Gardens of Stone (1987)

One of my all time favorites.

Absolutely Brilliant!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

It's the military funeral of Jackie Willow (D.B. Sweeney) as he recounts his journey. It returns to Jackie's first day at Fort Myer which provides soldiers for Arlington National Cemetery and he's gungho to fight in Vietnam. He's the son of a friend of Sgt. Clell Hazard (James Caan) who tries to talk him out of Vietnam. He helps screw-up Wildman (Casey Siemaszko) from platoon Sgt. Flanagan (Laurence Fishburne). Sergeant Major Goody Nelson (James Earl Jones) and wife Betty Rae set up Hazard with anti-war Washington Post reporter Samantha Davis (Anjelica Huston). Pete Deveber (Elias Koteas) is a clerk and Homer Thomas (Dean Stockwell) is the commander. Jackie marries Rachel Feld (Mary Stuart Masterson), the daughter of a colonel.Francis Ford Coppola revisits Vietnam with something less epic and more traditional. There are great actors. The thing I remember most is the story of the Vietcons fighting helicopters with arrows. This is certainly not as iconic as Apocalypse Now. It doesn't mean that it's not a worthwhile watch. For a war movie, this surprisingly has little war action. That's probably what throws most people off.

I saw Coppola's film twice, once because of his reputation, and the second time to see if I was missing anything. It was a very long two hours to discover that I hadn't.The film is beautifully shot, the script looks like it is going somewhere, and we wait for something to happen. And we wait.The film feels exactly like Waiting for Godot. In both the play and the film, nothing happens. Two major differences between them is that in the play, the author (and the audience) knows nothing is going to happen, and the film doesn't know this. The other huge difference is that "nothing happens" in the play in a fun and entertaining way, while the film...doesn't.James Caan tries very hard playing a military man, but he looks and sounds like James Caan wearing a uniform. I never got the sense that I was looking at an actual soldier. His character is quiet and distant, and we are supposed to relate to him on an emotional level, as he is the core of the film.POSSIBLE SPOILERS: Unfortunately, we can't, despite the fact that the film tries to build a relationship between him and a peace activist (we know how many soldier/peace activist relationships there were then), Angelica Huston, who seems as convincing an activist as Caan is a soldier. So what are we left with? That is the question that haunted me throughout the film.There is the obligatory confrontation between the stereotypical long-haired unappreciative liberal and James Caan at a party. The liberal attacks Caan verbally, then lays his hands on him (peaceniks are like that). Caan responds by punching him several times in the throat, then while the hippie liberal is lying face down in the dirt gasping, grinds his face into the dirt with his shoe in the back of the guy's head, as if he is putting out a cigarette. Someone has to pull him off the guy.This scene was carefully set up as a central moment in the film. What was the point of it? I guess (and I found myself guessing at a lot of the deeper meaning of some of the dialogue and scenes), it is to show that Caan is a soldier who has seen too much war, is in a place he doesn't want to be in (burying young dead soldier's whose sacrifice is scorned) when he would rather be fighting, and is surrounded a nation hostile to the war and the soldiers who fight it.However, if Coppola wanted to present that, he should have presented it differently than this. The effect of the scene is to make us either want to call a cop and have him taken away, or to get the hell away from him to avoid brushing into him accidentally and having the same thing happen to us.In the end, Caan tells his peace activist girlfriend that he has decided to sign on for another tour of duty as an "errand of mercy" to try to save more young lives from being senselessly wasted.The movie ends shortly thereafter, with Caan saluting a dead soldier's coffin at a funeral.But let's back up here for a moment to the poignant moment when Caan tells Huston he is going back to 'Nam, to save young men's lives.Caan knows this is a losing war. He is at a critical juncture in his life; he can do something truly difficult and brave at this point, and at a personal cost much higher than going back to war: he could, as a soldier, publicly speak out against the war and its senselessness, and the horrors he has seen; the deaths of his soldiers, and the slaughter of Vietnamese citizens by troops. He would be seen as a traitor to the military of course, but he would be speaking his mind, truthfully, (as he has privately to his girlfriend and his friend James Earl Jones), could testify before Congress, and could join the cause to end the war. If his efforts helped to shorten the war by even a few days, that would have saved hundreds of lives, more than the few he hopes to save.His offering to return to Vietnam sounds very noble, but is comparable to a Southern officer in the Civil War offering to return to the front lines; to what point? To die along with the rest of the men in a losing war? There is no flavor, let alone poignancy, to this statement by Caan. And at the end, that is reflected in his salute to the dead soldier's coffin, whom he may be joining soon; and just as senselessly.Not a good or profound statement by Mr. Coppola, if he was trying to make one.

