As documentaries go, it's a real commitment signing on for the tour that is "Carrier," a 10-hour PBS series about life aboard the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Nimitz on a trip to the Persian Gulf and back.
Premiering Sunday night and taking up almost half of the week's public-broadcasting prime time, it might be viewed by a suspicious or uncharitable critic as the network demonstrating to its conservative critics that it knows how to wave the flag. Although there is no politicking by the filmmakers or much political expression from the people in it, "Carrier" is not incidentally a paean to military hardware and the men and women who work it, live in it, and keep it organized and clean...
...apart from whatever assurances the brass may or may not have been given, it is natural enough that after traveling for six months cheek-by-jowl with people who are (as seen here) hard-working, dedicated, friendly and all too human, the filmmakers would finally send them a valentine.
Even from a critical standpoint, one wants to make clear that, as with the Iraq war itself, one's problem with the film is never with the troops, but with the thing they have volunteered for...
A thing largely made of snippets and sound bites, it's restless and choppy, even when describing days of tedium.
Its aesthetics are too often those of Madison Avenue. Pop songs, overly loud on the soundtrack, needlessly amplify the obvious majesty of the ship, the seas, the jets and the mission, but more crucially swamp the series' small, delicate, human moments, making sentimental and "cinematic" what would otherwise be plainly moving.
This is especially true toward the end, when friends bid goodbye and families awkwardly reunite.
Just stripping off the soundtrack would improve the series by half.
The people we meet here have joined the Navy for all sorts of reasons, patriotic or practical or romantic; there is some diversity of opinion on the war, God and life -- though having opinions is not necessarily what leads to success in this world, described by one sailor as "a floating dictatorship defending a democracy."
It is a more homogeneous society than most, and yet diverse within those bounds, separated not so much by color and creed as by rank and job. Dissension is acknowledged in the series -- talking heads, often shot against a black background, speak up for themselves -- but it's not really shown being explored...
