The Growth of the War Film Genre as Examined Through Apocalypse Now, Platoon and the Green Berets

Over the decades after the appalling incidents that occurred in Vietnam, an assortment of anecdotal war films were released. These served as the primary visual contestants to the overall disposition of war. Many of these films depict either the potential patriotic surge the war brought, or the mysterious and falsely depicted realities of combat in Vietnam. The main method of combating views of patriotism or harsh warfare reality in film is converging imagery to one sole focal point. Reasonably, these ideological based films serve as a historical background despite the stance the film may take on the war. The method of representation is a key aspect to the war film genre because the methodology of the genre dictates the feelings about the war. As the times change, the genre of war conforms and develops with the progression of history and culture. Accordingly, the war film genre has undergone drastic changes throughout the decades.

The chief contributing factor to this change is time. The time the film was produced establishes multifaceted characteristics that contribute to the changes of the war genre (Devine, xii). The characteristics of the genre are vibrantly dependent upon the culture, history, mood, and intent of the times. During times of hardship, aggression, retribution, and violence associated with a political movement or goal (war), there is a dire need to unite the beliefs of the masses (strength). While this is typically accomplished through politics, the media is an analogous method of influence. On the other hand, during post war times of deficit, recovery, and compensation, the destructive consequences become the focus of attention. A prime example of this can be seen in Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986), a post-Vietnam film released partially in response to the harsh atmosphere, and partially to capture the fear of naïve soldiers through unprecedented realism.

Platoon portrays the events using film techniques that enhance fear, underscore survival, and constantly provoke the viewer to question America's benign involvement. Focusing on the naive lower class American soldiers, juxtaposed with an elite, deadly, and ghost-like enemy are two of the basic techniques that help to instill fear. Consequently, this helps the American viewer comprehend the nature of the Vietnam soldier and overcomes the classic depiction of the enemy as a maniacal and xenophobic villain. The Viet Cong are made out to be wraiths, never to be fully exposed, constantly half-visible in the foliage throughout the entirety of the film. Inherently, the enemy now becomes a soldier of death fighting for the protection of homeland by eliminating the invader.

The paradigm of the enemy trait is shown during the quiescent rest scene set amidst the discomfort of a sopping wet and insect infested jungle. Private Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen) is on a night watch where he must stay alert and be ready to warn his sleeping comrades of incoming enemy soldiers. Private Taylor is constantly being assaulted by distracting gnats, which quickly becomes irrelevant as he spots the silhouette of the wooly enemy approaching. The Private, stricken with fear, is intoxicated with adrenaline and trepidation; he cannot even bring himself to move from his position to alert the rest of his faction. The fear instilled by the subtle and silent enemy nearly causes the innocuous Private Taylor and the rest of his men their lives, as the enemy trips a mine that initiates their ambush.

Additional filming methods such as collapse in military order, constant scenes of graphic death, the dichotomy among soldiers, and the glorification of death seek to show the bona fide brutality of the isolated and bewildered American soldier, in a seemingly purposeless war. Effectively, the combination of various film imagery and technique produces a cascade of reactions and evinces an overall message. In this particular case, all of these graphic technical elements provide a conduit for an irksome evocation of fright. The frightening and unfamiliar environment seeded with constant images of bereavement gives rise to a schism within the soldier's own mentality for survival. The soldier's cultural notions combined with the experiences in Vietnam gives rise to two distinct groups: a racist, alcohol-guzzling die-hard group and the collective drug abusing survivalist group. The partitioning among the soldiers causes resentment among the differing groups resulting in the collapse of ranked military order.