I don't know why Francis Ford Coppola thought he had to make another film about Vietnam after he had made the best possible with "Apocalypse Now", but with this film he definitely destroys a part of his reputation as being critical about the United States' role in the war. The problem of "Gardens of Stone" is that it is not uncritical, but seemingly critical. It all seems as if Coppola would use the dead soldiers' bodies or Anjelica Huston's role as an excuse for saying: "Hey, I know that maybe not everything was alright, but you have to do what your country asks you to." This movie is so obsessed with the military and tries so hard not to decide whether it's for or against the war, that it doesn't even notice, that it already has decided with its blind patriotism and denunciation of the peace movement. Rarely have I seen such a laughable characterization as it is done here with Anjelica Huston's "peace activist". Not one of the highlights of Coppola's career.

War in general, and particularly the Vietnam War, is an issue which required socially conscious and intellectual rumination...This was a story about the home front, and how the overzealous, and wet behind the ears soldier wanted to get involved...Hovering around the travesty of the TET Offensive, oblivion to what was actually happening on the other side of the ocean, made acts such as combat, and grenades carried by four year old Vietnamese girls, just a little more glamorous!! Military bases in the United States were desperately seeking some form of amelioration, and they wanted to be vindicated, as well as be spoon fed justification for their actions...This film explores all the diverse elements of patriotism,and makes the actions of the military just and rational!! This film allows the moviegoer to look at things through the eyes of the entire military rank and file involved in the Vietnam War!! Point of order!!, only a soldier knows what being a soldier is all about!! Much more inherently so than someone with a profession, particularly a man who is a soldier by nature..There are those who join, or those who were conscripted, but after sifting through all of them, there are men who possess a rudimentary element to their constitution whereby they are nothing but soldiers!!!...If their country made a mistake, they did not make a mistake for following orders..What their initial agenda was intended for was to uphold and defend the principles and policies of the United States of America!! The bulk of this film focuses on the development of a soldier, the anxious fortitude he possessed to serve his nation...While protesters balked at what they believed our government was doing was wrong, the military men and women were doing what they thought was right...THUS THEY SHOULD BE COMMENDED FOR IT!! If a soldier loses his life in combat, he is cast away in Arlington National Cemetery to THE GARDENS OF STONE...Bear in mind that a soldier has a different perspective as to whether or not a soldier's life was lost for no reason whatsoever!! The catastrophic outcome of the Vietnam War allows provision for several different conundrums to prevail: Do we engage in war with a blind patriotic demeanor?...Do we engage in war for National Cause? Or, do we engage in war for political agreement?...Suddenly devastation has a depraved dinner bell awakening, and, more and more Americans became affected, emotionally, physically, and psychologically!!! What shatters the mental stability of Americans touched by war is that they are hit by facts that are not complicated, but, very simple..We got involved in a war, we lost...Americans disagree.. There's turmoil...A young men wants to serve his country...he gets killed!!!...Underneath it all, all of the characters in the movie are hit with the bittersweet reality that they are only human and they make mistakes..Their patriotism to the cause of War by way of contributing to the military was something they thought was in the best interest of their nation!! Right and wrong are not black and white issues, and platitudes such as these should not be taken with a jaundice eye!! There are many Americans who believe a nation is always justified in declaring and/or fighting in a war!! There are other Americans who even believe that we should get involved in a war merely for purposes of strengthening our national resolve..."Gardens of Stone" is a film which brilliantly delegates tragedy, and appropriates anger..When a young soldier is killed in Vietnam in the line of duty, the reactions of the characters in the movie are not derivative, nor is there just an obligatory deference, rather, there is a heart felt empathy and sorrow for the loss of a picture book example of a soldier as well as a man!! This individual had a moral imperative to expedite national allegiance...If a soldier and a soldier's mother and father can have a grass roots recognition of the purpose for losing a productive life, then so too should the mainstream American public recognize it as well!!! The issue that the Vietnam War was a miserable tragic error, and the issue that the Military must execute their duties to defend the honor and integrity of her nation, are dichotomous!!! By no means is this an anti-war speech!! Tremendous acting performances make "Gardens of Stone" a movie worth watching...Especially if you are in the mood to just be a human being!! This documentary style movie is poignant, compelling, and articulates the pride with which this nation should have for her military branches!!...A definite winner!! It appears as though everything Francis Ford Coppola touches turns to solid gold!!