From Stanley Kubrick to Francis Ford Coppola: The 10 greatest Vietnam war movies
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Credit: Warner Bros
Why has the Vietnam War proven to be such a generative event for cinema?
When looking at global historical events that have spawned some of the most extraordinary pieces of art, it is difficult to look beyond the Vietnam War. The conflict began in 1955, took place in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and officially ended in 1975 with the fall of Saigon. We know the battle well in the Western world due to the United States’ involvement from 1965 to 1973.
The war in Vietnam has spawned several cinematic and literary masterpieces that often depicted the sheer depravity of what took place in the Southeast Asian country, particularly concerning the US’ involvement and ensuing mental consequences on its soldiers.
In terms of literary accomplishments, Tim O’Brien produced some of the finest war literature ever written with The Things They Carried, his third book on the conflict, after If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home and Going After Cacciato. The Things They Carried was a collection of linked short stories told from O’Brien’s experiences in the war, beginning with his reluctant drafting in the late-1960s and ending with him returning home as a veteran.
Many other literary efforts concerning the war have been appraised, including Dispatches by Michael Herr, an account of a journalist reporting the war from the frontlines, and Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes, an epic novel written over 35 years by a Vietnam veteran – as well as Boot by Charles Templeton and A Rumour Of War by Philip Caputo.
However, the medium in which the Vietnam War found its most artistic expression is in film. After the conflict ended in 1975, film producers were unafraid of depicting the terrible strife in movie theatres across the country. Perhaps one reason for this was that in America, the war was not popular in the slightest. Returning veterans were scorned by the public, being spat on in the street, struggling to get jobs and subsequently often turned to drugs and alcohol to deal with the horrific experiences they had gone through. The war in Vietnam was not at all successful from an American standpoint; many missions went awry, and swathes of young men – often as young in years as 18 – saw several of their friends die, as well as shocking injustices being served throughout the country (by both the Vietnamese forces and those of their own country).
Many films have examined the mental consequences that had been suffered by returning Vietnam veterans. One perfect example came in Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter, released in 1978, just three years after the war had ended. The film tells the story of three steelworkers who are traumatised by overseas events. When Robert De Niro’s character returns home from the war in 1970, he has difficulty adapting to civilian life; his co-veteran, Nick, tragically commits suicide, and their friend Steven is incapacitated and refuses to leave the veteran’s hospital.
Another fascinating insight into the mental torture that Vietnam veterans experienced came in 1990s Jacob’s Ladder, directed by Adrian Lynne. It’s a supernatural, psychological horror that shows the strange hallucinations that Vietnam serviceman Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) experiences. It transpires that Jacob had been experiencing an alternate reality during his final moments of life in Vietnam due to the regret of not being able to make peace with his normal life back at home.
Other films directly explored what occurred in Vietnam. Just a year after The Deer Hunter was released, Francis Ford Coppola’s epic Apocalypse Now arrived on the big screen. Though Coppola once said, “My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam.” The film starred Martin Sheen amongst a well-renowned cast including Marlon Brando and Robert Duvall and told of the hunt for a potentially defected and psychotic Colonel in a secret mission. The film somewhat self-indulgently depicts truly depraved events that will have had drastic consequences for those involved on both sides of the conflict.
Just under a decade later, two films were released that continued to explore the historical events of the war in Vietnam. In 1986, we saw Oliver Stone’s Platoon, in which Martin Sheen’s son, Charlie, played a fresh-faced recruit who suffers from the existential anxiety induced by the seeming futility of the conflict. Contrary to Coppola’s over-the-top depiction of the battle, in Platoon, we see the everyday struggle that soldiers were going through; mosquitos, extreme heat, in-fighting with fellow soldiers and dehydration. Sheen’s character aptly writes to his grandmother, explaining that Vietnam is “hell”.
A year later came Full Metal Jacket, directed by Stanley Kubrick. The film is structured in two distinct parts, and the first is disturbingly contemplative. It shows the rigorous training of new recruits at boot camp under the stewardship of the brutal Sergeant Hartman. Whilst much of this first half of the film is often comical, it also shows the futility of even attempting to prepare young men for what lay on the other side, namely, far worse brutality than what they were experiencing in training, nihilism and dread.
These are but a few of the brilliant visual depictions of the conflict. The reason that so many were made, especially when compared with previous historical conflicts, maybe to do with the fact that by the time the war ended in 1975, American society and its values had drastically changed. Most of the public was socially aware of the Vietnam war and had already confronted its political and moral depravity during several protests throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s.
In comparison with the society following the events of World War II, the American public was somewhat less conservative; they had experienced the 1967 Summer of Love, had joined in mass protest and were open with their drug use – much of which had been shown in the aforementioned films.
In World War II, however, there was a sense of deep hurt suffered by war veterans and the public. It was considered better to keep this pain under wraps, lest it escapes into the public realm — ‘stiff upper lip’ and all that. With Vietnam, the hurt was primarily experienced only by its soldiers. As such, World War II would not be extensively explored in the realm of cinema until many decades later, arguably as late as the 1990s, with the production of Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List.
So too had technology in cinema vastly improved by the time the 1970s had come around, compared to the mostly black and white films of the post-WWII 1940s and 1950s. This meant that the vividness of the Vietnam war could be more aptly expressed, the greens of the jungle, the hot oranges of the fire, the red of the blood.
The fact is that war, in general, produces unique art as it is a time when the barbarity of humankind is laid down in historical fact for examination. There is no need to fictionalise; all the required proof of the barbarity, the ugliness, and the conflict between the political and the personal, is there to draw reference from.
Then again, audiences are seemingly obsessed with films depicting historical events with which they have no direct experience, just for that reason. Namely, because wars and conflicts have played such a vital role in both the politics of a nation and on the social consciousness of a country’s subjects, they are wont to understand them.
While the conflicts that followed Vietnam – the Cold War, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria – have all spawned several distinguished works of art (not to mention the films that will most likely be created after the current Russian invasion of Ukraine), it appears that none have been as fertile in producing films and literature as the 20th Century conflict in Vietnam.
