Heroes in hell

HBO salutes Band of Brothers

By Robert David Sullivan

Band of Brothers

Produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, based on the book by Stephen Ambrose. Airs Sundays at 9 p.m., on HBO.

STRAIGHT SHOOTER: for the most part, the men in Band of Brothers are like the even-tempered commanding of cer (Damian Lewis) nicknamed “Quaker” who says he just wants to get home “and spend the rest of my life in peace.”

In contrast to lm actors, people on TV often look into the camera and talk about the freak occurrences that changed their lives — the bullets, real or metaphorical, that serve as plot points in a biography. This device has been used more frequently in the past few years: on Malcolm in the Middle and Once and Again, among others, characters address the audience with more candor in 15 seconds than Gary Condit could muster in a lifetime. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that interest in World War II has also been on the rise, particularly in the form of oral histories from the dwindling number of men and women who lived through it.

HBO’s 10-part drama Band of Brothers follows this trend, opening each episode with recollections from real-life veterans of Easy Company, an American paratrooper unit that participated in the D-Day invasion and the Battle of the Bulge. These sequences not only underscore Band’s sense of accuracy, they also remind us that the troops in World War II may have been the most self-aware soldiers up to that point in history. They knew about the waste of life in the previous world war, and many would have seen the lm All Quiet on the Western Front, a prototype for the anti-war genre. In one episode, a soldier in a foxhole looks across a snow-covered eld toward a Belgian forest; he points out to a companion that the Visigoths probably tore through the same eld in their attacks on the Roman Empire. This observation doesn’t help either soldier’s morale. Most of the American soldiers in Band of Brothers are well-mannered and articulate, which makes their sacri ces all the more tragic. Unlike the soldiers in most previous wars, they weren’t giving up lives that would have been nasty, brutish, and short anyway. And though Band has passing references to religious faith, none of the soldiers (at least in the rst six episodes) views military valor as a ticket to a glorious afterlife. They’re patriotic, but they’re hardly delusional. Today people spend a fortune on therapy to see life as clearly.

It’s no surprise that the series is xated on the idea of stoic heroism. Based on Stephen Ambrose’s 1992 non- ction book of the same name, Band of Brothers was produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, who worked together on the D-Day epic Saving Private Ryan. The series does depict a few moments of questionable behavior: one of cer executes a group of German POWs just because he can, and a soldier carries cynicism a bit too far in advising a frightened recruit, “Accept the fact that you’re already dead . . . all war depends on it.” But for the most part, the men are like the even-tempered commanding of cer (Damian Lewis) nicknamed “Quaker” who says he just wants to get home “and spend the rest of my life in peace.” (Shades of Gladiator?)

Band doesn’t have concise storytelling or interesting character development (most of the soldiers die too quickly for that). But it never feels less than faithful to the truth, and the various directors set a consistent tone. As for the look of the series, Band could be called a high-tech depiction of modern men forced to engage in a barbaric activity. The action scenes often resemble eshed-out video games, especially when sniper victims suddenly jerk away from the center of the TV screen — and that makes sense, because video-game makers must have studied actual combat footage to get the movements right. Then there are the recurring shots of white parachutes descending through a gray sky, images sure to turn up as computer screensavers among World War II buffs.

The premiere, set in training camp, is the only episode without stomach-churning shots of wounded soldiers. And though most of the actors in Band are little-known, Friends star David Schwimmer had a major role in the rst episode as an autocratic of cer. His presence was jarring at rst, but it turns out that his character is as ineffectual — if not as funny — as Ross.

World War II has been explored in several recent lms and bestselling books, but mainstream television seems less interested than ever in history. (That ’70s Show is the only current prime-time commercial-network series that’s set in the past.) Band of Brothers is a welcome attempt to make up for this de ciency. It certainly took away my appetite for phony adventures on the next round of Survivor.