Film Vietnam War

[Najla Ondik]

Thetwo films, both major critical and commercial hits, went head-to-head at the 1979 Oscars, and jointly dominated the major categories: The Deer Hunter took home five awards, including best picture and director, while Coming Home was recognised for its screenplay and lead performances by Jon Voight and Jane Fonda.

Some proclaimed Vietnamese language-films include Cyclo, The Scent of Green Papaya and Vertical Ray of the Sun, all by Tran Anh Hung, challenged the war-torn depiction of Vietnam at the time.[5] In more recent years, as Vietnam's film industry has modernized and moved beyond government-backed propaganda films, contemporary Vietnamese filmmakers have gained a wider audience with films such as Buffalo Boy, Bar Girls and The White Silk Dress.

More recent notable works include Vietnamese-language drama film, Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, by Phạm Thin n, which won the Camra d'Or in 2023 for best first feature film at the 76th Cannes Film Festival (2023). In the same event, the French film, The Taste of Things by Trần Anh Hng won Best Director at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.[6]

With the end of the First Indochina War and the creation of North Vietnam and South Vietnam, there were two Vietnamese film industries, with the Hanoi industry focusing on documentary and drama films and Saigon on war or comedy films.

Documentaries and feature films from Hanoi attracted attention at film festivals in Eastern Europe at the time. The documentary Nước về Bắc Hưng Hải (Water Returns to Bắc Hưng Hải) won the Golden Award at the 1959 Moscow Film Festival, and the 1963 feature by Phạm Kỳ Nam, Chị Tư Hậu (Sister Tư Hậu) won the Silver Award at Moscow. It starred lead actress Tr Giang.

Saigon produced numerous documentary and public information films, as well as feature films. The most well known feature film of the late 1950s was Chng Ti Muốn Sống (We Want To Live), a realistic depiction of the bloody land reform campaign in North Vietnam under Communist-dominated Vietminh. Some mid-1960s black-and-white features dealt with war themes, with actors such as Đon Chu Mậu and La Thoại Tn. Some later popular color features revolved around the theme of family or personal tragedy in a war-torn society, such as Người Tnh Khng Chn Dung (The Faceless Lover) starring Kiều Chinh, Xa Lộ Khng Đn (Dark Highway) starring Thanh Nga, Chiếc Bng Bn Đường (A Silhouette by the Road) starring Kim Cương and Thnh Được. Comedy movies were usually released around Tết, the Vietnamese New Year; most notable was Triệu Ph Bất Đắc Dĩ (The Reluctant Millionaire) starring the well-loved comedian Thanh Việt.

After Reunification of North Vietnam and South Vietnam, studios in the former South Vietnam turned to making Socialist Realism films. Vietnamese feature film output increased and by 1978 the number of feature films made each year was boosted from around three annually during the war years to 20.

In recent years,[when?] Vietnamese filmmakers have moved in a more commercial directions to try to regain audiences lost to television and DVDs. One of the most successful films of recent years at the Vietnamese box office has been Phi Tiến Sơn's Lưới trời (Heaven's Net), a film about corruption that closely mirrors the trial of Ho Chi Minh City gangster Nam Cam.

In 2007, Muoi (Muoi: the Legend of a Portrait), the first horror film in Vietnam after the Fall of Saigon (collaborated by Korean producers), also became the first rated film with an under-16 ban.[8][9]

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Bn trong vỏ kn vng) by Phạm Thin n won the Camra d'Or, for the best first feature film at the 76th Cannes Film Festival (2023). Similarly, The Taste of Things by Trần Anh Hng also won Best Director at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.[6]

Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American epic war film produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The screenplay, co-written by Coppola, John Milius, and Michael Herr, is loosely inspired by the 1899 novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, with the setting changed from late 19th-century Congo to the Vietnam War. The film follows a river journey from South Vietnam into Cambodia undertaken by Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), who is on a secret mission to assassinate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a renegade Special Forces officer who is accused of murder and presumed insane. The ensemble cast also features Robert Duvall, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Sam Bottoms, Laurence Fishburne, Dennis Hopper, and Harrison Ford.

