HBO's The Pacific: Marine Corps' War Makes for Epic Television
Executive Producers: Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Gary Goetzman. Airs Sundays, 2100 Eastern Daylight time, through 16 May on HBO.
Reviewed by Eric Mills
Advancing headlong toward enemy fire, from one blood-soaked island to the next, the U.S. Marines during World War II added a heroic chapter to history's pages. HBO's ten-part miniseries,
The Pacific, serves as a stirring tribute to these men.
A follow-up to the award-winning HBO series, Band of Brothers, and likewise boasting Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks among its producers, The Pacific seeks to do for its theater of World War II what Brothers did for the European theater. Concentrating on the legendary 1st Marine Division, the miniseries interlaces two classic wartime memoirs-Robert Leckie's Helmet for My Pillow and Eugene Sledge's With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa-with the story of Medal of Honor recipient "Manila" John Basilone, along with other source materials. The screenwriters have impressively woven the disparate elements into one grand saga, filled with moments of white-knuckle combat horror and occasional poignant interludes of wartime romance.
For those with only a vague sense of what the Marines went through during the Pacific war, the miniseries should serve as an eye-opener. From the jolting, disorienting night-fighting on Guadalcanal to the green hell of Cape Gloucester, from the nightmarish beach landing at Peleliu to the interminable slog on Okinawa, the Marines struggle toward Japan and victory. It is a hard-earned triumph, and viewers of this series are there with them the whole way.
The Pacific is both a tribute to the young men whose story it tells and a rumination on the steep emotional toll that fierce combat exacts from its survivors. The performances, from the three lead roles on down, are top-notch. James Badge Dale captures the ironic wit and underlying soulfulness of Leckie, who, after coming to terms with his war experiences, went on to a successful career as a journalist and author. Jon Seda conveys the complex and conflicting emotions behind the heroic sheen of Basilone, who won the nation's affection after his valorous deeds at Guadalcanal. And as Sledge, Joe Mazzello undergoes an astounding, heart-wrenching metamorphosis over the course of several episodes, as his fresh-faced idealism is destroyed in the cauldron of battle and replaced by a cold, hard survival instinct and remorseless bitterness of spirit. Like his comrades, Sledge has been numbed, he has learned to hate, and he has survived. The Pacific is unafraid to show this dynamic, and to show how survival may come at the cost of a lingering darkness that won't magically vanish, even back home in the world of safety and comfort.
The salient problem with this otherwise laudable miniseries is one of context-or lack thereof. The show does what it intended: it tells the story of the Marines fighting the Pacific war (specifically the 1st Marine Division, but all of them, by extension). But the cameras are so trained on the particular grunts that their experiences become oddly divorced from the larger story of the war going on around them.
Some of the problem might be a simple matter of nomenclature: The show's title is misleading. When you create an epic series about World War II and call it The Pacific, you invite criticism if you cut the U.S. Navy out as utterly as this program has. This was the Navy's great historic moment, the scene of its most massive battles and epochal triumphs. We do see corpsmen bravely dodging Japanese lead to rescue wounded Marines. But otherwise, during ten sprawling hours, the Navy's walk-on characters are rare and generally unflattering: a psych-ward staffer who bemoans a bloody nose, a doctor enjoying a cushy gig among the nurses, and an obnoxious Seabee tactlessly scrounging for Japanese souvenirs among battle-weary Marines. How about a little more contextual dialogue, more expositional references to the larger mighty sea-war raging beyond each particular beachhead? Granted, this was not meant to be exclusively the Navy's story. But by its own blood and tribulations, the Navy owns at least some mystic rights to any World War II opus tagged The Pacific. After all, the series that inspired this one was called Band of Brothers; it wasn't called Europe.
But it may be better not to concentrate on what The Pacific leaves out and instead to celebrate the miniseries for what it is-a depiction of heroism and sacrifice, and a gripping, absorbing, at times tear-inducing drama that provides an important and long-overdue history lesson. Many viewers will be left eager to learn more-to pick up Leckie's and Sledge's excellent books, then delve even further into the rich lore of World War II in the Pacific. For providing that inspiration, the filmmakers can be proud, and we should be grateful.