Platoon

365 Films

Entry #149

Platoon (1986)

Directed by Oliver Stone

It seems moot at this point to ask for a little bit of indulgence on the part of the brave few who still dare to tread through this infrequently updated blog, but I will ask it nonetheless.  I have just finished Nick Turse's remarkable book, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam in which Mr. Turse lays out a thoroughly convincing case about how the U.S. involvement in Vietnam came to resemble more a war against unarmed civilians than the North Vietnamese soldiers they were sent over to fight in the first place.  Orders came from the very top that resulted in the death and injury of millions of North and South vietnamese civilians alike as soldiers were taught to disregard any and all rules of engagement as the literal mantra of "kill anything that moves" was endlessly pounded into their skulls.  A few of these war crimes have managed to spur a fair amount of media attention such as the my lai  massacre and the incident at hill 192 but even those atrocities were written off as the actions of a "few bad apples."  Turse's book attempts to dis lodge that myth permanently from the American psyche and he does so with devastating first hand accounts of some of the most unimaginable horrors that not even the most hard bitten fiction writer could concoct.  Upon finishing the book, my interest in revisiting a selection of films about the war perked up instantly.  The first one that popped to mind was to write about also happens to be the first one I saw, Oliver Stone's Platoon.  Platoon came to me already in myth form for most of the major events of the piece were relayed to me by my brother after he had watched it for a high school class.  I don't want to say I was enraptured by the tale or that it was told to me as some sort of bedtime story, but something about the images, even in descriptive form, spoke to a kind of nightmare hell-scape as cinema.  That is exactly what Platoon feels like, even some twenty-seven years after it's release.  Drawing from personal memories and recollections, writer-director Oliver Stone has created one of the most intensely personal war films ever made.  Particular details like Stone stand-in Chris Taylor's (Charlie Sheen) almost mild indifference to learning of a parasitic leech sucking on his cheek, or the rhythms of each individual soldier's particular style of speech lend the feeling of total immersion.  It's as if we were being plopped down into the middle of the shit just like Taylor is at the beginning.  What Platoon also executes rather beautifully is an articulation of the moral and philosophical argument that is truly the heart of the film.  While the voice over narration confirms (a little too neatly, but that's okay) that Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger) and Sgt. Elias (Willem Defoe) are battling for possession of Taylor's soul, the implications of this internal conflict appear to ripple outwards through the rest of humanity.  On my most recent viewing, I came to see Platoon as another exploration on the part of Mr. Stone of a subject that has fascinated him throughout his filmmaking career: the schism and disappointments of the American Left.  While Barnes and Elias don't quite break down into the opposing forces inherent in the progressive movement, I could make the argument that Barnes represents the "fuck-it-all" apathy nature of the left while Elias stands for the engaged, active, and connected nature of the movement.  Again, these labels are a little reductive but Stone does make it abundantly clear that Bravo Company, 25th infantry division is more than a Platoon near the Cambodian border, it's a microcosm of America and its culture.  That is what ultimately gives Platoon it's breathtaking scope and heartbreaking clarity into the nature of war, it's a personal story with global implications.  And while Taylor escapes and emerges from the ruin and destruction with what appears to be some inkling of an insight (the haunting final shot says more about this than words ever could), it's hard to forget the fact that we've just watched a mild mannered and naive young man turn into a damaged killer in a span of two hours.  One doesn't so much finish with Platoon as they do emerge from it.  It's a hell of an experience either way.