Formal Film Study Vietnam War Films

    

I picked three films that I had heard were all very good in their own way. Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter and Platoon. All of them had star studded casts and all of them had won many Academy Awards, and all of them were very disturbing. Now personally I thought that the Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now were better films than Platoon because I think they did a lot more with cinematography and they had a more enjoyable story because they were much longer. Some things that connected these films were their political stance on the war and the way each film used sound to enhance the film.

First a quick summary of all three movies:

Apocalypse Now: The Protagonist Capitan Willard (Martin Sheen), is sent on a mission up the Nung River to eliminate an insane Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando). The story follows him on his wild adventures with his team to find Kurtz. Things become stranger and stranger the farther they go. Other big actors are Harrison Ford, Laurence Fishburne, and Robert Duvall. It won the Academy award for sound and cinematography.

The Deer Hunter: We follow a group of friends before, during and after Vietnam. They experience a lot of emotionally shocking things in Nam and have struggles readjusting following service. The Leader Michael is played by Robert De Niro and the best friend Nick is played by Christopher Walken who won the Academy Award for best supporting actor for this role. Other Academy Awards were Best Picture, Best Director (Michael Cimino), Best Editing, and Best Sound.

Platoon: We follow a year of service in Nam by our protagonist Chris (Charlie Sheen). After losing some men the Platoon has a civil war with itself over who they should follow, the honorable Elias (Willem Dafoe) or the dirty Barnes (Tom Berenger). Things go to hell when the men are more focused on who to kill in their own Army and not the VCA. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director (Oliver Stone), Best Sound and Best Film Editing.

Each movie either through dialogue or cinema said something about our Nation and the war. All of these movies were against the war certainly, which makes sense because they are all post 1975. Each have different arguments against the war. In Apocalypse Now there is a lot of dialogue and events that make the war seem ludicrous and that the Americans have no purpose to their fighting. For example, Robert Duvall’s character Kilgore is trying to surf in the middle of an attack on the VC. This kind of shows that the American soldiers were not fighting for something they believed was important. As we move farther and farther up the river less and less people are in charge. No CO’s are found and people are killing with no direction. At one point Playboy Bunnies give a show for the USO that ends in a sexual riot by the Soldiers trying to get at the girls. After that a voice over by Capitan Willard again showed that the Americans weren’t going to win because they didn’t have enough drive to fight. “Charlie didn’t get USO. His idea of R and R was cold rice and maybe some rat meat. He had only two ways home, Death or Victory.” And then during the visit to the French Plantation where we see the owner explain why the French don’t want to leave. They built the place into a civilization. They had lived there for hundreds of years and they called it home. But the Americans were fighting for nothing but control over people’s minds which he says is impossible.

 

In the Deer Hunter, we see that Americans do not understand how hard the war was on those who were actually in it.  They didn’t understand that these are not the same people they were when they left even physically but more so mentally. All of this is mostly through action shots and is aided by the lighting in certain scenes. When Michael first returns, he skips seeing all his friends and stays at a motel instead because he is unable to be happy at that moment, with his concerns about Nick and Steve. Then again when Michael flips out on Stanley in the woods because of the pistol he carries around. We see it in Steve when he refuses to leave the hospital for wounded warriors and he refuses to see his wife and child. And worst of all Nick, who is still in Saigon unable to cope with the amount of trauma that he has been through. The other criticism is that American excitement over sending our boys to war is foolish. Pre war we get almost an hour of Patriotic people at a wedding before the boys go off to war. But after all the intense things that happen in Vietnam that same Patriotism is there and it looks absolutely silly.

  

Platoon is not as focused as the other movies on the issues of the Vietnam war. Platoon has a lot to say about what is wrong with our military. There is a scene of dialogue about how the people who are fighting for this society are given nothing by this society. They have no jobs waiting for them at home, most didn’t graduate high school and almost all of them are poor.  The lowest people on the totem pole go to war but they have the least to fight for. It talks about how rich people always screw over poor people and they always will. I thought that that was a different take on the war and why it was bad. Money isn’t mentioned in the other two movies so it jumped out at me when he said it.

 

The one film element that stood out to me in all three films, also stood out to the Academy. All three movies won the Academy Award for best sound in their respective release year. All of them manipulate sound and music extremely well. In Apocalypse Now, the strange high pitched whine every time something strange is occurring gives the audience an uneasy feeling. It makes everything seem chaotic and dangerous. Perhaps the best use of sound is during Willard’s final encounter with Kurtz, you have this wild song by the Doors playing, Kurtz final recording “We train men to drop fire on people, but their officers won’t allow them to write fuck on their Airplanes because it’s obscene”, and then a tribal chant from a ritual being performed outside. It creates this feeling of total anarchy and chaos. Then it all cuts out as we hear Kurtz’s famous final words echo in the temple “the horror, the horror”.

  

In the Deer Hunter it was the music following Vietnam. After watching Russian roulette and people explode, the action moves back to Michael returning to the states. The music is this nice soothing piano with pleasant harmonies. The reason that this is so effective is because it gives the audience the same experience that Michael is going through. Jumping from high intensity music and action to soothing music and shots of small town America are too different. It doesn’t feel important or really filling because all of our minds are still in Vietnam just like Michael’s. Platoon’s sound really does a great job of helping the audience experience the anxiety and stress that a soldier in Nam would go through. When the action is in the jungle something is always happening in the sound, we always here shots or explosions or even just the sound of vegetation moving.  You always feel like something big could happen at any second. The sound creates this constant sense that so much more is happening than we can see. That must have been how soldiers felt in the thick jungle when they heard leaves move or shots in the distance but having no idea who caused them.

  

The final thing that I think should be noted about these films is that they range in believability. Apocalypse Now would never happen ever. It’s way too far fetched to think that this could actually happen. The Deer Hunter has some parts that are very unlikely but are still plausible, but it still feels very fictional. Platoon makes you feel like you experienced what war really was like in Vietnam. A lot of waiting, a lot of pain and anxiety, and a lot of displaced hostility. But overall I think everyone should see these three fantastic films.