By Jason O'Brien jaobrien@charter.net
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This film, the movie that catapulted Stone to success, still remains one of the classic films of American cinema. Platoon tells the story of Vietnam from the point of view of a young, naive infantry soldier, played by Charlie Sheen. The film showed the war in all of its ugliness and confusion. Partially based on Stone's own experience as a soldier in Vietnam, Sheen's character, Chris Taylor, finds himself in a completely different war from the faceless one being fought against the Vietnamese.
Stone made this film different from other war films in that he was able to show the horrors of war and the fighting without glorifying them. Instead, the effect is mass confusion, a generation lost in a struggle that it didn't really believe in, a group of young men fighting for a country that didn't really care or have a plan for what was really happening deep in the jungles, within their own platoons. This was the story we needed to see - it would be the first in a trilogy of Vietnam War films from Stone which probed deep into the Vietnam quagmire to show a new generation of Americans and for all those who were alive then the truth and the lies of that war. Both Berenger and Dafoe received Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor for their outstanding portrayals. This film still remains a favorite of mine because it shows Oliver Stone in his early brilliance, showing the promise of the kind of filmmaking we would soon see from him. Platoon is a political film which relayed its point through the human story, by showing the effects of war on these young men, and how the lives they later lived would always be shaped by a war in which their own country didn't believe in.
ANOTHER ANALYSIS OF PLATOON, By Victoria Baschzok
Platoon presented itself as the first attempt to reconcile
Americans with what had happened in Vietnam by telling the everyday truth
of how soldiers experienced the war. It was indeed constructed to heal the
still suppurating wound inflicted on the greatest nation in the world by
its defeat in open combat at the hands of a small, poor, third world
country.
In its final culmination of apocalyptic violence-a confused night
of smoke, explosion, light and sound-the platoon is defeated without the
Viet Cong becoming visible. They remain vague shadows in the trees. They
can not appear. In Stone's mythology American is neither fighting Vietnam
nor defeated by it. America is struggling to defeat the enemy within
itself. The great and good people are attempting to cast out the devil.
The early morning reveal a wasteland of bodies , some half-alive. One is
the devil sergeant, another the naive hero. He executes the devil, thus
freeing America.
The film ends with his rising from the disaster, again in a
helicopter. In voice-over, Chris reflects as he is evacuated:
Art heightens memory. As Riefenstahl demonstrated, propaganda can erase it
, as well as any sense of ethical reality. Stone's visual manipulation
literally exorcised the publicUs memory of failure and of . In the
aftermath of Platoon, other films , such as The Hill, were made,
reflecting this new perception, and slowly the general manner in which the
whole war was treated softened and became positive.
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His platoon's allegiance is split between two senior officers, Barnes (played brilliantly by Tom Berenger), and Elias (played by Willem Dafoe). Barnes is the war torn soldier, a man who has seen enough of war, and the war has taken its toll. He is a man who only knows to fight and therefore he often steps over the lines of human decency and law, especially in a riveting scene in a Vietnamese village when Barnes kills an innocent woman and threatens to kill her daughter, without remorse. Elias is also a war torn soldier, but is an idealistic one. He doesn't believe that the U.S. will win the war, but even though he has lost passion for what he is doing over there, he still represents the good, and the struggles between him and Barnes create an inner war in the platoon, which solidifies the statement of the horrors of war, and the war in Vietnam in particular.
Stone's method was built upon deceptively simple dramatic
conflict. His platoon was made up of a young, naive and well-intentioned
officer who commanded young, well-intentioned soldiers, including the
naive hero, Chris. The source of power in the group was a blondish, pale,
beautiful, gentle yet strong and wise sergeant. These people all believed
in the American dream and saw themselves as victims of injustice. The
source of power in the company was also a sergeant-a senior staff
sergeant. However, he was dark-skinned, cynical, scarred and cunning. The
first represented the American ideal; the second was the devil. To be more
exact, the second represented a constant in American history-the traitor,
Benedict Arnold in modern dress, the man who believes that men of
principle are weak, the force of evil within each person and therefore
within the nation. His cynicism and crude interpretation of reality enable
him to trick others into temporarily betraying the American dream.
The film rises through two successive apocalypses. The first ends
with the Christ sergeant being abandoned to a swarm of Viet Cong while the
company rises above him in helicopters in the care of the devil sergeant.
It is a false resurrection. A betrayal. We last see the good man who died
for them on his knees with his arms out as if on a cross.