PLATOON (1986)

Ira says

Approximately halfway through Platoon, there’s a moment where Charlie Sheen playing Chris Taylor, curses flying out of his mouth in a foul unending stream, roughly yanks an old Vietnamese woman and a young Vietnamese boy out of hiding. The boy smiles bravely in the faces of the American soldiers with an unspoken challenge, as Taylor yells and grills him. Till suddenly, Taylor stops, exhausted and there’s a moment of recognition on his face as he sees himself in that boy. A moment in which he suddenly knows he isn’t the ‘animal’ that some of his comrades have turned into, raping the young Vietnamese girls outside or killing without conscience. Seconds later, a young American soldier, Bunny played by Kevin Dillon shoots the smiling boy in the stomach.

That scene in the village shot in stark daylight, is the turning point in the narrative in many ways and the image of the village burning, the signal of the descent for these men into, as Conrad would say, the very ‘heart of darkness’. A place that is as murky as the predominantly dark setting Stone creates for most of the film. But the scene is also special because of another thing. It is so ironic to me that Taylor unleashed and more aggressive than we probably ever see him in the film, is so concerned with pulling out the young Vietnamese boy that he is oblivious to the old lady. A lady who could very well have been the same ‘grandma’ he writes affectionate, personal and sometimes painful letters to throughout the film. The same grandma who he confesses to about leaving his life of privilege to be fair to the socially rejected, poor and downtrodden ones who have no place else to go and are the ones who end up fighting for their country. (A feeling, as one of the characters points out in the film, only the ‘rich’ could have). But then war is the one state where everyone is equal, where class, race, even nationality sometimes doesn’t matter and where man’s primal instinct for violence rears its ugly head anyway.

It matters less to me that Platoon won 4 Academy Awards, or that it has the inklings of an Oscar film hidden in it because of its historical canvas, visual landscape, effective musical score, strong performances, and great writing. To me, it’s an important and meaningful film for other reasons. Based on the semi autobiographical experiences of Stone’s own time in Vietnam, this is one of his most personal and informed works and the genius here is in the small things, the details. We know Stone (Natural Born Killers, JFK) is a director who believes in realism, in stripping down issues like politics, society, and war and in bravely exposing the ugliness of human nature but in Platoon, a film about a young upper class ‘white’ boy (Taylor) who volunteers to fight for his country in Vietnam, he does it in a way that hits your gut.

This isn’t a film about the glory of war, or its heroes, it isn’t about patriotism or honor, as much as it is about the loss of innocence, and the coming of age of young men in the hardest possible way. Lingering on images of the men brushing teeth, or smoking marijuana, talking about girls or wildly shooting the enemy, Stone is able to get under the skin of things and often on your skin (think the red ants crawling along Sheen’s neck!) with the experience of war and what it does to you. The film opens with a hopeful, sad and ironic statement “Rejoice oh young men in thy youth”. Its interesting to me that Stone chooses Ecclesiastes because in this book of the Hebrew Bible, The Son of David also talks about man’s life being meaningless, life’s fleeting nature and faith in God. Ideas that are not overtly but silently and deeply questioned by Stone’s screenplay which ultimately leaves you with the sense of futility and life altering steeliness war causes to those who actually fought it, not those who sat in the ‘Washington D.C’s’ of the world. But Stone doesn’t take sides here, doesn’t judge, and deliberately leaves us to figure out whom the villains or the crusaders are. As that opening quotation turns into a blanket of dust, the uncertainty of war hits you, the strings of violins and that unforgettable theme music begins to swell and the screen clears onto a wide shot of an airfield where an army aircraft has just landed. And we meet Taylor, innocent, unprepared, apprehensive, watching a corpse being carried away. There is nothing here to rejoice in, no glory, and no cheerfulness. (Aside from that trippy, mock happy scene bathed in orange light where the men escape with beer and marijuana into an illusion of temporary happiness echoed later in a more gruesome scene soon after Sgt. Elias i.e. Willem Dafoe’s death.)

As the reality of Vietnam hits Taylor, it hits us too. A looming, overhead aerial shot of beautiful green foliage turns swiftly into a darkly lit, handheld shot of camouflaged frames as the men go on-ground, hidden behind the forest and themselves. Stone uses several lenses and depths in all his films and here within the first ten minutes these are once again, effective in taking us into his world. A low shot of sunlight filtering in through the trees, Sheens close-up and his eyes in extreme close-up say everything we need to know about that first experience of war, where a young boy, affectionately helped by some of his comrades, bullied and mocked by others, collapses on his first day. There is politics here and friendships too, and while he takes time creating the atmosphere, Stone doesn’t forget the human side of things, the fact that these men are living and breathing together, that relationships will inevitably forge and break. He isn’t afraid to look at that side of war, where the enemy is really and frighteningly, within.

