The Pacific (HBO Miniseries) [Blu-ray] Best Review
When I talked to a 1st and 4th Marine Division vet, the reason combat accounts are often vague became very clear to me: "At Saipan, we did a FOUR day assault, which was... the most..." - as he trailed off, I could see his mind discarding a succession of words, and his eyes welled with tears as each attempt took him further back to places he didn't want to go - "... INTENSE... experience". His relief at finally finding that single word - finally free to pull away from the nightmares and resume his story - communicated volumes more to me than any mere adjective.
Very few units (never mind individuals) survived the entire Pacific war intact, and those who did can rarely afford to tell us much about it. Thus, in lieu of a single narrative, the producers of "The Pacific" instead pieced together three stories which, taken together, span the experience of the 1st Marine Division throughout World War Two. Leckie and Basilone's accounts cover Guadalcanal, Gloucester and leave in Australia while Sledge's account describes Peleliu and Okinawa, with flashes from Basilone describing life stateside and the landing at Iwo Jima.
Several negative early reviews suggest to me that understanding the brilliance of this miniseries requires patience. Indeed, upon a first viewing, "The Pacific" may appear muddled and disjointed as it forcibly juxtaposes three very different story lines at contradictory moments of dramatic inertia. First time viewers may believe the characters to be woefully underdeveloped, as most scenes appear to read as, "Some random guy in a helmet tells us this and that". These "guys in a helmet" are not only hard to identify in their combat gear, but also answer to a bewildering variety of names, nicknames, ranks and even rank slang. However, as those who've come to admire the once nameless likes of Hoobler and Shifty from "Band of Brothers" can attest, none of these helmeted figures are as anonymous as they seem, and as viewers go back and review these once random snippets they will discover a wonderfully rich tapestry of personalities that teaches us how the barbarism of war affected these people and their relationships to each other.
No one demonstrates this growth better than Joe Mazzello ("Timmmy" from Jurassic Park), who's slight frame evolves Eugene Sledge from a kindly, quiet kid to a bitterly angry vet. James B. Dale may lack the confrontational "bad boy" edge that Robert Leckie's character seems to call for, but his powerful innate decency radiates a layered and humane interpretation that's endlessly watchable. The inner life of John Basilone is not as well known, leaving actor Jon Seda little choice but to play him as a somewhat generic hero for fear of disrespecting a Medal of Honor winner by ascribing motivations that may appear less than courageous. However, Seda is an excellent ensemble actor, most notably developing wonderful romantic chemistry with Annie Parisse in the calm before the storm of Iwo Jima. This actress is just one of the many outstanding co-stars who create memorable sub-plots as they effortlessly perform the period dialog that seems to elude just about every other WWII production.
The music is also unusual and daring. Hans Zimmer's New Age sensibilities construct a distinctly Japanese dissonance of bells that quietly envelopes the fury of battle with an unsettling form of Zen that never competes with or interrupts the urgency of combat - quite unlike the standard pounding action score or screeching horror effects that seek to heighten violence in other films. Zimmer also proves he's perfectly capable of writing more conventional title music that evokes a gushingly American sense of honor without ever falling back on snare drum cliches. His title music retains the "Plaisir d'Amour" quote (sung by nuns in an Ardennes convent) and will occasionally replay "Band of Brothers" in its entirety for those listening carefully to background music in certain dialogs.
There are, of course, nitpicks, which are inevitable in a project of such massive scope: Leckie's romance central to Part 3 never ignites, American mortars seem to be more accurate that baseballs (even on the first shot), shell-shocked Japanese on the verge of starvation are somehow more energetic and cleanly dressed than Marines (or even Okinawan civilians) and the hasty exposition to Part 1 is quite awkward (yes, it's true that that the nation was gloomy, but it's difficult to imagine ANYONE - especially Chesty Puller - assuming the Japanese were on the verge of world conquest with their campaigns only 3 weeks underway!) With that said, for every little thing "The Pacific" might get wrong, there is SO much more it gets right that there is little doubt that this series is now the definitive recreation of the Pacific conflict.
