Friday, April 18, 2014
The Nam
I really liked Platoon. I had only ever seen pieces of it on T.V and I like Oliver Stone. However my favorite Vietnam War movie is definitely Apocalypse Now, Platoon like the reading says is closer to the reality of war. I love the Coppola film but it is a stylized impressionistic work, I think Apocalypse Now is how people of my generation see the Vietnam War. A war characterized by madness and claustrophobia paired with drugs and brutality.
I didn't know that stone himself was a Vietnam Vet but now it makes total sense. I agree with the reading's analysis of how Stone portrayed insane moral conundrums like the village scene. Vietnam was a terrible demonstration of the military's inability to deal with an insurgent force that was highly organized, uniformless soldiers moving within civilian populaces made identification of the enemy impossible. The panic and stress that Stone conveys in that scene is amazing and could only be drawn from real life experience. Stone was unafraid to show soldiers covered in bugs and snakes, he painted an accurate depiction of life in the jungle.
It was fun having never seen the opening of the film to see Willem Defoe paired with Christ imagery. Seeing Elias carrying his M60 like a cross all back lit was really weird. I remember shouting out "Christ imagery!" and for once I was right. The juxtaposition of Defoe and Berenger was really interesting. Berenger was a brutal barbarian akin to someone Kurtz from Apocalypse Now would've recruited. He had the "will" to win the war, through any means necessary. Defoe however was still guided by a kinder code of conduct, that probably saved his soul but not him.
Between Apocalypse Now and Platoon there seems to be a common theme of the primal warrior, chest pounding,trophy taking and drugs. This always interested me, it seems like admission of war's nature as the reading calls it "The ultimate male romance." Much like how Marlowe in Heart of Darkness goes into the jungle and sees human nature in nature and how Kurtz embraces it the soldiers of Vietnam war films remind me of unwilling children put into a place where anything goes and like Bunny says "you only gotta worry about dying..." It's interesting how the atmosphere of the jungle brings out images of primordial living and dying. Vietnam movies feel like a war was being fought out of time, set in a savage landscape unhindered by human contact but fought with high tech weapons, it borders on science fiction.
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I do think that this film is more realistic than a film such as Apocalypse Now. I thought it was interesting that you mentioned how panic that Stone shows could only be drawn from "real fear." I think that since Stone was a vet himself, he probably incorporated his own personal account. I also thought it was interesting how you mentioned Elias's character to showing Christ imagery. I thought that was a really powerful image.
ReplyDeleteI also thought the "ultimate male romance" was interesting and primal war. Watching this film I felt a sense that they were very isolated and alone.
I think that Apocalypse Now was a romanticizing of the Vietnam war. Platoon felt very real and in your face and made you uneasy when Apocalypse Now was just a ride that you got on and rid until the end or you just needed to get off and only after do you get to process what just happened.
ReplyDeleteIt would be a fun drinking game to yell out "Christ imagery!" while watching _any_ movie, at any random point during any random movie, but get to drink only if you're right. ET would induce the most godawful hangovers. I like the comparison with the phantasmagoria of Apocalypse Now, with regard to mythologized masculinity. There's a fair bit to work with there. More discussion of Platoon in the context of 80s revisionism would have been nice, and reference to the reading would have been even better.
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