True Blood and The Vietnam Vet
I read a lot. All sorts of things. Classics, literature, prize winners, pure entertainment, crime and thriller, some Fantasy… I am curious when I hear people enthuse about a book. That´s how I got lured into reading the first two in the Southern Vampire Series, Dead Until Dark and Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris. I do not really want to go into this reading experience here (I do understand why the series is succesful), nor is this the place to analyse women´s obsession with vampires (…. maybe…or,…..no, I don´t even go there…), what caught my attention early on was the character Terry Bellefleur. I felt he was very intense and with very few words Charlaine Harris captured the personality of a truly traumatized person. Without elaborating this character much she added another dimension to the already multi-faceted people swarming these books. Like in many Vampire novels before the Sookie Stackhouse series, one of the major themes is the outsider, someone who has lost contact with the society or was never part of it. And since the Southern Vampire books are populated with so many different types of fictitious and real outsiders like vampires, shape-shifters, homosexuals, Afro-Americans, addicts, the addition of a Vietnam vet seems of almost stringent logic.
I had read the books before even hearing of the series but was very curious to watch it. Six Feet Under will always be my favourite series so it was only logical I would at least have a look at what magic Alan Ball would be weaving in True Blood. I was not disappointed. This series is just great fun. Very sexy and daring. Great cast, great stories, greatest intro song to any series ever (sure, it is only my humble opinion).
Writers and director took quite a few liberties especially with the cast. Many characters are much more developed than those in the book. Some are totally different, like Tara. Other types of outsiders are added, like alcoholics.
And what about our Vietnam vet? Miraculously transformed into an Iraq veteran to offer identification to the younger audience and to raise the awareness and understanding of and for those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. This is more or less the explanation given by the producers. Quite nice, only it does not work for me. It does not feel right. I cannot explain it, but to me he is and will always be a Vietnam vet. No matter how much rationalization they put into his “transformation”.
When the actor Todd Lowe, whom many know from Gilmore Girls, was asked how he did prepare for the role, he explained he pictured a Vietnam vet that he had known as a young man. A homeless guy that talked him into giving him his cigarettes.
I wonder if there is not another reason to switch from Vietnam to Iraq. Maybe the age? Would a Vietnam vet not be much older than a guy returning from Iraq and Afghanistan? Of course this is a rhetorical question. Maybe the producers, even though they are extremely inclusive of marginal groups did not want to embrace the elderly? Now, don´t tell me this is not food for thought. Aren´t we living in a society that is ever so obsessed with age? Aren´t the vampires ageless…always young, always beautiful? There is a certain logic in ostracizing the elderly from a vampire movie, right?
Or – which is not much better – did they think it was too hard to believe that someone could still suffer from PTSD after having come back such a long time ago? If so, what do they know?
I think they should have let this be. And I don´t buy the explanations. I would have preferred Terry Bellefleur to be an elderly Vietnam vet.
What about you?
I have to post the opening credits here for you, they are just too good to be missed and, let´s be honest, when will I ever get another chance to do this in a blog on war movies? Although…Come to think of it… what about a post dedicated to Generation Kill and Alexander Skarsgard….
Vietnam War Movie Quotes Film Quiz 4
Do you have a favourite quote?
I have one. It is the first one below. Maybe it is of dubious taste. I don´t know. It is only a very short exchange but I think it does convey a lot. It is taken from what I think is one of the most emotional Vietnam movies. I´m sure many of you know it.
Movie 1
“Sir, I don’t know how to tell this story.”
“Well you have to, Joe. You tell the American people what happened here. You tell them how my troopers died.”
“Yes sir.”
Got it? No, no, don´t worry. It is not over yet. I´m only just starting. Here are another few for you to puzzle over. Solutions follow as well.
Movie 2
“We gotta play with more bullets.”
“What?”
“More bullets… “
[gunshot]
“I gotta get more bullets in the gun.”
“What?”
“We gotta play with more bullets.”
“More bullets in the gun?”