Stone’ s screenplay, punctuated with Sheen’s somber, monotonic, and felt voiceover is rich, moving, at times humorous, grimy and always penetrative as it moves from the macro level of nations at war to the lives of these specifically drawn characters. Because Platoon is more than anything a character study of a group of the men of Bravo 6 fighting in Vietnam in 1967, it really could be any war at any time and that’s the beauty. Performances are fantastic all around especially Sheen, Defoe and my favorite Tom Beringer as Sgt. Barnes, the man who has been shot 7 times, stayed alive and has become unrecognizable not only through the scars on his face but by his inhuman nature. But as much as the landscape, the colors and the mood remain grey, stark, half hidden, and gritty, so do Stone’s characters. Who is a hero? And who’s to say who’s crazy? Stone ambushes you with these questions through a docu style, hard-hitting naturalness and a shocking intensity infusing that with moody music, the almost constant sounds of radios, choppers, the harrowing drone of machine guns and the quieter noises of crickets and of leaves crushing on the ground as the men move into the wilderness, externally and internally or wait, endlessly.

Platoon isn’t an easy film to sit through and as Stone allows that final battle to rage on with a fierce, uncompromising realism that just sucks you in and makes you forget this is a movie. You are thinking to yourself, ‘this is it. It doesn’t stop, it wont stop.’ He steadily forces you to watch bodies flying, men dying, and a world being destroyed. As blackened faces, charred corpses, and bloodied soldiers move across the final open ground, the man himself appears in a quiet, unaccredited cameo and I couldn’t help feeling he had to take himself there to complete telling us his story in perhaps a final effort to remind us that life is not and need not be that; that there is and always will be, a way to find ‘goodness and meaning’ to it. We hope so too Mr. Stone.

Neha says

Platoon (1986) released at a time when the cultural paradigm was shifting-cable television was raging and RAMBO was the new pin up, bubblegum action guru and then suddenly here came a film that didn’t coax or gloss but just ripped the bandage, revealing brutal, uncompromising truths about war but more specifically about those individual stories ingrained and shaped by battle. I still believe Cappola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) is the cult, allegorical Vietnam War movie but Platoon has the weight and complexity of a true, first-hand account that makes it undeniably real, immediate, intimate and so very personal. Director, Oliver Stone, an ex Vietnam War veteran himself, makes a film that “grew out of his own experience” and in that not only does he examine the carnage of the Vietnam chapter but he also manages to recreate some of that experience, through character, anecdotes and images. Stone’s semi autobiographical, dark tone along with the way his story absorbs the small and the big details goes a long way in making you relive the experience.

As the opening credits roll, we see our protagonist Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen) and Stone’s alter ego arriving in Saigon. His youth and idealism motivated him to enlist along with the class and race divides that unfairly meant the poor go to war and the rich enjoy the benefits. As Chris with his Platoon treks through the jungles, I could imagine Stone doing the same, contending with fear for his own life and this “hell” amidst the dark silences that tease with sounds of the wild- angry rainfall, buzzing bees, slippery insects, whispering leaves, fearful footsteps, the exaggerated sound of a heart beat along with interludes of a background score in eerie symphony manage to create this heightened atmosphere yet keeping the hyper realism of the experience in tact.

While life at base does get occasionally slow and overcrowded, the grounding force is Chris torn between the conflicting ideals of two heavy weights-a scarred and ruthless commanding officer Lt. Barnes (Tom Berenger) and a moralistic crusader Lt. Elias (Willem Dafoe). Taylor endures ambushes, a bunker explosion, fire fights, the atrocities of his own as they torture the weak and helpless and the moral, ethical dilemma’s confronting him each step of the way. Berenger with that scary physicality of his lends that drama to what is the strongest character of the film. Had it not been for his menacing intensity, overloaded dialogue like “You all know about killing? Well, I’d like to hear about it, potheads. You smoke this shit to escape from reality? Me, I don’t need this shit. I am reality” would have come off seeming like it belonged to another movie altogether.

It’s the subtle differences between Lt. Barnes and Lt. Elias interweaved in the story that are more effective. All those scenes with Elias smoking pot in a red flushed room with the camera distorting his face in extreme close up and drowning out dialogue creates that voyeuristic dynamic that’s such a contradiction to the gritty realism of Lt. Barnes and the decadence of cigarettes, alcohol and playing cards. Lt. Barnes is hardened by war to a fault while Lt. Elias played with a quintessential nice guy stroke by Willem Dafoe still believes in humanity as he gazes at the stars and talks about right and wrong. These characters and impressions seem so acutely real; their fate so gut wrenching and ironical; the dirty, uncomfortable realities that we love to turn our back on so blatantly observed that many a moment feels like a moment of truth. In contrast elements of theatrical realism manage to strangely fit into the scheme of things. When an important character dies for example, with his hands embracing the lord and with slow motion bullets invading his chest-Stone holds back and lets the powerful moment direct itself.

I’ve always found voice over’s to be an extremely tricky narrative tool. It’s like a serving of food-too little or too much in quantity or density can threaten to compromise an experience. While the historical significance, cultural viewpoint, competent performances and Chris’s personal struggle enrich his story, Stone tends to get heavy handed and philosophical with his voice over’s, contradicting at times the intended straight forward approach. At first it’s letters to his grandmother but eventually it’s just an affirmation of his premise- “I think now, looking back we did not fight the enemy, we fought ourselves and the enemy was in us.” I wonder-was it really necessary to say the obvious? Was Stone not confident his story was powerful enough to convey the message? Was he so personally attached to the process that he could not be completely objective? Questions I’d love to ask him if one gets the chance.