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 THE GOOD FIGHT The gritty excellence of HBO's "Band of Brothers"
It's difficult to pinpoint the source of the World War II nostalgia currently gripping our midst. Certainly the biggest boost came Steven Spielberg's 1998 homage, "Saving Private Ryan. Then there's the continued prolificacy of historian Stephen Ambrose, who never met a WWII story he didn't like. And with HBO's intensely detailed, ten-part epic, "Band of Brothers," which combines Spielberg's (and Tom Hanks') producing skills with an Ambrose book, they're certainly continuing the franchise. But it's a good bet they're just feeding the desires of their audience, because our fascination with the big war seems more personal than that. Perhaps it's simply that the veterans are dying off, that our fathers and grandfathers are fading away and we don't understand them as well as we'd like to, or as well as we should. In the final episode of "Brothers," a soldier about to return home is asking his commanding officer, by then Maj. Winters (an understated, yet bravura performance by Damian Lewis), what he can say about where he's been. "What do I tell them about what I've seen?" he asks, obviously worried about bringing all the violence and horror he's seen home. "Tell them you fought," the always steady Winters replies. The message is clear: You fought with honor—that should be enough. And therein lies our fascination. Many of the soldiers returning home from the war didn't want to talk about it, didn't want to bring what they'd survived home—no matter how much it molded them, changed them, shaped them. They didn't want to say, and we didn't want to ask, which left many a story untold. My maternal grandfather was a paratrooper, like the men of "Brothers"' Easy Company, a member of the 101st Airborne. He got a piece of shrapnel in his leg during the Battle of the Bulge that wasn't treated promptly. By the time he did receive treatment, it was leave it alone or possibly lose his leg, so it was left in. For fifty-plus years he's had a draining wound—a constant reminder of the war he would never talk about. And he never did. Not to his family, not to anyone—except my other grandfather. The story goes that when my parents married, the in-laws got together and my grandfathers had a whale of a time trading stories from the war. And that, "Brothers" shows us, is sometimes what it takes to get things flowing—the ability to share with someone who's seen what you've seen. The great achievement of this series isn't just that it's intelligent, useful and insightful television, but that it illuminates for those of us who weren't there the details of two years in the lives of soldiers, many of whom won't make it. It's the mundane details—these guys aren't off finding cute little Matt Damon—they're trying to find a way into Germany through Holland, they're taking piddly town after another, places where regular folks live, struggling, casualty by casualty, to win the war. The contrast to "Saving Private Ryan" is striking. There's whiz-bang when the troopers have to jump from planes awash in anti-aircraft fire on D-Day. You finally understand why Private Ryan wasn't where he was supposed to be—none of the paratroopers were. These guys had to jump, with the weight equivalent of another man strapped to their backs, from their planes before they exploded, thanks either to enemy fire, or flaming debris from other injured planes, diving nose first toward the ground. "Brothers" isn't easy—it takes a little doing to get to know the characters, to remember who's who and to recognize the men you're supposed to be tracking. But it's worth the effort. When you've finished watching it you'll know you've seen something important—a story that's aided by introductions from the real veterans of Easy Company, though they won't tell you until the last who's been speaking so you have to wait and find out who survives. Coming in just before D-Day we meet the reserved and serious Lt. Winters (Lewis) and his buddy, the more gregarious, increasingly boozy Lt. Nixon (a stellar performance by "Office Space" guy Ron Livingston). But instead of moving forward, we go back, to training camp and the company's first commanding officer, Lt. Harold Sobel (David Schwimmer). This may well be a landmark performance by Schwimmer, whose Sobel is so unlikable, such a starchy, play-by-the-rules supercilious Army jerk—which is ironic, considering he's militarily inept—that you almost don't realize what an amazing acting job it is. You're so busy hating him, you miss that he's playing Sobel perfectly—a surprising show of depth from the veteran of "Friends." Sobel's petty, he's irritating and he takes great pleasure in making sure that Easy Company's training is ten times more rigorous than anyone else's, regularly sending them running (carrying full gear) up the training camp's dreaded hill, Curahee. Winters, we can tell early on, is a better leader. He understands strategy, the men, the military—and he can read a damn map. And though we'll dispense with Sobel early—the non-coms (non-commissioned officers), like Sgt. Lipton (Donnie Wahlberg, showing us that his remarkable five seconds in "The Sixth Sense" weren't a fluke) won't follow him into battle—the lessons of Curahee follow us through the series. The second part of the two-hour premiere, "Day of Days," depicts the paratroopers' D-Day. And while the jumping sequences are epic, and fast-paced, here's where you see the real diversion from "Private Ryan." As the jumble of Easy Company tries to find each other, there are moments where nothing happens—just what soldiers do when they're not at the front. But they're fascinating to behold. When Winters finally has to take a few men to shut down some guns pounding the fellows on Normandy beach, we don't see it in scope—we're focused in on the fight of these three men to stop three large guns. The detail and precision are startling, and just as incredible as "Private Ryan's" much-ballyhooed opening sequence. Once you've been sucked in, and you will be—"Brothers"' continues HBO's tradition of creating addictive television—the remaining episodes take you on the journey with the men. Episodes five and six, detailing the move into the Ardennes Forest and the siege at Bastogne, are among the most moving things you'll ever watch and enough to give you chills just seeing what was endured. Some critics have attributed our current societal fascination with World War II to guilt, for having never served in the Great War. And watching these men in misery, in the dead of winter with no proper cold weather gear, huddled into foxholes trying to keep warm, you can't help but feel awful that their suffering helped to ensure our current way of life. But if "Brothers" shows us anything, I think it's that our World War II focus is really about envy. We're shown ordinary men in the most amazing circumstances, rising to the occasion and acting truly heroic in the face of horrors they could never have imagined. These men had something they believed in, something worth fighting and dying for—an idea of America that, when we look at modern times, doesn't appear to be there. In many ways, I think we're jealous of that feeling, that pride in our country, the unshakable belief in what we stood for and that we stood together for something right. Could we find it again today if we needed it? Possibly not. But we can hear the stories of those that did, admire their integrity and honor their memories. And then, one day, if we do need it, perhaps we can look back and find it in the courage of those who went before. "Band of Brothers" premieres September 9, 8pm on HBO. Check local cable listings. Also by Elaine Richardson BIG MUDDY
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