“More bullets in the gun.”
“How many more bullets?”
“Three. That means we gotta play each other.”
“More bullets against each other?”
“We gotta do it! “
“What? Are you Crazy?”
“Nicky, it’s the only way. I’ll pick the moment. The game goes until I move. When I start shootin’, go for the nearest guard, get his gun and zap the fucker!”
“I’m not ready for this! “
“You gotta listen to me… You wanna stay down here and die? Go on. It’s up to you. Now it’s up to you.”
“NOOOOOOOO!”
“Hey! Him against me! Side by side! Side by side!”
“Get away! Get away!”
“Side by side! Me and him! Me against him!”
Movie 3
“They burned the flag and they demonstrated against us; it’s on the cover of the paper today. They have no respect. They have no idea what’s going on over there, Mom – the men that are sacrificing their lives. People are dying every day over there, and nobody back here even seems to care. It’s a bunch of goddamn shit if you ask me!”
“Ronnie, don’t take the Lord’s name in vain – not in front of the children. I agree with everything you say!”
“I served my country – and they just want to take from it – just take, take! Love it or leave it, that’s what I think.”
Movie 4
“Go back to your son. Make him the best son you can. That is the war you must fight. That is the victory you must win!”
Movie 5
“I just want to begin by saying to Roosevelt E. Roosevelt, what it is, what it shall be, what it was. The weather out there today is hot and shitty with continued hot and shitty in the afternoon. Tomorrow a chance of continued crappy with a pissy weather front coming down from the north. Basically, it’s hotter than a snake’s ass in a wagon rut.”
Movie 6
“You took an oath, Mr. Cole. You, too, Mr. Grafton. You took an oath to defend the constitution and obey the orders of the officers appointed over you. It’s the same oath that every officer in the navy has taken for damn near 200 years. And during all that time, the military has obeyed the civilian elected government. Now, they might not have always been right, or wise… or even smart, but they were elected. Any other way and the United States would be nothing more than another two-bit military dictatorship.”
“ Why did you do this, Cole? An officer with your fine record? Did you think you were going to win the war?”
“Frankly, sir, I think we’re going to lose this one. But I do love the work.”
“ Mr. Cole, you may find that amusing, but we don’t. Gentlemen, this is our country you’re messing with. Well, Mr. Grafton, you have an attentive audience here. Perhaps you can explain to us why you thought a one-plane war was the way to go.”
“Well, sir, we bomb worthless targets night after night – I mean, three tents under a tree… sampan repair yards that have been hit ten times already. Sir, you know the list better than I do. My first bombardier and 50,000 other Americans are dead and… can anyone tell me why? I realize that I’m Lieutenant Nobody. I’m… I’m not really sure about anything anymore. This war’s become very confusing. Nobody… nobody wants to fight in it. Nobody seems to want to win it. Maybe it never should have happened, but people do die in it. Maybe for me, it got personal, because I do know the difference between dying for something and dying for nothing. I know that’s no excuse. I… I know that. And I broke the faith, and for that, I am truly wrong. Perhaps I should hang.”
“Hanging, Mr. Grafton, is no longer a punishment much in use. But a prison term in Leavenworth is, or a dishonorable discharge if a court-martial should so decide. But whatever happens,I think it’s safe to say that your career in the navy is over. The only question’s how.”
Movie 7
“Darling, believe me, I try not skip a day in writing you. Whether or not I get a letter determines if it’s a good day or not.”
I hope this quiz was not too easy for you. Here are the movies (yes, one is not strictly speaking a movie) in the wrong order followed by the solution underneath.
Heaven and Earth, Born on the 4th of July, Dear America, Flight of the Intruder, We were Soldiers, Good morning, Vietnam, The Deer Hunter.