The latter episodes of "The Pacific" are saturated with intense action and contain some of the most disturbing scenes ever put in a war film, once again reminding me of that conversation with the veteran: "These are things that no human being can possibly deal with. The only thing you can do is 'wall it out'. Guys that couldn't wall it out - officers who were trained to cope by keeping things organized or artists who tried to cope by expressing themselves - these people simply couldn't handle it". Even this man's tremendous skills, inherited from a lifetime in the backwoods, were of no comfort. As a member of an elite recon unit, the Japanese would deliberately let his unit pass then ambush the main body behind him. The number of times that he literally walked *through* the gunsights of hundreds of enemies - each CHOOSING to spare his life - was only one of an endless list of profoundly disturbing things he had to "wall out" just to survive another day... not to mention another year.
To quote the series:
"You can't dwell on it. You can't dwell on any of it".
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The Pacific (HBO Miniseries) [Blu-ray] Overview
The Pacific is an epic 10-part miniseries that delivers a realistic portrait of WWII's Pacific Theatre as seen through the intertwined odysseys of three U.S. Marines - Robert Leckie, John Basilone and Eugene Sledge. The extraordinary experiences of these men and their fellow Marines take them from the first clash with the Japanese in the haunted jungles of Guadalcanal, through the impenetrable rain firests of Cape Gloucester, across the blasted coral strongholds of Peleliu, up the black sand terraces of Iwo Jima, through the killing fields of Okinawa, to the triumphant, yet uneasy, return home after V-J Day. The viewer will be immersed in combat through the intimate perspective of this diverse, relatable group of men pushed to the limit in battle both physically and psychologically against a relentless enemy unlike any encountered before.
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Customer Reviews
A disgrace - Mr. T. J. Denman - London, UK
Everything about this series stinks. The script is wretched, the drama is non-existent, the history execrable (what veterans in Australia must make of its treatment, or rather non-treatment, of their part in the campaign is unimaginable). For a devasting critique of the series, see Clive James in the Times Literary Supplement for 8 July 2010.
Putrid - Maxtone Witherball -
Band of Brothers was propaganda masquerading as history, but at least it was well-executed and entertaining propaganda masquerading as history.
The Pacific's flaws in conception and construction are far too numerous and deep to catalog. Suffice it to say that the few minutes of commentary from veterans and actual war footage which precede the dramatized part of each episode are infinitely more interesting and informative than anything which follows. In other words, the stagecraft is a huge letdown from even a peek at real soldiers and soldiering.
Not to mention, a solid third of the miniseries--at minimum--doesn't even take place in combat zones, but ranges from covering at length the home lives of characters in patrician Alabama, to reenacting at length a tepid romance between a Medal of Honor winner and a cook. In fact, the entire third episode--after the show's spent under two hours on Guadalcanal--follows soldiers on leave in Australia. And the finale is set almost exclusively in the United States. It's not as if the war against Japan was so dry or thin as to warrant or require plumping up with such filler.
I freely admit, and I'm happy to report that The Pacific does deliver a few moments of exhilarating drama. But these are so few and far between that they can't redeem what is otherwise an utterly worthless production. If it's a gripping account of the war in the Pacific you want to watch, you'll do worlds better with Ken Burns' The War, one of the best-made and most compelling documentaries I've ever seen.
The Broken Theatre - Grey -
Tom Hanks provides an ominous VoiceOver at the beginning of each episode of The Pacific, calmly informing us of the horrors the episode we were about to see would bring. For me, it was a somewhat scary experience, because I knew that what I was hearing was nothing more than a summary. And then the episode spiraled into the powerful theme song featuring a powerful orchestral score and charcoal drawings of soldiers in battle coming to life, scared amidst the hell of war. The DVD release of the Pacific bears my highest recommendation simply because the show is unrelenting in it's depiction of a very unrelenting Pacific theatre of WWII. James Badge Dale turns in one of the finest performances I have ever seen on television alongside Eugene "Sledgehammer" Sledge and the unforgettable, milestone psychopathic performance of Remi Malik as "Snaffu." While Steven Speilberg does not step behind the camera for a single episode the miniseries echoes the spirit of Saving Private Ryan. It is a masterpiece and carries my highest recommendation.
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