While Lynne Sachs’ documentary Which Way is East and Francis Ford Coppola’s lengthy feature film Apocalypse Now Redux both present a strong anti-war message with their examinations of the Vietnam War (“la guerre amèricaine”), their perspectives are strikingly different.
In Which Way is East, the filmmaker and her sister Dana Sachs tour the Vietnamese countryside in the early 1990s with an eye to the lasting effects of the memory of the Vietnam War. Footage of modern-day life in Vietnam is presented in the same way as images of formerly war-ravaged scenery: with a simplicity and peace that suggests a movement forward. While the memory of war is ever present in the minds of its citizens, both young and old, the Vietnamese feel compelled to try to put this past behind them. Even when Lynne and Dana tour former Vietcong tunnels, where they speak to a woman, the wife of a Vietcong soldier, who lived underground for 20 years in order to survive and even gave birth in the damp space, she is not bitter. An injured war veteran Dana meets is uncomfortable when she apologizes for her country’s involvement in Vietnam. “It doesn’t matter,” he says.
Lynne and Dana speak to Vietnamese people who recount the diffusion of the people throughout the country during the war-torn years. They hear a story about a man who couldn’t contact his family in Saigon by mail for over 20 years. “When a water buffalo and a bull are fighting, it is the mosquitoes and the flies who follow them that die,” says one speaker. This proverb places the emphasis on the innocent civilians, families of the soldiers, who suffered throughout the duration of the war and continue to struggle today with economic and personal instability.
While the filmmakers are sympathetic to the plight of the Vietnamese, it is important to note that they are still outsiders. Dana remarks that Lynne seems to “understand Vietnam better through the lens of her camera.” In framing the country with a specific purpose, to create a documentary, Lynne is able to separate herself from the distress that surrounds her. She is privileged to be the outsider behind the camera looking in.
Apocalypse Now Redux examines the negative effects of war from a different perspective, based on the moral questions war invokes. It is the dark, psychological story of an American officer who is sent to the Cambodian jungle in 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War, to stop the destruction of a crazed, renegade military officer, Colonel Walter Kurtz, who has gone mad and established his own reign as warlord in the jungle.
The story takes a dark turn when the American officer, Willard, becomes obsessed with Kurtz’s situation and begins to descend into madness himself. After his crew stops a boat of civilians in order to search it, and most of the civilians on it are killed after a member of the crew opens fire, spooked by a sudden movement, Willard personally, inhumanely, murders the one survivor of the massacre with no remorse. Willard becomes a monster, unlike the tortured Kurtz. He accepts the war and embraces its casualties.
While Apocalypse Now is focused specifically around the Vietnam War, it could be about any war. Its message is not specific to that particular conflict, and thus I find its message to be meaningful but not necessarily enlightening when it comes to reflecting on the history and effects of war in Vietnam. When taken together, Apocalypse Now and Which Way is East serve to promote an anti-war message, but Which Way is East is more enlightening as to actual Vietnamese culture. In addition, the production of both films by American directors could possibly cloud the viewer’s understanding of the situation in Vietnam. The outsider perspective is valuable, but arguably not as enlightening as the viewpoint of a native Vietnamese citizen.
No comments:
Post a Comment