Movie 1, Movie 2, Movie 3, Movie 4, Movie 5, Movie 6, Movie 7
Regeneration aka Behind the Lines (1997) or Psychiatry, Poetry and Shell Shock during WWI
Based on British novelist Pat Barker´s incredible book Regeneration, the first book in her Regeneration trilogy, this movie has an awful lot to offer. Unfortunately like some other brilliant war movies (e.g. When Trumpets Fade) it never got its due appreciation by the public. This is a bit sad since everybody included in this film, especially the actors, did a brilliant job. Jonathan Pryce´s way of playing the eminent Dr. Rivers in such an understated manner impressed me a lot.
Set in WWI England and the French trenches Regeneration looks into so much more than just into it´s central theme shell shock. Class and duty, courage and a sense of utter futility coming from the colossal losses of lives are some of many themes.
Another interesting aspect is that Regeneration also looks at the birth of a medical discipline namely psychiatry in its struggle to become a well-respected way to cure people. During the times depicted in the movie however its sole purpose was to restore the ill young men and make them fit to be sent back to the trenches.
A further central theme is the poetry of young poets such as Siegfrid Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. The people we encounter at the heart of this movie are mostly intellectuals.
The story circles around the poet Sassoon (James Wilby) who is considered to be a war hero. He has written a letter of protest against this war that is still going on despite all better understanding. To avoid court-martial he is sent to the asylum to be treated for shell shock. He does have recurring nightmares but apart from that he seems unharmed.
As mentioned before we also find a thematization of the topic of class. The officers were mostly from the leading upper class. One patient however made it to a higher rank without the usually required background. One more look from another angle at this complex mess of a war.
There are many other patients in the asylum that have been marked more deeply than Sassoon. Some stammer, some lost their speech altogether, others suffer from hallucinations, delusions or other forms of psychotic reactions. One of them, Billy Prior (Johnny Lee Miller), is a very interesting character, so is Wilfred Owen (Stuart Bunce), the young poet.
Dr. Rivers (Jonathan Pryce) who is also a leading anthropologist is a very gentle psychiatrist (We learn more about him in the novels. The sequels to Regeneration, The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road elaborate these aspects. Being an anthropologist myself I would have liked to see sequels of those movies. As an avid reader it is rare I am truly impressed by books but I was when reading this trilogy. Unbelievably good.). He tries to heal by listening to his patients and help them regain their memory of often unspeakable horrors. Empathy and compassion are Rivers´ trademarks. He cares deeply for his patients and it is tragic when he ultimately realises that all he does is cure them to send them off to face a certain death.
During the movie we are also shown one other doctor´s techniques at curing mutism originating in shell shock. They are revolting to say the least.
What made this movie so remarkable is the way it chose to show the scenes in the trenches. Even tough it is a color movie, the use of color during the trench scenes is attenuated, creating almost black and white sequences. This is convincingly artful. The just middle between the black and white of All Quiet on the Western Front and the corny choice of color in Passchendaele.
Regeneration is one of the best war movies on WWI. It excells in showing the absurdity of war, friendship among men, the birth of a discipline, the power of poetry to convey even the most horrible adequately. Yes, it is a rich movie. Would I want to do it justice, this already long post would be at least three times longer. Putting my review in two words: Watch it!
Should you be interested in more background information you should read a first hand account of one the people shown in the movie. Why not read Robert Graves´ (played by Dougray Scott) autobiography Goodbye to All That? Graves was Sassoon´s closest friend and responsible for his escaping court-martial. Of course Paul Fussell´s book The Great War and Modern Memory does also take a closer look at the above mentioned poets. This is dense however not less recommended reading.
Regeneration at amazon.com, amazon.co.uk ,amazon.de
Everyman´s War (2009) is retelling The Battle of the Bulge
I don´t really know what to say about this movie. Basically I think it is a missed chance. It contains too many flaws to be really good but still has quite a few touching moments. One would like to grab the filmmaker and give him a good shaking because it would not have needed much to be satisfying.