The separate factions give rise to many brutal and desperate situations, including massacre of civilians, rape of women, violent arguments among soldiers, disregard for the lives of friendly soldiers, and even inflicting self-injury to avoid further involvement in the war. One particular instance of such occurrences is in Platoon when the discovery of mutilated U.S. soldiers causing severe agitation and desire for revenge. The enraged men of the first patrol ambush their nearest possible outlet for revenge - a small civilian village. The raid ends in the rape, pillaging, and massacre of innocent civilians, and instigates the separation between the moral and the fuming revenge-seeking soldiers. The cascading downfall of military order results in an exclusivist and individualist attitude among the troops, effectively counteracting the purpose of the men to act as a cohesive unit. Overall, this representation of the war through these techniques bears a heavy cultural value for the non-veteran when questioning moral tactics of the American soldiers (McCrisken, 133).

The release of films during the Vietnam War has a clearly defined difference between films of the post-Vietnam era. The Green Berets, a film released in 1968 during the crux of the Vietnam War (Tet Offensive), offers many distinctions between Platoon and other post-Vietnam films. Both films cover the Vietnam War and are considered to be within the war genre. However, regressing from Platoon, it becomes blatantly obvious that the earlier war genres produce very different feelings about the intentions of the Vietnam War. Platoon offers an inspection oriented towards the realism of naive soldiers and the overall view that 'war is hell' rather than focusing on the political aspects of the Vietnam War (McCrisken, 145). As well, Platoon elicits a message for avoiding atrocities in the future and serves to debunk old clichés of heroism, while The Green Berets attempts to adjust the American mentality toward war as the answer to anti-communism (Dittmar, 233).

As mentioned earlier, the war film genre at the time of this release was a crucial and influential factor, serving as a means of political conveyance. The Green Berets is an overview of Vietnam political involvement, specifically holding a military outpost from being overtaken by the Viet Cong and strategically capturing a principal Northern Viet Cong general. The rendering of Vietnam through The Green Berets equips civilians with political astuteness and unifying logic to comprehend the just cause of the involvement of the United States. Moreover, this film serves as an overview to the offensiveness of the operation as a whole, delving into the proof necessary for war, and the nature of the invasion. A significant demarcation in the film war genre is established as violence and close examination of the soldiers is non-existent in this early Vietnam film. The film establishes a very positive outlook on the war and that involvement is vital if communism is to be halted. The Green Berets is unusual not for the propagandizing intent, but rather for its reworking and continuation of the conventions used in war films based on the Second World War (Chapman, 160).

Overtones of patriotism and humanitarianism undoubtedly permeate The Green Berets and serve to provide the basis of the film techniques and imagery. The majority of the imagery is positive and glorifies the democratic/imperialistic side. Triumphing over the enemy, patriotic songs, high troop morale, openhandedness and protection of civilians, and down playing graphic violence quintessentially make up the entourage of the filming techniques. Similarly to Platoon, these multifarious techniques link together to achieve a purpose. Unlike Platoon, the aim in this case is ultimately a victorious America. The proof necessary for involvement relies almost solely on the fact that the Viet Cong are using weapons given to them from communist Russia. The proof of Communism in tangent with patriotic songs, specifically the Green Beret's Ballad, creates an overall feeling of wellbeing for the soldiers and helps to fully validate the involvement of the United States (Devine, 38). The Green Berets relies heavily upon dialogue between soldiers and very little stimulating graphic violence is used throughout the film. Many argue that The Green Berets has propagandizing motives, and facilitates the government's need to press forward with the war (Devine, 43).

The government highlights the occupation in Vietnam as highly constructive by showing soldiers handing out candy to southern Viet Cong civilians (humanitarianism), and always succeeding against the enemy, even in unanticipated ambushes. In one particular scene, a green beret becomes the surrogate father to an adorable orphan who lost his parents in the way. This punctuation of humanitarianism is fervently played out by the typical action hero, Colonel Kirby (John Wayne), who encourages the elite group of Green Berets interest in the protection of the innocent Viet Cong. Concurrently, in this typical Hollywood format (good guy vs. bad guy) there is no room violence and horrors of war if the hero is to prevail. Violence and destruction serve solely as a device to show the resistance in Vietnam and the ability of the United States to overcome it.

