"Hell is the impossibility of reason."

The pre-departure "course" on Vietnam that I have designed for myself includes a mini movie-marathon. Last night I watched Oliver Stone's PLATOON as the second installment of my Vietnam film series (the first was documentary HEARTS AND MINDS). I have a strong aversion to violent films, especially those with a lot of guns, so I have been avoiding this movie for years. Some prodding from my NYU film-grad boyfriend, combined with spirit of "openness" that I'm trying to maintain, finally got me to sit down and watch the film that won Best Picture in the year of my birth.

I would like to preface my thoughts about the movie by explaining that I have considerable guilt regarding my time in Vietnam. Guilt towards Vietnam and the Vietnamese people for the destruction we created, guilt towards Americans who fought, died, lost loved ones in the war. Although I have felt emotions ranging from excitement to fear regarding my trip, the strongest and most enduring emotion has been this guilt. I have been afraid to tell Vietnam veterans that I'm going to Vietnam. I've felt a backlash of sadness every time I say with excitement that "I'm going to Vietnam", knowing that so many people said the same thing under less favorable circumstances. I have been unable to figure out how the Vietnamese people can be so welcoming to Americans--a phenomenon I have already experienced in corresponding with some Vietnamese folks--given the sins that we committed against them. A man who I respect very, very much told me that my going to Vietnam is a way to help expunge those sins, but I still feel guilty for them. Guilty, and extremely sad.

PLATOON, draped in the sorrowful melody of Barber's Adagio for Strings, addresses the guilt I feel towards people of my own country who were victimized by the war. Director Oliver Stone (also an NYU film grad) served in the Vietnam War from 1967-1968, and his cinematic depiction of it is mostly drawn from his own experiences in and his own footage of the actual war. Even the characters are modeled after real people he knew in the war. While the film shows in detail the brutality of Americans against the Vietnamese, it primarily focuses on the dynamics between American soldiers within a platoon. The viewer (i.e, me) becomes invested not in the conflict between the "good" Americans and the "bad" VC, but between the "good" Americans and the "bad" Americans. The war, in this sense, is within the platoon. But the war is also within each individual, who battles between maintaining himself and giving himself over to the "enemy", the darkness, within. (This is also a theme found in my favorite book, Joseph Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS, and it's film adaptation, APOCALYPSE NOW.) Protagonist Private Chris Taylor makes this conclusion during the final shot of the movie: listen.

The experience of Americans in the war, then, was not as simple as just finding and killing the enemy. Stone's film illustrates how the classification of "enemy" became increasingly unclear, as members of a single platoon come to see each other as "enemies". (This vague definition of "enemy" among American soldiers exists in addition to the unclear status of Vietnamese civilians as potential enemies. Also in addition to the confusion of who's who during a shoot-out.) The platoon in the movie eventually crumbles into a quasi-civil war, half the men aligning themselves with brutish, scarred Sgt. Bob Barnes and the other half with the more civil, even-handed Sgt. Elias Grodin . Ultimately, Barnes kills Elias, our protagonist Taylor later kills Barnes, and all surviving men "lose their innocence" in the jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia.

(Barnes and Elias)

