WAR

I recently watched all ten parts of THE PACIFIC (2010). The series is billed as kind of follow-up, or add-on to BAND OF BROTHERS (2001)…though the two couldn’t be more dissimilar.

The aptly named BROTHERS answers the “why we fight” question personally. Men fight for their buddies, not their county. They fight for concrete things, not abstract ideals. There may or may not be atheists in the foxholes, but there most certainly is no only-child.

PACIFIC also lives up to its name. War is about geography. Soldiers are pawns at best, existential vermin at worst. War is hell. Why fight? Why not? Hell is asking why. Hell is knowing that no one knows the answer.

John Boorman’s HELL IN THE PACIFIC (1968; “alternate ending,” the only ending) suggests that mortal enemies without weapons are, indeed, brothers. Why do men fight? Because we are socialized to hate…to fear…to capture and humiliate.