Milius became interested in adapting Heart of Darkness for a Vietnam War setting in the late 1960s, and initially began developing the film with Coppola as producer and George Lucas as director. After Lucas became unavailable, Coppola took over directorial control, and was influenced by Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) in his approach to the material. Initially set to be a five-month shoot in the Philippines starting in March 1976, a series of problems lengthened it to over a year. These problems included expensive sets being destroyed by severe weather, Brando showing up on set overweight and completely unprepared, and Sheen having a breakdown and suffering a near-fatal heart attack on location. After photography was finally finished in May 1977, the release was postponed several times while Coppola edited over a million feet of film. Many of these difficulties are chronicled in the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991).

Apocalypse Now was honored with the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered unfinished. When it was finally released on August 15, 1979, by United Artists, it performed well at the box office, grossing over $80 million in the United States and Canada and over $100 million worldwide. Initial reviews were polarized; while Vittorio Storaro's cinematography was widely acclaimed, several critics found Coppola's handling of the story's major themes anticlimactic and intellectually disappointing. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (Coppola), and Best Supporting Actor (Duvall); it went on to win Best Cinematography and Best Sound.

Apocalypse Now is today considered one of the greatest films ever made; it ranked 14th and 19th in Sight & Sound's greatest films poll in 2012 and 2022 respectively.[6] Film critic Kyle Smith dubbed it "the greatest war movie ever made,"[7] while The Guardian called it "the best action and war film of all time."[8] In 2000, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the U.S. Library of Congress as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."

In 1969 during the Vietnam War, jaded MACV-SOG operative Captain Benjamin L. Willard is summoned to I Field Force headquarters in Nha Trang. The officers there tell him that U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel Walter E. Kurtz is waging a brutal war against NVA, Viet Cong, and Khmer Rouge forces without permission from his commanders. He is based at a remote jungle outpost in eastern Cambodia, where he commands American, Montagnard, and local Khmer militia troops. These troops view him as a demigod. Willard is ordered to "terminate Kurtz's command... with extreme prejudice." He joins a U.S. Navy river patrol boat (PBR) commanded by Chief Petty Officer Phillips, with crewmen Lance, "Chef," and "Mr. Clean" to quietly navigate up the Nng River to Kurtz's outpost.

At a remote U.S. Army outpost, Willard and Lance seek information on what is upriver and receive a dispatch bag containing official and personal mail. Unable to find any commanding officer, Willard orders the Chief to continue. Willard learns via the dispatch that another MACV-SOG operative, Special Forces Captain Richard Colby, was sent on an earlier mission identical to Willard's and has since joined Kurtz.

Lance activates a smoke grenade while under the influence of LSD, attracting enemy fire, causing Mr. Clean's death. Further upriver, the Chief is impaled by a spear thrown by Montagnards and attempts to kill Willard with the spear point protruding from his chest, but Willard overpowers him.

Willard reveals his mission to Chef, who is now in charge of the PBR. The PBR arrives at Kurtz's outpost, a Khmer temple teeming with Montagnards and strewn with remains of victims. Willard, Chef, and Lance are greeted by an American photojournalist, who praises Kurtz's genius. Willard encounters Colby and two other soldiers among the Montagnards. He sets out with Lance to find Kurtz, leaving Chef with orders to call in an airstrike on the outpost if the two do not return.

Although inspired by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, it is not a direct adaptation. The novella, based on Conrad's experience as a steamboat captain in Africa, is set in the Congo Free State during the 19th century.[22] Kurtz and Marlow (whose corresponding character in the movie is Capt. Willard) work for a Belgian trading company that brutally exploits its native African workers.

After arriving at Kurtz's outpost, Marlow concludes that Kurtz has gone insane and is lording over a small tribe as a god. The novella ends with Kurtz dying on the trip back and the narrator musing about the darkness of the human psyche: "the heart of an immense darkness." In the novella, Marlow is the pilot of a river boat sent to collect ivory from Kurtz's outpost, only gradually becoming infatuated with Kurtz. In fact, when he discovers Kurtz in terrible health, Marlow makes an effort to bring him home safely (which Willard also does in Milius's draft screenplay). In the film, Willard is an assassin dispatched to kill Kurtz. Nevertheless, the depiction of Kurtz as a god-like leader of a tribe of natives, Kurtz's written exclamation "Exterminate all the brutes!" (which appears in the film as "Drop the bomb. Exterminate them all!") and his last words "The horror! The horror!" are taken from Conrad's novella.

3a8082e126