Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
As I sit down to write this week’s review for BAND OF BROTHERS, I have CNN playing in the background, and I’m listening to Osama Bin Laden’s translated speech about September 11th and our response. I am sickened by the ideological drivel he’s spewing, and after just watching the disturbing documentary THE ARCHITECTURE OF DOOM the other night, I can’t help but be struck by the similarities in what he says to the rantings of another two-bit pedagogue, a greasy little German man who wanted to reshape the world according to his fanatic views. This all makes it hard for me to focus, but I’m going to try since this week’s episode of HBO’s outstanding BAND OF BROTHERS is one of the best and covers one of the key moments in WWII, the Battle Of The Bulge.
Credit Bruce C. McKenna for writing an exceptional script for this installment, boiling down a complicated military engagement into a profoundly personal and human story. David Leland directs expertly, and there are a few moments here that would be listed among the most effective in the whole series. Shouldn’t be a surprise, but it was, since I didn’t immediately remember Leland’s name. He’s a really good filmmaker with a quiet, keen intelligence about his work. WISH YOU WERE HERE back in 1987 made me believe that Emily Lloyd might actually be a star, and THE LAND GIRLS is a gentle film filled with great longing. Neither picture suggests anything like his work here. Once again, director of photography Remi Adefarasin does a magnificent job, creating an atmosphere as effective and memorable as anything you’ll see on a big screen this year.
I’d like to single out one member of the creative team this week, though, since this is an episode that particularly highlights his enormous contribution. Anthony Pratt is the production designer on this enormous project, and recreating Bastogne and its surrounding forests this week is a challenge he met with aplomb. It’s a surreal frozen hell that he’s built, and it’s utterly convincing at all times. There’s a thick blanket of fog wrapped around everything in the woods, limiting visibility, and Pratt and his team make full use of that. I can’t imagine fighting under the conditions shown here, but the men of Easy Company continue to do more than anyone could expect, digging in and holding on against insane odds. Thanks to Pratt, you understand exactly what it was they were facing during that horrific winter. It’s awards-worthy work, and should be remembered next year.
This week’s episode starts with survivor interviews, as they all do, and it’s particularly hard stuff. There’s no light memories when it comes to Bastogne. They talk about the conditions there, the feeling of being overwhelmed. “We were down to one round per man in some cases,” one man remembers. “Every time they tried to drop supplies, they missed and dropped them to the Germans.” There’s talk of a man whose arm was blown off asking someone to retrieve his watch. There’s talk of other injuries, of a learned hatred for the cold, of effects felt even today. It sets the stage for an episode that truly feels hopeless.
Each week, the show has nimbly shifted point of view, giving us a moment in the war through a different person’s eyes. This week, the focus is squarely on Medic Eugene Rowe, played by Shane Taylor. Taylor’s a newcomer to film, and this is a major role to be handed. He brings a quiet grace to his role, and instead of taking the opportunity to play big, Taylor’s work is restrained, authentic, persuasive. By the end of the hour, I felt an affinity for this character that hasn’t really happened with any other member of Easy Company so far. More than any of the others, I got a glimpse at what this war did to this person, how it changed them. Winters and Nixon seem to have found themselves in the war, moving up the chain of command by virtue of some natural ability and accumen. With Rowe, he knew his place from the start of the war, and it’s the things he’s witnessed that are starting to change him, and there’s a chance it’s not for the better.
The episode opens with an extended sequence that follows Rowe on his attempts to scrounge whatever medical supplies he can. Bandages and morphine are a constant need, as well as things like plasma and even scissors. By following him, we get a look at the way all of the 101st is laid out, how they’re dug in, what the front is like. It’s an ingenious way to show us an entire picture of what it was like for the men who were there. There’s giant gaps in the line, that fog making visibility a joke, soldiers wandering lost across enemy lines and back almost at will. When the bombing of the forest begins, it’s always without warning, and it stops the same way. There’s a feeling of always being on alert, always being afraid. There are no fires. There is no relief from the cold. A hot meal is a preposterous luxury. Everyone has infections and coughs and complaints, and Rowe does what little he can. When Lt. Toye (Kirk Acevedo, who HBO viewers probably recognize from his excellent work on OZ) has his shoes blown up, Rowe tries to help him battle advancing frostbite and trenchfoot. The conditions go beyond hellish, and we see how Rowe is almost rendered numb by the constant litany of woe that is laid on him.
