Prof's Choice
"Coming Home," directed by Hal Ashby (1978) A paraplegic Vietnam veteran becomes an anti-war activist. One of the few films to consider the role of women during the war.
"The Deer Hunter," directed by Michael Cimino (1978) A powerful film that narrates the Vietnam War's tragic impact on small-town, workingclass America. Ideologically ambivalent, it explores the darkness of war by demonizing the Vietnamese.
"Apocalypse Now," directed by Francis Ford Coppola (1979) An allegorical expose of the nation's unacknowledged imperialism. Based loosely on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the trip upriver towards the darkness of Kurtz provides a profound vision that juxtaposes American rock-and-roll and PX consumerism against the destruction of a water-buffalo culture.
"Rambo: First Blood Part II," directed by George Pan Cosmatos (1985) The fantasy about recovering America's MIAs and Stallone's inimitable "Do we get to win it this time?" define this cartoonish film.
"Platoon," directed by Oliver Stone (1986) The film that finally brought Vietnam jungle combat to the screen in full and harrowingly realistic detail, "Platoon" broke new and volatile ground by becoming the first film to touch upon atrocities perpetrated in Vietnam by American troops.
"Full Metal Jacket," directed by Stanley Kubrick (1987) Kubrick's narrative explores causality in the perpetration of war atrocities. By means of the infliction of mysoginistically rooted violence, young Marine recruits are turned into "masculinized" men pyschologically prepared to act sadistically toward the "feminized" the small, slightly-built, black-pajama-clad figure of the Vietcong.
"Casualties of War," directed by Brian de Palma (1989) In a horrific narrative about the atrocities of the Vietnam experience, de Palma uses the violent act of gang rape as an allegory for the war.
"Born on the Fourth of July," directed by Oliver Stone (1990) Stone takes us via fellow veteran Ron Kovic's book into a Veterans Administration hospital to witness the myriad humiliations that the paraplegic veteran must endure. The film forces us to traverse again the territory first explored in "Coming Home" in 1978.
