ANDERSON PLATOON Movie Review
1967 Pierre
Why is this Oscar-winning Vietnam documentary so little known? Most guides give it cursory attention, if any, and it's seldom mentioned in discussions of that war. The film is a rough, unpolished, direct look at the early days of American involvement that attempts no grand statements, no conclusions about the futility of foreign intervention in civil wars. It will not appeal to anyone trying to make partisan political points on either side of the conflict, and it contains comparatively little action footage. Instead, director Pierre Schoendoerffer captures the famous definition of war as long periods of boredom broken by moments of pure terror.
Schoendoerffer, who also narrates, is a veteran of the French campaign in Indochina. That experience is the basis for his fictional look at Vietnam, 317th Platoon. He admits a certain feeling of responsibility for the situation there. In 1966, 13 years after he'd left, he went back with cameraman Dominique Merlin and soundman Raymond Adams to spend six weeks filming an American outfit. It turns out to be a platoon from the First Air Cavalry, the same unit commanded by Robert Duvall's Col. Kilgore in Apocalypse Now. As this group is introduced, a Catholic religious service is being conducted over the background action of an American artillery barrage.
The platoon is led by Lt. Anderson, a 24-year-old black West Point graduate. He has 33 men, 28 of them draftees, from all parts of America. Though several of them are introduced, only Reese, the South Carolina radio man, becomes a recognizable character. Schoendoerffer follows the group and limits his comments to brief explanations of where they are and what they are doing—a howitzer emplacement that must be guarded, a village that may be a Vietcong base, an injured child who needs to be airlifted out, another village, night patrol, rain, more rain, a hot meal. After a slow, relatively uneventful beginning, the physical action becomes more dangerous, but in unexpected ways, and those should not be revealed.
The one light moment, Reese's leave in Saigon, turns out to be more serious than he'd expected. When violence does occur, it is sudden, and Schoendoerffer presents it without embellishment in grainy, imperfectly focused images. No music to heighten tension, no editorial comment. He's right to film it that way. A brief stomach-churning glimpse beneath a lifted bandage is enough to make the viewer feel the destruction caused by a real bullet. And when the platoon comes under fire, the look on a wounded man's face is more moving than Hollywood's most graphic special effects.
The film ends with the same sad note that it begins, and while that may be unsatisfactory to some viewers, it is appropriate for 1966 and a war that still has several years to go and thousands more lives to claim. Schoendoerffer realizes that fact, but leaves it unsaid.
Cinematography by: Dominique Merlin. Producer: Pierre Schoendoerffer. French. Awards: Academy Awards ‘67: Best Feature Documentary. Running Time: 62 minutes. Format: VHS, Beta.