There’s something that really seems to be evident in this episode that I’ve noticed over the course of this series so far. There’s a suggestion that there is heroism of all stripes on a battlefield, but none is quite like the heroism of the medics. Everyone is under fire, but most of the soldiers are dug into their holes, armed, returning fire the whole time. Not Rowe. He’s the one who has to respond to that cry every time. “MEDIC!!” He’s the one scrambling across the field of fire, diving from hole to hole, working quickly to save lives, tuning out everything around him. There’s another side to this that’s equally well illustrated this week, too. There’s a combat patrol at one point that goes out, and Rowe is left behind for his own good. All he can do is sit and wait and listen to the distant sound of gunfire and explosions. His whole purpose in the war is defined by that time waiting, and it’s horrible. There’s nothing for him to do until one of these men is hurt. He has to live with them, be friends with them, be involved in their daily lives, then fix them when they are torn apart.
One injury in particular is too great for Rowe to repair, and he rides with the injured man into the town of Bastogne, where the Red Cross hospital has been set up in a shelled-out church. The town is totally cut off, so none of the injured can be evacuated. The nurses work to ease the overall suffering, but the conditions are unthinkable. One French nurse, Anna (Rebecca Okot), begins a sort of friendship with Rowe that evolves over the course of a series of trips into Bastogne. It’s not a romance. There’s no furtive kisses or intimacy. Instead, it’s just a connection, a fleeting sort of bond formed by the shared burden they both carry. It’s expressed through the gift of a chocolate bar or shared cigarettes. Both of these actors are great, and there’s a lyrical, aching quality to these moments. Such strength and such frailty both expressed in the same scenes... it’s powerful stuff, and it’s small, in the details of things. No one’s grandstanding here.
Everyone sees some death during the war. That’s just part of war. But Rowe and this nurse... they see it all. They are witnesses, there just to verify death as much as they are to save life. It has a cumulative effect on them, and it comes to a head on Christmas. It’s a brutally sad sequence, and right at the start of it, we realize that Rowe has reached his breaking point. When the attack begins and the first cry of “MEDIC!” rings out, Rowe cannot respond. He is frozen inside and out. It takes Winters dragging him from his foxhole to snap him out of his daze, to get him moving. He makes his final visit into Bastogne that night, and what he finds there is a nightmare. The arrival of Patton’s forces and the horrific firefight that erupts is portrayed as a vision of the world gone mad, fire lighting up the sky. Returning from that devastation, Rowe repairs a wound in the hand of Babe Heffron (Robin Laing). What he uses to repair that wound took me off-guard, shocked me, and actually brought me to tears. It’s a reminder, a symbol of how we pick up and we carry on during war, no matter what, no matter how hard. It’s a small but significant symbol, and it broke my heart.
The episode closes with a series of title cards that explains that the story of the Battle Of The Bulge is typically told to show how General Patton saved the surrounded 101st on Dec. 26th, 1944, and how no member of the 101st has ever agreed that they needed to be rescued. No matter how bad the conditions were at Bastogne, those soldiers were there to do something, and they weren’t going to leave until they did it. I am particularly moved by this sentiment as our own troops are in Afghanistan tonight, and I want to wish success and safety to the men and women in that distant place. Watching this episode today underlined the enormous sacrifice they are being asked to make, and it also underlines, for me, the importance of this story and the achievement that BAND OF BROTHERS truly is.
"Moriarty" out.
