:

A Filmmaker on the Frontline
By Alex Selim

When Michael Tucker arrived in Baghdad with a camera in May of 2003, he wanted capture the chaos and danger that American soldiers faced in the months after “major combat operations” had ceased in Iraq.

After spending two months in-country with the 2/3 Field Artillery, a.k.a. “The Gunners,” who were stationed in a bombed-out palace, he produced “Gunner Palace,” a documentary that will be released nationwide on March 3 [2005].

“I wanted to see how [the troops] were coping,” he said in a question and answer session at a screening in the Embarcadero Theater on January 27.

“Gunner Palace” portrays the war from the soldier’s perspective, following them through the banalities of war as they police the streets, teach their translator how to flirt and have a pool party in their home, a former pleasure palace built for Uday Hussein after the first Gulf War.

It also depicts the war’s intensity as they raid the houses of suspected insurgents and patrol the streets of Adhamiya, a hostile neighborhood of Baghdad where every plastic bag left on the street could contain an improvised explosive device.

Tucker, who was born in Hawaii but is now based in Germany, wanted an accurate representation of the war without the filter of the evening news or the inevitable Hollywood makeover but didn’t want to make an overt political statement.

“I’m suspicious about films influencing elections,” he said in response to a question about why he didn’t release the film before the American elections. “Since when are films made to change people’s minds? It’s for people to see what the war was like for them now.”

Like the World War II journalists Ernie Pyle or Bill Mauldin, Tucker, a former Army reservist, has an affinity for the enlisted men, letting them express their own complex feelings about the war, many through free-style raps and one through his guitar playing—both of which provide the film’s soundtrack.

The film also displays soldier’s dark humor—a coping mechanism in stressful situations—as they joke about the quality of their vehicle’s armor, months before Rumsfeld made excuses for it in Kuwait.

Though not an imbedded reporter, Tucker had total access to all operations and did not have to submit any of the 400 hours of footage that he filmed to a military censor because its release wouldn’t put soldiers’ lives in any immediate danger.

However, despite the surprising amount of cooperation that the U.S. military gave him, Tucker has found it difficult to find a distributor in Germany, where he now lives. Europeans feel that the film is too sympathetic to the soldiers, he says, citing a change in European attitude toward Americans after the Abu Ghraib scandal.

Though viewers coming to the film to see either a condemnation or a justification for the war in Iraq will both be disappointed, “Gunner Palace” offers a valuable record of what the men and women serving our country are experiencing right now.

“It’s not about for or against,” he explains, “It’s about talking about it and finding solutions.”


Capsule Review:

Director Michael Tucker offers a gritty, slice-of-life documentary about the American soldiers stationed in one of Uday Hussein’s pleasure palaces as they patrol a hostile neighborhood of Baghdad. With little voice over, Tucker allows the soldiers—who provide the film’s heavy metal and freestyle rap soundtrack—to express their own complex feelings about the war. The drawback of Tucker’s verité style, however, is that it lacks the necessary context to judge their actions. Nevertheless, it gives a much-needed human face to the war in Iraq.