Instead of finding action heroes, doc finds brave, calendar date-crossing folks.
Providing a voice to the unfortunate batch of soldiers who’ve had to sacrifice a lot more than BBQ weekends among family and friends, first-time directors Michael Tucker and his wife Petra Epperlein’s docu video-diary explores the intimate, highly stressful conditions that take place behind the Donald Rumsfeld veil. Straying completely away from the G.I Joe image, Gunner Palace is a voice-piece for those who’ve had the misfortune of signing up for a war which to dozens of folks in green makes very little sense.
Limiting the discussion to what the camera captures – this cinema verite testimonial might be more surprising in showing what the folks do during their down time and not their gun-trigger ready moments. Uptight situations are juxtaposed with laid back ones. Guitar playing and poolside BBQ’s at a royal palace/mini Disneyland are paralleled with day missions and bullets that fill the air. Clearly meant as a documentary that doesn’t question the politics of the invasion, the filmmakers provide a colorful, sometimes freestyle view of the sort of psychological conditions that these aptly-trained, high-schooled troops of the 2/3 Field Artillery have found themselves in.
The unfortunate filmmaker’s accompanied narration litters the piece with less than provocative thoughts, and since the doc concentrates on many accounts rather than singling out a couple of individuals – viewers won’t necessarily feel the same sense the loss that some of the other soldiers and filmmakers (who spent the better part of an entire year with) have felt. Perhaps, this is an evocative piece for the millions who are somehow related to these screen stories and it certainly brings on th disturbing thought that this is a story that has no end, but with very little new insight shed, Gunner Palace makes for a far less interesting documentary than those which the masters at PBS’s Frontline regularly churn out.