PLATOON also raised (in my mind, at least) some interesting questions about masculinity. Not surprisingly, and probably appropriately, the film featured few women. The only females were a handful of Vietnamese villagers-- a woman shot as an "example", her distraught 5ish-year old daughter, and two pre-teen girls being raped by a few members of the platoon. We meet all these women in the span of a few minutes, and while the whole film can be read in terms of questioning masculinity, the scenes with these women felt particularly telling to me. Barnes quickly shoots a village woman, and soon is holding her now distraught young daughter at gunpoint.
The men who have aligned with him are rooting for the extermination of the entire population of the village (think My Lai). Enter Elias. He walks up on the scene, releases the young daughter from the grip of Barnes, and knocks the hell out of Barnes with the butt of his gun yelling "We're not a damn execution squad!" (not sure if that's an exact quote, but it's reeeally close). This scene, I thought, issued an interesting comment about two alternative forms of masculinity within the terrible setting of the war--the more brutish, haphazard masculinity that kills indiscriminately versus a more humane, sensitive masculinity that seeks to minimize harm and even protect. The scene also helped to further develop the conflict of the "good" and "bad" Americans within the platoon. Ultimately, Elias has his way. No one else is killed and the villagers are evacuated while their town is torched. Meanwhile, protagonist Taylor stumbles upon the impending gang rape of the two pre-teen girls. He pulls the girls away from his platoon mates, who immediately mock him for being a "homosexual" for not participating. Taylor replies that the girls are "human beings" and criticizes the men for "just not getting it". This incident, like the previous one between Barnes and Elias, reflects what I see as Stone's creation of alternative versions of masculinity. Of course, these two incidents can be seen strictly as conflict between the "good" and "bad"--the enemies within the platoon--but I prefer to analyse these things through multiple lenses.

So, PLATOON presents us with questions of "enemy" and of masculinity. Stone also touches on the issues of class/socioeconomic status and race among the American soldiers. Taylor, a middle class white boy, drops out of college and volunteers for the army because he doesn't think it's fair that only the poor people are sent off to war while the rich can avoid the draft by going to college: listen. Although the US Army does not currently use conscription, the issues of socioeconomics and the army remain relevant and concerning.

As I said, PLATOON deals with the American side of the war and some of the reasons I feel guilty towards my own country people for the suffering inflicted by the war. While challenging to watch at times, the film successfully blurs the line between "enemy" and non-enemies, and for two hours, immerses the viewer in the chaotic, confused, hellish nightmare endured by American soldiers who were forced to choose between self-restraint and giving themselves over to the "enemy" inside. (Again, think HEART OF DARKNESS.) Upcoming flicks in the movie-marathon include BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, CASUALTIES OF WAR, THE DEER HUNTER, FULL METAL JACKET, APOCALYPSE NOW (seen, since it's the film adaptation of favorite book, but re-watching), GOOD MORNING VIETNAM, LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY, and RESCUE DAWN. All of these films, in fact, deal with the American experience of the war (and, interestingly, all but FULL METAL JACKET and the last two are made by Americans). While I am eager to gain more of the perspective offered by these films, I am hoping to find more media that enlighten me to the Vietnamese experience. HEARTS AND MINDS, a documentary about the war that I watched a few days ago, is such a film, made not by an American but by Brit Sir Peter Davis. This doc was much harder for me to watch than PLATOON, due to inclusion of actual footage that shows things like a tied-up Vietnamese man being shot point-blank in the head, and then falling to the ground with blood shooting out of the bullet hole like a fountain. Perhaps such stomach-churning reality is what makes it a must-see film about the war. An interesting combination of the Vietnamese and American perspective seems to be Stone's HEAVEN AND EARTH, a film he calls the final piece of his "Vietnam Trilogy" which includes PLATOON and BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY.

I've also ordered two Vietnamese films, CYCLO and VERTICAL RAY OF THE SUN, neither of which have to do with the war.

I would love suggestions about other movies, books, etc. I'm also looking forward to Stone's upcoming movies. He's currently filming a movie called W (or dub-ya), about George W. Bush (who was actually a classmate of Stone's at Yale before the latter dropped out). Stone is hoping to have it out before the election this year. After W will come PINKVILLE, Stone's return to Vietnam in a film about the investigation into the My Lai Massacre.

One last thought on the war. As a student of political science and international affairs, I can learn the facts, and quote the theories that "explain" the war and the various engines that drove it (and arguably all wars). But there is another part of me that just does not understand the war, or war in general. A part that does not let me get too close to the "rational" explanations of war. I cannot get over the absurdity, the self-defeating nature, the destruction, the absolute ridiculousness and chaos. These two parts of myself feel dichotomous, and I am trying to reconcile them--if that is even possible. As Pvt. Chris Taylor says about war at the beginning of PLATOON, "Hell is the impossibility of reason. And this place feels like hell."