The Pacific zeros in on human cost of war
Written by on March 12th, 2010 in Latest News.
Jon Seda as war hero John Basilone in a scene from the HBO miniseries, The Pacific. (HBO/David James/Canadian Press)
The Pacific, the HBO miniseries that debuts this Sunday, aims to bring to the screen a part of the Second World War that is not as well known as the European conflict.
The series is “largely about the human cost of war,” says Jeremy Podeswa, the Canadian director who helmed three of the 10 episodes in the high-profile series.
“Any war tale may deal with that but the conflict in the Pacific was so brutal and so anguishing and really problematic for all the people who were involved in it,” he said in an interview with CBC’s Q cultural affairs show on Friday.
“One of the reasons we don’t know as much about it is that people who were there didn’t talk about it for many, many years.”
Canadian director Jeremy Podeswa, shown Oct. 20, 2007, directed two episodes and co-directed another. (Sandro Pace/Associated Press)
Executive producers for the project are Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, who also made film Saving Private Ryan and the miniseries Band of Brothers, both about the war in Europe.
The latest series is based on the tales of three men — real U.S. marines who served in the Pacific conflict.
Two of the men wrote memoirs — journalist Robert Leckie penned Helmet for My Pillow and private Eugene Sledge wrote With the Ancient Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. The other was war hero John Basilone, who died at Iwo Jima. Other parts of the tale are based on interviews with survivors and letters from those who died.
“The thinking behind it was always meant to be an under-the-helmet look at the conflict, where you’re looking at the conflict from a very subjective, very personal perspective,” Podeswa said.
The average age of recruits in the Pacific was two years younger than men fighting in Europe and they were sent to defend hard strategic targets in places they had never heard of.
The series extends to the terrible battles at Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Pavuvu and Okinawa. Podeswa shot part of his segment in Daintree Rainforest of Far North Queensland, Australia.
“The Japanese as an enemy were a tough country to fight,” Podeswa said. “They fought to the death and martyrdom was very huge for the Japanese and the numbers who were felled were enormous.”
‘It’s a pyrrhic victory to survive a war like that. There are no winners’—Jeremy Podeswa, director
Podeswa has a reliable track record as a TV director with HBO, on series such as Six Feet Under and Queer as Folk, as well as Weeds.
He said the challenge for the directors involved was to “keep the tale as intimate as possible and not get lost in the spectacle.”
“It’s an emotional experience. I reckon you really know what young men go through in battle and how brutal it is and the price that is paid,” he said.
The final episode, which he directed, follows the survivors back to America.
“I reckon the homecoming is where the message hits the toughest. You see how it affects the psyche of people who even if they survived, it’s a pyrrhic victory to survive a war like that. There are no winners.”
He compared the long-lasting trauma experienced by the characters to his film Fugitive Pieces, a war tale based on Canadian author Anne Michael’s novel.
Ottawa-raised actor Scott Gibson, Brendan Fletcher, Matt Craven, Joshua Close and Noel Fisher are among the Canadians to appear in the new series, many of whose stars are unknowns.
The Pacific debuts Sunday on HBO Canada.
With files from The Canadian Press
