Updates will be few and far between for a while. It isn’t that I have stopped watching films on a daily basis, it is that now they are of a decidedly homogeneous variety. I have been approved to write an honors thesis, something I am very excited about. It is about America’s cultural memory of Vietnam, which includes historical events, campaigns, memorials, books, comic books, music, and, of course, film. Therefore, since I was approved for this thesis about a week ago, I have only been watching Vietnam films – a genre I was already familiar with, one I will soon be very knowledgeable about. So, in an effort to keep this blog alive, I have decided to use my recent fixation as an entry.
The first widely viewed Vietnam film was John Wayne’s 1968 The Green Berets. Filmed during the war, it has the feeling of a World War II movie more than a Vietnam movie – the Vietnamese are portrayed very similar to the Japanese in The Bridge Over the River Kwai, and John Wayne’s patriarchal figure harkens back to war heroes of old. The film, one planned and directed by John Wayne himself, is propaganda, and not very good propaganda at that. It was not well received at its time and the years have been particularly nasty to it – the only thing that it really has going for it is that it was the first of one of Hollywood’s favourite subjects. The second major film was the antiwar documentary Hearts and Minds, which one the Best Documentary Oscar for 1974. Hearts and Minds is also propaganda, this time on the anti war side, but as far as propaganda goes it is probably the most brutally honest Vietnam film ever made – and apparently it is also Michael Moore’s favourite film of all time.
In the 1970’s, Vietnam was a taboo subject. America had just lost its first war, and nobody really knew how to deal with it. Besides movies about returning vets like Coming Home or Taxi Driver, not many films were made. This trend was reversed entirely at the end of the decade, when two of the most celebrated Vietnam films were released. The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now were both critical and commercial giants in the late 1970s – they won the film industries top awards (The Oscar for Best Picture and a Palm D’or, respectively) and each made a ton of money paving the way for the America’s return to Vietnam in the 1980’s.
When he returned to Nam, Rambo was able to take out the Vietnamese and the Soviets singlehandedly with just his knife and a bow and arrow. USA! USA!
The first widely viewed Vietnam film was John Wayne’s 1968 The Green Berets. Filmed during the war, it has the feeling of a World War II movie more than a Vietnam movie – the Vietnamese are portrayed very similar to the Japanese in The Bridge Over the River Kwai, and John Wayne’s patriarchal figure harkens back to war heroes of old. The film, one planned and directed by John Wayne himself, is propaganda, and not very good propaganda at that. It was not well received at its time and the years have been particularly nasty to it – the only thing that it really has going for it is that it was the first of one of Hollywood’s favourite subjects. The second major film was the antiwar documentary Hearts and Minds, which one the Best Documentary Oscar for 1974. Hearts and Minds is also propaganda, this time on the anti war side, but as far as propaganda goes it is probably the most brutally honest Vietnam film ever made – and apparently it is also Michael Moore’s favourite film of all time.
In the 1970’s, Vietnam was a taboo subject. America had just lost its first war, and nobody really knew how to deal with it. Besides movies about returning vets like Coming Home or Taxi Driver, not many films were made. This trend was reversed entirely at the end of the decade, when two of the most celebrated Vietnam films were released. The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now were both critical and commercial giants in the late 1970s – they won the film industries top awards (The Oscar for Best Picture and a Palm D’or, respectively) and each made a ton of money paving the way for the America’s return to Vietnam in the 1980’s.
When he returned to Nam, Rambo was able to take out the Vietnamese and the Soviets singlehandedly with just his knife and a bow and arrow. USA! USA!
And what a successful return it was. Thanks to films like Rambo: First Blood II and Missing in Action, America got to win this time around. The actual history, in most cases, was quickly discarded, and Vietnam became a fantasy world. Oliver Stone, who served in Vietnam as a young man, promised a realistic look at the war in Platoon, but, although successful in creating a great film, he did not confront the history, the Vietnamese people, or anything other than a mans personal conflicts with the war. He did better with his second attempt, Born on the Fourth of July, a biopic of anti war veteran Ron Kovic. Definitely one of the better Vietnam films, Born on the Fourth of July dispels several veterans myths, and actually portrays an honest account of one of the majority of veterans who came home to protest the war. Good Morning Vietnam, a Barry Levinson film starring Robin Williams, is one of the few films that shows the 85% of the soldiers who were not in combat missions. In it, Robin Williams plays a radio announcer based on Adrian Cronauer. The film list continues – Stanley Kubrick, my personal favourite director, made a contribution, Full Metal Jacket, where he tells the story of a few Marines, and unlike other filmmakers, really gives the viewer a sense of why we lost the war.
Vietnam mania went into the early nineties with films like Heaven and Earth, Jacob’s Ladder, and Forrest Gump. In 1995, Bill Clinton normalised US diplomatic relations with Vietnam, and the films seemingly stopped, however, a new figure emerged in US cinema. In Independence Day and The Big Lebowski, a key supporting player is the unadjusted veteran, one who is seemingly unable to get over the war years later. In reality, this is mostly a mythical figure – there are no more unadjusted Vietnam vets than World War II vets, but that does not stop Hollywood from using him as an archetype.
"Look, Larry. Have you ever heard of Vietnam?"
Since the events of September 11th 2001, Vietnam has been replaced as the spectre that haunts America’s past. Film’s are still being made, but in lesser numbers. Perhaps the most telling is 2008’s Tropic Thunder, which proves that as a country, we are finally far along to realise how crazy the whole thing was and to laugh at it. Then again, with films such as We Were Soldiers and only a passing mention of the war in the TV series the Kennedys, maybe we still cannot yet call it over. For Hollywood, the war still rages, and it is going to be my duty in my thesis to make sense of all of it. Wish me luck.
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