Blood, gore, and bereavement are rare images throughout the film due to their pessimistic and apprehensive effects. When battle scenes are initiated in The Green Berets, images of destruction and death are shown via explosions, vehicular and mechanical devastation, and death without showing blood. Vivid scenes of carnage in war films remained absent for a long period, even after the Vietnam War. The primary reason for this was that the violent tendencies served no purpose to those who were watching the films. The families on the home front did not want to know of death and mass slaughtering, but were more eager to see American's victorious in war (thus confirming to the psyche of many families of soldiers that the cause was right and the danger to soldiers was not too great).

The Green Berets are men of camaraderie, honor, decency, against the Viet Cong renegade, and even more fervently against soft liberals undermining the involvement in the Vietnam War (Auster, 31). However, following the war many films began to divulge the general view that the Vietnam War was a purposeless onslaught. Due to the high number of casualties and the return of veterans, the public began to hear rumors of malfeasance pervading Vietnam. Film genre was greatly influenced by this and war films released soon after the war began to take a cynical turn. A primary example of this is Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), an enthralling fictional account of the returning Vietnam veteran Captain Benjamin Willard. After serving in the Vietnam War and returning to civilian life, Captain Willard finds himself unfit in society and decides to return to Cambodia to embark upon a top-secret mission. His mission is to relieve Colonel Walter Kurtz, a well decorated and model officer, from his command. As Captain Willard embarks upon his journey to Colonel Kurtz's isolated domain in the jungles of Cambodia, he discovers that Kurtz has gone completely insane and assumed the rank of warlord with many of the natives devoutly worshipping him as a god.

When examining Apocalypse Now in the war genre, the cinema is not very efficient in presenting abstract ideas. In particular, the method in which this film is presented marks the first significant change in the war genre. The war films of the World War II and early Vietnam War era pale in comparison to new films when it comes to presenting meticulous detail. The change in the war genre demonstrates how movies are now more efficient at presenting the look of battle, facial expressions, and the mood of a country. Previously, war films of the earlier era (i.e. The Green Berets) attempt to logically outline a plot or plan and substantiate it with positive imagery. However, as history has progressed and final outcomes have been seen, the moral stance of the war in film has been adjusted. Apocalypse Now proves to be an appealing example and one of the premier films to mark change, as it has aspects of both early Vietnam War films while also marking a shift into new territory of post anti-war sentiment. Upon Captain Willard's first encounter with Colonel Kurtz, Willard is humbled in his presence and begins to understand his isolated disposition and how Kurtz's chain of command changed from an orderly military ranking system to the ritualistic worship of gods by the natives.

This particular scene also marks much of the anti-war sentiment towards Vietnam as Colonel Kurtz tells Captain Willard, "You are neither [neither assassin nor soldier] you're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect the bill." The film mirrors many of the aspects within Platoon and draws a pessimistic cascade effect over the harsh views of war. In hindsight, the film also slows itself from advancing to the level of gore and violence that marks Platoon as a prominent anti-Vietnam war film. Apocalypse Now makes used of oblique imagery to display explicit violence to dampen its frightening effects. At the end of the film, Willard decides it is time to relieve Kurtz of his command by assassination. As a camouflaged Captain Willard slowly creeps up into Kurtz's domain, Willard's thoughts are pronounced before he kills Kurtz:

"There were gonna make me a major for this, and I wasn't even in their fucking army anymore. Everyone wanted me to do it, him most of all, I felt like he was up there waiting for me to take the pain away. He just wanted to go out like a soldier, standing up, not like some poor wasted brag ass renegade. Even the jungle wanted him dead, and that is who he really took his orders from."

