ABOVE AVERAGE
THEY DEPENDED ON EACH OTHER. AND THE WORLD DEPENDED ON THEM.
The original quote from William Shakespeare’s “Henry V” is: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile”. As the soldiers of the Easy Company stand listening to a German colonel surrendering his men to U.S. forces sometime in 1945, they all can’t help but feel that the speech could just as easily have been directed toward them. The scene plays out in the final episode of Band of Brothers, a limited series about the special bond shared by those who join the armed forces – regardless of country.
Part of the invading forces
In 1944, the men of Easy Company become part of the invading forces on D-Day, parachuting behind enemy lines in France. Their first objective is to help U.S. forces take the city of Carentan as a way of securing the Allies’ continued push toward Germany. From Carentan, Easy Company moves on to the Netherlands, but subsequently find themselves trapped in the Ardennes forest and the Battle of the Bulge when the Germans try to drive a wedge between the British and American forces in northern France. The bitter cold and grisly deaths continue as the Allies are pounded by Germans holding the town of Bastogne.
As the surviving soldiers of Easy Company leave the horrors of Bastogne behind them and move deeper into Germany they find revolting evidence of the consequences of Nazi race laws… as well as the spoils of war.
A look and feel of a motion picture
After making Saving Private Ryan (1998), Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks turned their attention to a TV adaptation of historian Stephen Ambrose’s literary depiction of the real-life Easy Company and their path from basic training to taking the Eagle’s Nest in Berchtesgaden, Germany. Although the limited series was made for HBO, not broadcast TV, its makers never made it as gruesome as Saving Private Ryan. The cinematography is nonetheless true to the style created by that film’s DP, Janusz Kaminski – this stark chronicle comes with bleached colors. It has the look and feel of a motion picture; much of it portrays battles between the Germans and the Americans and those sequences are overwhelming in their intensity… and credibility. The British Hatfield Aerodrome was convincingly transformed into bombed-out French hamlets.
The series also has an admirably meticulous attention to the facts of E Company’s drive through Europe. Each episode either begins or ends with testimonies from the real survivors of the E Company, now old men, who convey their emotions of what was going on at various instances of the campaigns.
Initially, I found it difficult to commit to the E Company; had it not been for the technical qualities that make the battles compelling, I might have found it harder to get into it all. Still, the characters of Winters och Nixon (Damian Lewis, Ron Livingston) who survive all the ordeals, not without psychological sacrifices, are interesting. The same is true of several characters who make short-lived appearances, not least the officer who keeps disappearing whenever things get tough in the Ardennes forest.
Europe is heartbreakingly beautiful and diverse… with constant racism lingering beneath the surface
Michael Kamen’s main title theme is emotional and so are the two final episodes of the series. Band of Brothers shows us Europeans how Americans viewed the continent they came to help liberate. There is still a lot of truth to it. Europe is heartbreakingly beautiful and diverse… with constant racism lingering beneath the surface.
Band of Brothers 2001-U.S.-U.K. 705 min. Color. Created by Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg. Book: Stephen Ambrose. Cinematography: Joel Ransom, Remi Adefarasin. Music: Michael Kamen. Cast: Damian Lewis (Richard Winters), Ron Livingston (Lewis Nixon), Scott Grimes (Donald Malarkey), Shane Taylor, Donnie Wahlberg, Peter Youngblood Hills, David Schwimmer, Michael Fassbender, Dexter Fletcher… Simon Pegg, Tom Hardy, Dominic Cooper, Jimmy Fallon, Colin Hanks, Stephen Graham, James McAvoy, Andrew Scott.
Trivia: Originally shown in ten episodes. Co-executive produced by Hanks and Spielberg. Among the directors: David Frankel, Mikael Salomon, Hanks, Richard Loncraine and Phil Alden Robinson. Hardy’s first onscreen role. Followed by two other similarly-themed limited series, The Pacific (2010) and Masters of the Air (2024).
Emmys: Outstanding Miniseries, Directing. Golden Globe: Best Miniseries.
Last word: “There were seven of us: Tom Hanks, Erik Bork (supervising producer), Graham Yost, myself, John Orloff, Max Frye, and Erik Jendresen (supervising producer). The heaviest lifting was done by the last five above: We called ourselves “The Band of Writers.” We all shared our scripts and research, so that as much as possible, the miniseries would have a seamless quality. We divvied up the writing according to the whims of Tony To (co-executive producer) and Tom Hanks. […] We started with Ambrose’s book, naturally. In addition, Erik Jendresen wrote a huge series “Bible” which distilled Easy Company’s experiences down to a manageable level, and painted portraits of the main characters in the Company. Then all of us sought out the men themselves and interviewed them. I spent four days with the Company at a reunion in Denver, then hundreds of hours on the phone with them over the course of writing my scripts (I was hired to rewrite episodes four and eight). For episode six I interviewed Army medics and doctors about their experiences in general, and at Bastogne in particular.” (Writer Bruce McKenna, FilmJerk.com)