Everyman´s War is based on the story of Thad Smith´s, the film director´s father. Sgt. Don Smith was part of the 94th Infantry Division fighting for Nennig, a small town in Germany during the Battle of the Bulge. The Battle of the Bulge was one of those notorious big battles that had to show up with an enormous cost in lives. Being one of the decisive battles, the last big Nazi offensive, it overshadows other battles like the one at Hurtgen Forest that was so skillfully depicted in When Trumpets Fade. The battle of Bastogne Forest that we saw in Band of Brothers is also part of the Battle of the Bulge. Smith lands in Europe around Christmas 1944, just when the offensive begins and stays in Europe until the end of the war.
The tragedy of the battle is well shown in Everyman´s War. The Army command misjudging the German´s will to fight thought they would never attack during ice-cold weather, snow and temperatures below zero. But they did.
Sgt. Smith´s courageous fight, the love for his comrades and his despair about losing them is well shown. So are the battle scenes. As long as there is no music all is fine. Sadly the choice of music is bad and ostentatiously corny. And so is the background story, the home front bits (think the end of Saving Private Ryan and dip it in sirup).
This is frustrating as the main theme, alluded to in the title, is nicely executed. This was everyman´s war. Everybody was in it. The French, the English, the Americans, but also the Germans and the German Jews. Moments where the film achieves to make us feel sorry for everyman involved are truly good.
One last word on the use of language that will only annoy people who understand German. 90% of the actors impersonating German´s are not Germans and have bad accents and an unintentionally funny way of pronouncing the German words. However this will not bother speakers of other languages. Apart from that the portrait of Germans is quite just.
Having said all this I just think it is a pity. This could have been a good film but now we are left with a 3 (out of 5) star achievement.
History versus Story or Platoon versus Hamburger Hill
I named both these infantry combat movies among my Top 10 favourite war movies (of course, since this list ist out there for everybody to see I doubt its content. Typical.). Apart from thinking that these are great representatives of the genre I think they illustrate wonderfully the topic “history versus story” and why critics often rate the second as the better movie, whereas the general public will be more likely to prefer the first one.
Hamburger Hill is foremost based on a historical event, namely one squad´s battle for Hill 937 in the A Shau Valley of Vietnam from May 11- 20, 1969. The squad consisted of 14 U.S. Army soldiers of B Company, 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. The battle was later called Hamburger Hill since the losses were so high and the American soldiers literally shredded to minced meat.
You can not be more precise than this when chosing to tell a story in a movie. That is the theme, and that is what is shown. No niceties, no made up story, no sugar coating to make the bitter pill go down any better. War movies don´t get any more visceral than that.
And then there is Platoon. We know the year and that some events resemble other events that happened but apart from that this is purely fictional. Especially the whole good and bad officers theme and a young soldier´s loss of innocence. All these roles are played by famous actors which is not the case for Hamburger Hill.
As I said before many critics rate Hamburger Hill higher than Platoon and from an intellectual point of view I can´t blame them. But I don´t agree. They think it is more realistic. Somehow morally superior. There is not a tiny spark of beauty in that movie. OK, I agree. But… If we really wanted pure unadulated realism, authenticity, moral education, unambiguity, shouldn´t we stick to documentaries? (And even those can show us whatever they want to make us believe has happened. But this is not the subject here).
I´m afraid but I like a bit of symbolism and an interesting story. And I also judge movies by the criterion whether their pictures stay in my memory or not.
For many of these reasons if been considering lately to kick out Hamburger Hill of my Top 10 list and integrate one of the most artistic Vietnam war movies ever: Full Metal Jacket.
Yes, right, why wouldn´t I?
Escape from Huang Shi aka The Children of Huang Shi (2008)
Believe it or not but Escape from Huang Shi is an Australian, Chinese, German co-production telling the true story of a British journalist. What a combination. This gives the movie a very authentic feel, especially due to the fact that we hear as much Chinese as English (and some Japanese).
If anyone has liked the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as much as I did (I think it is one of the best movies ever. One could almost call it a martial-arts fairytale), he or she will be pleased to see Michelle Yeoh and Yun-Fat Chow in the same movie (however no joint scenes).
But this is not the only pleasant surprise of this quite enjoyable movie.
