But it also layers in several other choices, made by almost all of the characters, in ways that build steadily to the gravity of the episode’s final moments, when US forces begin firing on advancing insurgent forces who have unarmed women and children among their number. The script for “The Choice,” by Mikko Alanne (who served as showrunner for the adaptation) and Scott Gold, presents Jassim’s choice to join the US-led coalition effort as its central decision. Jassim doesn’t decide to work with the US-led forces because he deeply believes in their cause he just believes in the insurgents’ cause even less. Homayoun’s performance underlines how war tends to turn normal civilian lives into an unending attempt to make the least-bad choice among several terrible options. Jassim’s choice drives “The Choice.” National GeographicĬentered on Jassim al-Lani, an Iraqi translator working with US forces, played by Darius Homayoun, “The Choice” depicts in its flashbacks how one man makes the voyage from sympathizing with the insurgency and nearly joining it to working with the US military. And in the grand scheme of the series, “The Choice” is incredibly important to setting up that moral order.
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The series can never quite escape its larger American-centric point of view, one that often reduces the Iraqi insurgents to faceless enemies, but it tries to set up a complicated moral order that better reflects the quagmire that was the Iraq War. The series is based on Martha Raddatz’s nonfiction book of the same name, and if it doesn’t quite achieve its goals, it does an admirable job of attempting to humanize characters above and beyond its American military members, who are played by the most recognizable actors (including House of Cards’ Michael Kelly and Parenthood’s Jason Ritter). The battles there began in April 2004 but stretched on into 2008, as first US-led coalition forces and later Iraqi government forces tried to put down an insurgency led by the Mahdi Army, a local militia controlled by a powerful Shia cleric named Muqtada al-Sadr.
“The Choice” follows an Iraqi man who joins the US military as an interpreterĮvery episode of The Long Road Home is structured, Lost-like, as the story of one person whose life is connected to the early battles in Sadr City, a suburban district of Baghdad. It’s situated in one character’s point of view, to be sure - but mostly on the page. This, ultimately, is where “The Choice” - a genuinely engaging episode of National Geographic’s Iraq War-set miniseries The Long Road Home, a fictional account of a true story - falls short of greatness. When creators are just trying to get through an episode as quickly as possible, most scenes will be shot from a dry, omniscient point of view - observing the events, but relying heavily on the script for emotional commentary and catharsis. There are obvious exceptions, but it’s telling that many of them (from The Sopranos to Girls to The Leftovers to Westworld) are on HBO, which often allows its episodes around double (and sometimes triple) the amount of shooting time compared to other networks.
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This takes time and purposeful direction, something that TV doesn’t always have room for when it comes to crafting episodes. This doesn’t mean, say, shooting everything like a particular character would see it (though that can work in some cases), but rather finding ways to shoot scenes to convey the proper emotional experience of those scenes, whether that’s something a particular character is feeling or something a whole group of characters is feeling. There are more obvious ways to pull this off - voiceover narration being the most overused - but a great director can situate you in point of view through careful shot selection and composition.
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In the best films, there’s real thought put into how to convey the perspective from which the story is being told, whether that’s a singular character’s point of view or a larger ensemble.
The thing that most separates film as a medium from TV as a medium isn’t size or spectacle or even typical viewing situation. The episode of the week for November 26 through December 2 is “The Choice,” the fifth episode of Nat Geo’s miniseries The Long Road Home. Every Sunday, we pick a new episode of the week.
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