Warren Brown (left) and James Nesbitt portray British soldiers caught in cross fire -- physically and emotionally -- in Iraq.
TELEVISION REVIEW
‘Occupation’ captures inner battles of war
Warren Brown (left) and James Nesbitt portray British soldiers caught in cross fire -- physically and emotionally -- in Iraq.
There have to be good reasons to watch a scripted drama about the war in Iraq, as opposed to a documentary. And BBC America’s powerful “Occupation’’ provides plenty of them. This four-hour epic, which premieres tomorrow night at 8, is a spectacularly acted and dramatically filmed look at three British soldiers during and after their service. A sort of “The Best Years of Our Lives’’ for a more fractured time, “Occupation’’ is a portrait of how war can break even the hardiest of souls.
We first encounter the three soldiers, all from Manchester, during the invasion of Basra in 2003. The most conventionally heroic one is Mike (James Nesbitt), a married father of two who, early in “Occupation,’’ is trying to get medical care for a wounded Iraqi child. At the hospital, which is overrun with bleeding civilians, he encounters and soon falls in love with an Iraqi doctor, Aliya (Lubna Azabal). They share a powerful, almost tacit bond, built as a shield against the despair and destruction around them. It’s the kind of connection Mike could never share with his wife.
His attraction to Aliya will bring Mike back to Iraq after his first tour. Indeed, all three of the central characters return to the Iraqi war zones, to pursue the transformative experiences they began in 2003. Danny (Stephen Graham) is the most unmoored of the three, and he becomes drawn to the chaos and aggression of battle. He evolves from a happy-go-lucky sort into a bit of a monster. After serving, he returns to Basra to form a private company and take advantage of the American dollars going toward reconstruction in Iraq. He becomes a kind of Kurtz figure from “Heart of Darkness,’’ as he and his fellow contractors operate by their own rules and morality. Like a two-bit gang lord, Danny drinks and snorts cocaine and finagles private riches.
Lee (Warren Brown) is the shaky one, perhaps because he feels a deep sense of guilt about the impact of war on the Iraqis. He has scruples, and they plague him. At home in Manchester with his parents and peacenik sister, he clings to his anger; and in Basra, where he returns to make moral reparations, he clings to his decency. His experiences in Iraq become increasingly intertwined with those of Mike and Danny, as the movie moves across the decade.
“Occupation’’ is filmed with a sense of narrative disconnection that some viewers will find jarring. As in HBO’s “Generation Kill,’’ the scene-to-scene links are not spelled out, to evoke the randomness of battle. The handheld camera work has a rough quality, too, that’s documentary-like at times. And some of the dialogue - the screenplay is by Peter Bowker - is delivered in such heavy British accents that American viewers may miss a line here and there. Not that the movie takes a distinctly British viewpoint on the fighting in Iraq; Bowker is after the universality of psychic war wounds, and not the specific tensions of international politics. I can easily imagine “Occupation’’ adapted with an American cast.
Ultimately, patience with the movie’s disorientations is rewarded by director Nick Murphy with a larger sense of the emotional ups and downs and ins and outs of fighting a war with no specific goal. And the performances are so breathtaking, they compensate for a lot of the jittery, piecemeal formatting. Nesbitt, in particular, is profound, as he registers unbearable pain on his tense face. You can see the huge costs of war, and of love, in his quiet, piercing eyes.
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