The story is similar to Welcome to Sarajevo, only this journalist here, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers (who is really good in this), is doing something even more courageous. He stays in the country to help the orphans.
It is absolutely incredible what some people are capable of doing even when facing adversity at its worst. This is a story of someone who was capable of overcoming his own fear, of reinventing a life for himself and a group of orphan boys and creating a home for them.
George Hogg, a young British journalist, arrives in China in 1937 finding the country being invaded by the Japanese. Air raids, floods of refugees on the streets, he´s afraid and thrilled at the same time hoping for the story of his life. He gets it only not the way he had hoped for. He soon sees himself in great danger and is led by an Australian nurse to Huang Shi. She leaves him there to struggle with famine, the depressions and aggressions of some 60 orphaned boys who have seen the worst and the insecurity of a life on the border of a war.
In wonderful pictures we see him overcome the urge to escape and help those children transform the barren land around them into a fertile garden. He is assisted in this by a mysterious tradeswoman Madam Wang (Michelle Yeoh) who sells more than just seeds, by Chen (Yun-Fat Chow) the leader of a communist partisan group and of course the Australian nurse (Radha Mitchell) he is secretly in love with.
When the Japanese and the air raids start to approach Huang Shi, Hogg must make a decision. He wants to flee and take the children on a journey over 500 perilous miles across the snow-bound Liu Pan Shan mountains to safety on the edge of the Mongolian desert. This seems almost impossible to achieve.
The movie reminded me a little bit of The Painted Veil (no, it is not a war movie). Same beautifully filmed landscapes. And those sumptuous and, for us exotic, Chinese interiors of the time. The story is already quite captivating but the beauty of those landscapes alone would have been enough to enchant us.
To Remake or Not to Remake: e.g. All Quiet on the Western Front, Psycho, Dangerous Liaisons
We have been flooded by a recent wave of remakes (Fame, Predators, …) some of which seem redundant to say the least. I do not think it does make any sense to remake a movie that is fairly recent and to re-do it just the way it was, only exchanging the actors to attract a younger crowd of spectators.
However, some movies like theater plays (e.g. Hamlet, hence the title of this post) make interesting material for reinterpretation.
I remember that when I heard Hitchcock´s Psycho had been remade by Gus Van Sant I thought it was pointless but when I saw it I found that it had its charm. Adding color and playing with this gave it a totally new feel. If you want to get a bit of an impression watch this YouTube movie someone did to compare both versions.
All Quiet on the Western Front is one of those movies that can do with a remake. I know it is a classic and one of the most important war movies of all times and many a reader will think it hateful to encourage such a thing. Still I believe it would benefit from it. (I know that it has already been done for TV). All Quiet on the Western Front is really old. We are talking 1930. The acting has still the feel of the silent movie era that only just ended in 1927. The acting is over dramatic. A lot of the facial expressions are exaggerated (not as bad as in the real silent movies more like on the stage). The whole pictorial language of the acting, so to speak, is hard for us to understand. To enjoy a movie like this nowadays you have to know a lot about film history and be interested in it.
What works very well in the original All Quiet on the Western Front is the depiction of the atrocities of war. Whenever the focus is not on the actors it is fabulous. Hands that are gripping barbed wire but are no longer attached to a body… Those very nuanced shots in black and white accentuate the horror and give a more realistic impression. Black blood looks somehow more like the real blood than overly red blood does.
All this will be a challenge for the film director of the upcoming 2012 version.
Furthermore let´s not forget that the movie is also already a reinterpretation since it is based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque. And like with plays where no one takes offense when another director takes it up again, one could claim that this is not really a remake of the movie but a reinterpretation of the book. (I can think of another literary phenomenon that has been turned into a movie at least three times and all of the versions I have seen are extremely interesting and well done. I´m thinking of Les liaisons dangereuses aka Dangerous liaisons the novel by Choderlos de Laclos. First there was the French movie by Vadim (1959), then the Stephen Frear´s remake (1988) with Michelle Pfeiffer, Glenn Close and John Malkovich and last but not least Cruel Intentions (1999) with Ryan Phillippe, Reese Witherspoon and Sarah Michelle Gellar.)
