The further I got lost in the harrowing and exhausting depths of HBO’s The Pacific, the more I began to understand its genius.
I use “genius” but I hesitate to call it “entertainment” in many ways. I was exhausting watching at times, gripping and exciting at others, something close (but light years afar of course) perhaps to the old adage of “hurry up and wait” when it comes to soldiering and warfare.
Let me back up and start by saying that Band of Brothers, also executive produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, is one of my favorite historical epics and longform dramas I’ve ever seen. For all of its dark and scary and downbeat moments, it’s a thrilling and soaring and patriotic affair all told, a coherent and inexorable journey taking us from training through Europe and into the Eagle’s Nest itself with one highly trained company (good old Easy) of men.
The Pacific is designed, I believe, to deliberately subvert this model. The pacific during World War II was a far flung and enormous theater of war, filled with ferocious battles on islands that no one had ever heard of, that didn’t have a great deal to do with the outcome of the war in some cases after the bodies were done being counted. It takes us several episodes to get some small sense of who is important, character-wise, in The Pacific, as we’re shown a number of different guys from the jump who are thrown into chaotic and truly scary jungle battles. Aside from Tom Hanks’ quick narration to start off each episode, in fact, politics and strategy play very little role throughout. Whereas in Band of Brothers we’d occasionally see Nixon and Winters chatting about how to get to Berlin and end the war, in The Pacific we’re almost always in the muck with the grunts, trying to find the courage and strength to make it through another day of hell.
And hell it is. There are some of the most unrelenting scenes of battle and exhaustion and enduring horrors and bombs and endless rain and mud and deprivation that I have ever seen. By the time we get to the ninth episode, “Okinawa,” I was ready for a break… and it was not to come. It’s one of the bleakest, dreariest, and most chilling pieces of drama I’ve ever sat through on TV. And that’s the genius right there – that’s what the war was like for so many thousands of soldiers, for days and weeks and months on end (and I kept thinking about how long the pacific war was compared to the European campaign for the U.S.), and it was brought to harsh and immediate and compelling light.
As I mentioned, it takes time to get a sense of who the main players are, but eventually we understand there are three “main” storylines. John Basilone (Jon Seda) comes in and out of focus, mostly based on the fact that he was pulled out of the war after his heroism on Guadalcanal to sell war bonds back in the states. I enjoyed his storyline because, quite frankly, it was a welcome break in the intensity of battle during latter episodes (of course, the real life Basilone tragically dies storming the beaches at Iwo Jima, depicted during the episode of the same name). I found myself relating most to Robert Leckie’s (James Badge Dale) story as his good humor and wit is slowly eroded by the unrelenting menace of war.
It’s Eugene B. “Sledgehammer” Sledge’s (Joseph Mazzello) story though that provides the real gut punch(es) of this series. We see him almost out of place in the story at first, a quiet, good natured kid from Mobile, Alabama who wished to join the marines and go off to war against his father’s wishes. He’s forced to grow up fast – too fast – and comes out of the impossibly grueling Peleliu campaign (chronicled brilliantly over three episodes – “Peleliu Landing,” “Peleliu Airfield,” and “Peleliu Hills,”) a grizzled veteran with a boy’s face who “got pretty damn good at killing Japs.” And, at the risk of being repetitive, by the time we reach the Okinawa campaign, where civilian deaths and forced suicide bombers and sinking into mud with maggot-infested corpses and madness engulf the senses, it’s nearly too much take.
All of the acting is pretty great throughout, but I have to point out the work of Rami Malek as Merriell “SNAFU” Shelton as Sledge’s unlikely compadre in hell. His was one of the quirkier and more interesting performances I’ve seen in some time, particularly in the midst of this war epic. (Imagine what the uniformly earnest lot in Band of Brothers would think of this oddball?) Likewise, Mazzello as Sledge merits attention; he’s certainly an actor to keep an eye on.
Hanks and Spielberg have really outdone themselves here, and the direction and cinematography and action sequences all felt real and authentic, and if anything stripped down of Hollywood level excitement in favor of brutal realism whenever and wherever possible.
I won’t be watching The Pacific again anytime soon, but that doesn’t take away the fact that it’s a stunning achievement.
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.