The reptilian Captain Willard inharmoniously approaches Kurtz with a knife preparing to decapitate him. Just before Kurtz has been slaughtered, he turns around and a montage of dark scenes flashes between struggle with Kurtz and a ritual where the natives decapitate a bull. The scene marks a new level of symbolic violence previously unseen in war films. However, this violence is very indirect and any carnage that is displayed is very brief, dark, and results in a less enduring and violent scene so that the brunt of the killing is symbolic rather than brutal in nature. Additionally, Kurtz's motives and an understanding of his insanity is curtailed through Willard's thoughts. This not only shows a form of agreement from an outside-unrelated military soldier, but also a need to kill Kurtz to put him out of his misery. Willard is the ideal character to understanding Kurtz's dementia because he can directly relate to the dire effects that the war has had upon him.

Apocalypse Now uses many intermediary devices (influences from the beginning of the war and elements of post war repressed veterans) to elicit the dark side of the war. Perhaps one of the subtlest scenes is before Willard is to embark upon his mission and is being briefed. As he is briefed he pontificates human existence and a key use of lighting techniques to give underlying subtext: "There is a conflict in every human heart between the rational and irrational, between good and evil, and good does not always triumph." As his general is giving him his mission, his face is cleaved in half by dark light. As he mentions "rational" he turns towards the darker side, and as "irrational" is mentioned he turns to the light side, thus a way of suggesting the diffident and illogical nature of the war. The film makes use of fundamental techniques that focus upon the individuals and coping with the dissention of war through the senses. Some of the primary modus operandi are barbarianism, massacre, highly sanitized violence, a transition into hearing the narrator's thoughts, the atypical hero whom struggles with the horrors of war, the use of eerie music and dark lighting to give an uncanny mood, and the use of underlying messages. All of these speak to the combat experience of veterans and the game-like as well as backward nature of the war. The transparent use of the cameramen within the film, telling the troops to "act like they are fighting" not only mocks the game-like nature of war but gives a voyeuristic effect, hence the metonymy of the camera (Dittmar 55). Finally, the washed out nature of war really is what allows the people to connect to the film and prominently speaks out in the apathetic attitude toward the war. In a series of moving scenes, the feeling of intrusion is conveyed as helicopters swarm upon a previously serine jungle (Ditmar, 152). A supplementary scene, speaks out to the uncaring attitude in the war when Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore (Robert Duvall) lands on the beach with surfboards as shells continually fragment the area. He demands that the shell-shocked soldiers surf as he stands strong among the explosions, uninterested in the war surround him.

From the gung ho jingoistic action hero film of The Green Berets and the barrage of sensation stimulating scenes of war horror in Platoon and Apocalypse Now, the war film genre has changed dramatically to symbolize the ultimate truths of combat. Oliver Stone's technical transformation in film technique and depiction has led to the war genre's decisive goal in contesting history and providing a different mode of storytelling. Overall, the transition of film and genre style to Platoon offers the audience a much realistic view on the war by tactically combining inner realms (friendship, hatred, loneliness, love, and fear) with the outer realms (insects, rain, night, and our hidebound existence), allowing the audience to share the tactile living sensations of the repressed G.I. Vietnam experience (Dittmar, 233-234) Although all films have many commonalities as war movies, they both serve to answer the opinionated questions of the time.

Works Cited

1. Auster, Albert. How the war was remembered Hollywood & Vietnam. New York: Praeger, 1988.

2. Chapman, James. War and Film. Wiltshire, Great Britain: Reaktion Books, 2008.

3. Devine, Jeremy M. Vietnam at 24 frames a second a critical and thematic analysis of over 400 films about the Vietnam war. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1995.

4. Dittmar, Linda, and Gene Michaud. From Hanoi to Hollywood The Vietnam War in American Film. New York: Rutgers UP, 1991.

5. Films of Oliver Stone. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow P, 1997.

6. McCrisken, Trevor B. American history and contemporary Hollywood film. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers UP, 2005.

7. Robb, David L. Operation Hollywood how the Pentagon shapes and censors the movies. Amherst, N.Y: Prometheus Books, 2004.