Band of Brothers
Jan. 14th, 2023 08:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerA few weeks ago I watched the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. It had been in the back of my mind since not long after its 2001 debut. Back in 2002 a coworker told me he'd sat down to watch the first episode with his wife. They found it engrossing and wound up bingeing all 10 episodes in a single weekend.
I tried that with my spouse 20 years later. She got bored after the first 5 minutes and left. And while I didn't find it exactly engrossing at first I stuck with it, expecting great things. I binged the 10 episodes in 3 or 4 days over the New Year break.
Band of Brothers follows the men of Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, of the US Army's legendary 101st Airborne Division, from their basic training at Camp Toccoa, Georgia, in 1942 through their combat in Europe, to the war's conclusion in 1945. The series features a large ensemble cast. Not all of them appear in every episode. The narrative structure, though, centers around one person who rises through the ranks of the company, Richard Winters, played by Damian Lewis. The executive producers are Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.
Band of Brothers fits well within the genre of war movies. It hits several of the genre's common themes without seeming derivative. For example, there's the "Sadistic Drill Instructor" trope in the first episode. The episodes about the invasion of Europe beginning with D-Day show several subplots of "Men on a Mission". That combines with "War is Hell", as pretty much every victory comes at a price. The "War is Hell" theme reaches a climax during the Battle of the Bulge, . There are even a few examples of "Soldiers lose sight of the mission and serve themselves" in the final few episodes.
Two things set Band of Brothers apart from much of the rest of the genre of war movies. One, for all the other themes the miniseries checks in its 10 episodes, the overriding theme of the series is how the men band together like brothers. That's the show's name! Virtually all other war movies/series focus on the action or the morality play. This one has scoops of those but also the building of relationships, which makes it enjoyably different.
Two, this series is true. Okay, many classic war movies are true. They're true in the sense of portraying battles or campaigns that really happened. But Band of Brothers is also true at the level of the individual soldiers. While the screenplay is obviously dramatized it's rooted deeply in the actual experiences of the soldiers who were there. The characters are (almost, I think?) all real-life people. And every episodes starts or ends with interviews of some of those real-life people describing how they remember the action and how they felt being in it.
Update: Keep reading with my blog about Ep. 1, "Currahee".
I tried that with my spouse 20 years later. She got bored after the first 5 minutes and left. And while I didn't find it exactly engrossing at first I stuck with it, expecting great things. I binged the 10 episodes in 3 or 4 days over the New Year break.
Band of Brothers follows the men of Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, of the US Army's legendary 101st Airborne Division, from their basic training at Camp Toccoa, Georgia, in 1942 through their combat in Europe, to the war's conclusion in 1945. The series features a large ensemble cast. Not all of them appear in every episode. The narrative structure, though, centers around one person who rises through the ranks of the company, Richard Winters, played by Damian Lewis. The executive producers are Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.
Band of Brothers fits well within the genre of war movies. It hits several of the genre's common themes without seeming derivative. For example, there's the "Sadistic Drill Instructor" trope in the first episode. The episodes about the invasion of Europe beginning with D-Day show several subplots of "Men on a Mission". That combines with "War is Hell", as pretty much every victory comes at a price. The "War is Hell" theme reaches a climax during the Battle of the Bulge, . There are even a few examples of "Soldiers lose sight of the mission and serve themselves" in the final few episodes.
Two things set Band of Brothers apart from much of the rest of the genre of war movies. One, for all the other themes the miniseries checks in its 10 episodes, the overriding theme of the series is how the men band together like brothers. That's the show's name! Virtually all other war movies/series focus on the action or the morality play. This one has scoops of those but also the building of relationships, which makes it enjoyably different.
Two, this series is true. Okay, many classic war movies are true. They're true in the sense of portraying battles or campaigns that really happened. But Band of Brothers is also true at the level of the individual soldiers. While the screenplay is obviously dramatized it's rooted deeply in the actual experiences of the soldiers who were there. The characters are (almost, I think?) all real-life people. And every episodes starts or ends with interviews of some of those real-life people describing how they remember the action and how they felt being in it.
Update: Keep reading with my blog about Ep. 1, "Currahee".
Band of Brothers - is that a recommendation?
Date: 2023-01-15 10:32 am (UTC)Re: Band of Brothers - is that a recommendation?
Date: 2023-01-15 05:20 pm (UTC)Re: Band of Brothers - is that a recommendation?
Date: 2023-01-16 02:19 am (UTC)Re: Band of Brothers - is that a recommendation?
Date: 2023-01-16 05:06 am (UTC)