Platoon

Writer-director Oliver Stohe is, of course, a personal favorite of mine. And with all the raves and advance publicity, coupled with the reading I had done on Vietnam a ways back, I was very hot to see this picture. Let me say at the outset that seeing it on a postage-stamp sized screen did not help. (There oughta be a law) But the picture is good. It is very good. Indeed, it is very, very good. It may even be great. Ironically, as I was watching it, I was a little disappointed. Not a lot, mind you--it wasn't bad or anything--but it seemed at the time not to be living up to my expectations. At the same time, it is true that those expectations may have been unfairly high.

Still and all, a curious thing happened afterwards. The more I thought about it, the more I liked it, and the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that it may indeed be great. I really think that I will have to go back and see it again to be sure. At the moment, I can say a few things. I do think it is the closest any of us will get to actually fighting in Vietnam (which is a good thing). I did have a couple of quibbles, which, again, seem increasingly inconsequential. For one thing, they really could have dispensed with the voiceover narration. I think the images speak perfectly for themselves; they do not need any help whatsoever.

In fact, the narration at times is a little bathetic (yes Bathetic). In this reagrd I agree with some of the reviews. But my main complaint is a little more complex. It is true that the movie recreates the feel of actually being in the war (at least what I imagine it would have been like) (and Vietnam vets seem to endorse it as such). But I thought or hoped or expected that in this way the picture would have helped the viewer to understand the motivations for some of the admittedly atrocious things that went on there. That is, by making us feel what they felt, we would know how they could have done some of the things they did. Oddly, the film did not do this for me. Viewing the awfulness, I could feel rage, revulsion, even hatred--of the land, the people, the situation--but I could not understand or condone some of the respinses of the soldiers. Perhaps it is impossible to elicit that kind of empathy from a viewer, or perhaps just from me, but in any event that was the biggest source of my disappointment. I really thought that by living it, I could feel the same response and thereby understand why certain things happened.

But this is not meant as a condemnation. Perhaps just the recreation of the world there is enough. It is interesting-by adhering closely to an absolutely flat presentation of what went on, the picture achieves a kind of hyper-realism, which at times became quite hallucinatory. Cannot help but compare it to the first Vietnam masterpiece, “Apocalypse Now.” But where that film synthesized a kind of madness to approximate the reality, “Platoon” uses a straight, nonjudgemental narrative to approximate the reality... which was a kind of madness. You could say (at least I will) that “Apocalypse” was an example of art imitating life imitating art, whereas “Platoon” is more like life imitating art imitating life. You get that? Trust me. In any event, it is a very moving and powerful experience, one that certainly merits a re-view. One of the few "must see" pictures around. And for the record let me say that the performances are universally superb. William Dafoe is rapidly becoming one of my favorites, but Berenger and Sheen are faultless, as is the rest of the cast. And Stone's direction is worthy of his script. He was, as they say, there.