{"id":11720,"date":"2010-12-19T20:26:10","date_gmt":"2010-12-19T12:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2010\/12\/19\/the-pacificpart-2\/"},"modified":"2018-03-14T10:42:09","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T02:42:09","slug":"the-pacificpart-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2010\/12\/19\/the-pacificpart-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pacific – Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the other hand; there were elements in The Pacific <\/em>that didn\u2019t work for me. One of the strongest aspects of BoB<\/em> was that it centered its attention squarely on a small group of men who fought in a one-year long campaign across Europe. That The Pacific<\/em> tries to tell the stories of three different men I think proved problematic to narration consistency. For starters, all three men participated in different parts of the Pacific campaign. For instance; when the series begins, Leckie and Basilone are in combat, while Sledge is still in the United States. About halfway through, Basilone is back in the United States selling war bonds, while Leckie is interned at a hospital from battle fatigue while Sledge is in military training. By the series\u2019 end, Basilone has been killed, Leckie is again\u00a0 hospitalized from battle wounds, while Sledge is still in combat.<\/p>\n

What this means is that there is a jarring degree of story switching between and even within episodes, and the lack of a consistent and unified focus in story-telling really hurts the emotional resonance that the series purports to elicit. The most telling observation of this was that at the series\u2019 end, I didn\u2019t feel nearly the same degree of empathy for Leckie and Sledge as I did for Easy Company in Band of Brothers; <\/em>I dare anyone to watch the scene where Lieutenant Winters narrates the subsequent lives of the Easy Company survivors and not feel themselves tearing up. Nothing like this happened to me in The Pacific<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Another aspect of the production I had some issue with was the almost modernist perspective the series takes. I\u2019ve written before here that I don\u2019t particularly care for revisionist views of the Japanese role in World War II<\/a>, and there were some small albeit subtle traces of it in The Pacific<\/em>. Specifically; at this point in the war, the American Marines hated the Japanese Imperial Army and that sentiment was returned in spades. Both sides engaged in horrific acts of brutality, but there are a couple of scenes where the series tries to humanize the Japanese Imperial Army soldier. That\u2019s not factually wrong nor incorrect, but that scene was in the perspective <\/em>of Leckie \u2013 which led me to wonder whether the typical American Marine fighting a war of brutality was ever thinking \u201cHey, those guys who are trying to kill me have got wives and mothers too!\u201d The series is almost sympathetic to the Japanese and seemingly even tries to go out of its way to explain and persuade the reasoning <\/em>of their actions.<\/p>\n

The series stretches also more far along towards the limit of what adult audiences can see. There\u2019s a lot of violent imagery on what explosive metal does to soft human flesh, and \u2013 surprisingly \u2013 a higher degree of both male and female nudity too. Thankfully, as in Spielberg\u2019s other productions, the violence never feels gratuitous, but the nudity and couple of sex scenes in one episode feel pretty tacky.<\/p>\n

The music of the series was written by popular film composer Hans Zimmer, who dishes up a suitably patriotic opening titles and end-credits music in a style that\u2019s reminiscent of John Williams\u2019 work for Saving Private Ryan<\/em>. The opening titles music is wonderful listening, though a little grandiose and far too long \u2013 but the end-credits is sublime.<\/p>\n

In all; it\u2019s all still pretty good though not quite to the very high levels that Band of Brothers <\/em>reached. The stories are more diffused in The Pacific<\/em>, and less successful in elicitation of your emotions and heart strings.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the other hand; there were elements in The Pacific that didn\u2019t work for me. One of the strongest aspects of BoB was that it centered its attention squarely on a small group of men who fought in a one-year<\/p>\n

Read More The Pacific – Part 2<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-home","category-entertainment","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-10-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}