For some, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) is the best film made about the Vietnam War:  for some it is one of the greatest war/anti-war films ever made. It was certainly a manic, filmic projection of a manic man-eating war.  Eight years later Coppola made another film about Vietnam, this one quiet, no napalm, no screaming jets, just the daily, non stop burial of those coming back in boxes, to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, and the agonizing grief of those who loved them.  Like too many of Coppola’s films, Gardens of Stone, (1987) fell into puzzlement and dismissal and has all but disappeared. It may be worth taking another look at it with another, terribly similar war thrumming in our ears, and the forgetting of the earlier one all but complete.

The story is a simple one. The spit and polish 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment carries dead soldiers and presidents to their graves at Arlington National Cemetery.  The Regiment is the public face of the respect and honor given to the military dead.  The soldiers are drilled and groomed to an almost unbelievable perfection, and Coppola gives them their full due.  As an artist of the technical you can almost see Coppola’s admiration in the repeated shots of precision arms handling, marching, saluting.

Among the soldiers are three, around whom the story is built.  James Caan plays Clell Hazard, a very believable top sergeant.  Lean and tough, he is taunted for being a “pacifist” because he thinks the war in Vietnam is the wrong war against the wrong people, and being fought the wrong way; in other words — get out.  But if it is going to be fought, he believes he should not be with the Old Guard, a “toy soldier,” but should be at Fort Benning training young soldiers to fight and stay alive.  [The reasons that he is not allowed to go is one of the weaker parts of the film.]

His superior and good friend, Sergeant Major “Goody” Nelson, is played by James Earle Jones –the Sergeant Major, with more gold on his sleeve than can be lifted, and a sternness in his presence that is entirely convincing.  For great military tough guy pyrotechnics you could not have cast better. They go after each other, and anyone in sight with hammer and tongs. Yet, their friendship is real and extends back to the Korean war.

Into the Regiment comes a new recruit, Jackie Willow (D.B. Sweeney) who is regularly called “Dildo” in the eternal male teasing that says if you can deal with this, then you’re a man and we can can trust you. He does all right, being the son of another sergeant, retired, who served with Nelson and Hazard in Korea.  The kid is all military, all the time, and wants to go to OCS (Officer Candidate School) and then to Nam — the only place a military man should be. The two sergeants take the newcomer to their hearts and comradeship [another bit of weakness as I remember the military, but needed for the story.] In fact the mechanism for telling the story of the film are a series of letters Willow writes to Hazard after he is shipped to Vietnam, recalling the older man’s warnings, and reflecting on what he has learned in a year there.

Hazard, divorced by a woman who had had it with Army life, makes an awkward approach to Sam (Samantha) Davis, played nicely by Angelica Huston, who to stir the pot quicker is a reporter for the Washington Post (the well known communist rag) and thinks the war is genocide. However improbably, the two fall in love — in some very nice and believable scenes.  Sgt. Major Nelson has a firebrand girlfriend of some years.  Willow, after he makes sergeant, runs across the young woman who has not been answering his letters. He persuades her to re-find her love for him and stand against her father, a Colonel who does not want the shame of his daughter marrying into the enlisted ranks — a piece of the film that rings true to my military bred eyes.

Set in 1968-69 the set up is obvious for knock down, drag out arguments about the war but Coppola has another aim in mind, and one that is obvious as soon as Willow comes on the scene.  By the time he announces his goal of going to Officer Candidate School (OCS) and then to Vietnam there is no other end in sight.  Second Lieutenants in Vietnam had the highest causality rate of any rank. We are going to go with these three couples and enter the work-a-day world of the men as one of them moves through the ranks and comes back to be buried as he buried others.  We share the sorrow and grief, even of those who fight the war, for those they love.  Histrionics are not necessary.  Everybody knows: this is what war brings to families and friends.

Why is the film worth seeing now in 2010?

Soldiers are going again to war, a war which many think the U.S. should not be in, but to which many are glad to go –as this is what soldiers do.  They go with mixed emotions, proud of beings soldiers, determined to meet the test of fear and prove themselves capable; they go bound to their friends.  Yet they go knowing they are leaving behind those they love and that their own futures are more uncertain than most others.  Families are saying good bye again, families with mixed emotions of pride, of dread, perhaps of anger at the decisions that are sending their kids over there.  Some will think their child has no business in another country, killing and in danger of being killed, but will love him as he goes.

Some of these children, these newly weds, these fathers and mothers will come back and be buried with pride and honor by those they left, and with a grief that will go on for years.

Coppola does a good job of showing military life and emotions to those of us unfamiliar with either, and with no polemics he shows us the sorrow and the pity of it all.

The dialog and script are tight and snappy.  The scenes of  military life, on the parade ground or fighting in bars, are real.  We don’t get to know much about the women, especially Angelica Huston’s character who could have been given more background, and more of a struggle between her love for Hazard and her hatred of the war.  Jackie Willow, the eager recruit is a bit too naive and wide-eyed for me, especially as the son of a top Sergeant, but the performance is just a bit distracting, not a major impediment.  The use of actual war footage, helicopters coming in for the dead and wounded, grainy and with realistic radio mil-com between the pilots and units on the ground is well used, cut into the daily lives in Arlington, the first time as a mystery and a warning, the second as a proof and a portent.

Gardens of Stone was built around a novel of the same name, by Nicholas Proffitt, who not only was Newsweek’s Bureau Chief in Saigon in 1971, but had been a member of the Old Guard in the early 60s. As usual, one wants to know how film and novel complement or contradict each other but I’ll leave that for another day.  If you’ve read it, and have an opinion, leave a comment.

The movie itself is available on Netflix, and in the Instant Play offerings as well.