HBO's The Pacific (2010)

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   While nosing around hbowar fandom tumblrs very serious academic websites, I discovered HBO’s The Pacific, which was billed as a follow up to Band of Brothers.   I found some highly legal streaming links and decided to go at it. While the Pacific Theater was where my grandfather served in the war (however, he didn’t enlist until 1946 after the war was technically over and served in occupied Japan), I admittedly am much less familiar with  the Pacific Theater of that war than I am with the European, because of my childhood interest in the Holocaust*, and am always eager to learn something new about history.  

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        About half way through my viewing (which took way longer than my recent viewing of  Band of Brothers, though admittedly I’ve seen Band of Brothers before), I took a gander at some user-created reviews over at IMDB, just to see. I always like reading people wank on things that I’m enjoying, because it’s usually for hilarious and ridiculous reasons that people are mad.  I’d say the number one complaint given was that it wasn’t like Band of Brothers. Well, no shit. The war in Asia wasn’t like the war in Europe.  I think the fact that the two miniseries were so different in style and character development is a wonderful representation of the two sides of one war. 

  Band of Brothers focuses on one specific company, with main point of view episodes featuring a handful of officers and enlisted me. The character development is beautiful and emotional, as is the scenery. You really become emotionally attached to the characters right from the get-go. The viewer gets to share in the joy of Dutch towns being liberated, and the pain of soldiers looking into the eyes of the man they’re about to shoot. 

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        Where Band of Brothers is deeply emotional, The Pacific is visceral.   When Band of Brothers focuses on individual characters, The Pacific lacks the same level of character development, which is something that user-reviews pointed out and complained about.  I felt that the lack of character development was a good thing. The main character of this miniseries is not Eugene Sledge, or Robert Leckie, but the war itself.  The terrain, the mud, the endless death.   Throughout the entire series, I couldn’t help but think of how awful the stench must have been- something I never registered while watching Band of Brothers. It’s more than safe to say that the elements were just as much of a formidable enemy as the Japanese troops were. I felt like the lack of character development was actually a good story telling tool- you don’t become familiar with the characters dying around you and it gives you a sense of what the Marines must have felt like, not bothering to learn each other’s stories because he’s most likely not going to make it. (I’ve read similar stories from pilots. After a while, they stopped making friends, because the mission survival rate was 1:2).

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 The combat scenes in Band of Brothers were stressful and violent, but they were in no way as stressful and violent, and frankly disturbing as the combat scenes in the Pacific.  The violence is relentless- and not always physically manifesting in storming  a shore or shooting a gun. Carnage is high.  Watching the Pacific is frankly exhausting, but still riveting, if you can stand the level of violence shown on screen.  Violence in film and television rarely bothers me, but there were times that it was hard to watch.  Good. It’s a film about teenagers firing flame throwers blindly into cliff-side bunker windows and stealing gold teeth from enemy corpses- it should be hard to watch. 

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What people loved about Band of Brothers will not be found in the Pacific. There are some solid and interesting characters (Sweet kid Eugene Sledge turned damaged veteran and Snafu, who was fucking nuts, but weirdly endearing at the same time. In fact, these two really saved the series, character-wise.), but because they’re not fleshed out was thoroughly, it’s hard to stay focused on them.  There were a few emotional moments (Sledge encountering a Japanese citizen dying in her home is especially moving), along with some deep, dark M*A*S*H-Hawkeye-mental-breakdown-style-realness.  All in all, I felt it was a  good companion to the beloved Band of Brother purely because it didn't perfectly match.

*Side note- In hindsight, I feel nothing sums up my childhood better than writing the line “my childhood interest in the Holocaust”. Jesus.