I have uttered my reservations as to the cast of the new All Quiet on the Western Front (see my post on My Boy Jack and Daniel Radcliffe) but apart from that I´m curious to see if they will do the book (and not so much the film) justice.
Remarques´s book is one of the best anti-war books of all times. It is so good that when I had finished it and read that it had been translated into 50 languages and sold over 20 million times I could not believe that anyone anywhere in this world could have ever wanted to start a war again.
Unfortunately literature is not as powerful as that.
Under Fire: A Century of War Movies, edited by Jay Slater (2009)
Under Fire is simply a must-have for people seriously interested in war movies or even movies in general.
It contains a collection of essays on all sorts of topics regarding war movies, from WWI to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many different people have contributed to this very dense work. Well-known film critics and academics alike.
This is really something to sink your teeth into. Quite demanding reading but extremely insightful.
For example did you know how important YouTube´s influence was on contemporary Iraq movies (yes, I even started to understand Redacted)? Or how Vietnam changed the war movies? Do you know a lot about British propaganda movies of WWII? Did you consider to interpret Starship Troopers as WWII and Nazi satire?
These are only a few topics of many that are analysed in these very thoroughly researched essays.
Sure, this is no movie guide as such. It is not recommending or rating anything. Under Fire provides criticism and analysis for those who like to interpret not only the apparent but also the subtext.
This book is really worth having and I am quite excited about this find that manages so well to show the variety, the depth and the virtuosity of war movies.
Here you find the link to the publishing house. It contains an interview with the editor and interesting additional chapters.
Katyn (2007) or The Crime and the Lie about a Gruesome Massacre on Polish Officers
This is an outstanding movie. Truly outstanding from every possible point of view. Narrative style, cinematography, actors, story, technical aspects. Absolutely great.
The Polish movie Katyn is about the massacre of some 22000 Polish officers by the Russian army and the subsequent disposal of their bodies in the Katyn forest in 1940. Once the mass grave is found in 1943 the so-called Katyn list is established. After having waited anxiously for the return of their fathers, husbands, sons and brothers the families are now informed if or if not their loved ones have been among the victims. However not all the victims are on the list. Many more a still missing and may or may not have been murdered. Many wives still wait for their husbands in 1945.
The movie focuses on two families. One is the family of a Polish General, the other the family of a Polish officer. The story is told in two sequences. The first half tells the story until the massacre, the second tells the story of the lie and ends again with the massacre but this time shown much more explicitly (The way these murders were executed…How can people do this to people?). After the first half we think the story should be over but in reality it only just begins. Seeing it first from the point of view of the victims, we are then guided towards the point of view of the families who wait for them. Their ordeal is a different but very cruel one. Even though everybody knows who killed those officers, officially it is said to have been a massacre committed by the Germans. To say otherwise would be very dangerous. The political climate of the time that made it impossible to even mention a critical view of this incident until 1989 is palpable in all its atrocity.
On my DVD of this movie is an interview with the Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda. He tells the interviewer how difficult it was to make this movie. He didn´t know how to tell the story. Should he tell his father´s story, who had been among those officers, or his mother´s who was one of those who did not give up hope until 1945. He decided eventually to tell both stories, juxtapose them, have one mirror the other. This is very skillfully done. Wajda belongs to the so-called Polish Film School and has made many movies, two of his better known earlier ones also deal with WWII: A Generation aka Pokolenie (1955) and Kanal (1957) about the Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto.
This film is truly the work of a master, of someone who does not just deliver a story but who weaves it carefully, adding symbolism and criticism alike. And still it is highly watchable.
Air Combat Film Pictures Quiz 3
This is a themed variation on an older quiz.
Let´s see how good you are at finding out those movie titles. Don´t just click immediately on the pictures as some reveal the movie´s title. No cheating!
