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Show 8E The Salt Lake Tribune Sunday, April 28, 1985 jiHow Hollywood portrayed Vietnam: Which films will last, which will fade? i; tJ ture whether or not we see Capt. Willard call for an air strike that will incinerate Kurtzs compound after he has been killed. The videotape version of "Apocalypse Now" ends the same way as the initial release print of the picture, with Capt. Willards horror-stricke- n face dissolving into the image of an impassive stone figure. The more explosive, perhaps ByGeneSiskel Chicago Tribune Writer has been 10 years since the lArfcerican military left Vietnam and J jit 'tJ'years since the American movie lg3ustry began reflecting on the war. t beginning in 1968 with John dyne's The Green Berets, there have been dozens of commercial feature films about how the war was fought in the jungles of Vietnam and in the streets of the United States. Veterans of the war have been porvictims trayed as wheelchair-ridde- n s JComing Home), as walking (Taxi Driver) and as strangers in their hometowns (Some Kind bf Jlero"). ) Other films have reflected the combat pressures both on the officers (Apocalypse Now") and on the grunts ("The Boys of Company of C). There have been musical attacks on jour rationale for fighting the war f'Hair") as well as jingoistic fantasies in which the war is refought and this time we win (Uncommon Valor and Missing in Action"). And Vietnam films have triumphed in a big Avhy both at the box office ("First Blood) and at the Oscars (The Deer more commercial, airstrike ending, was used by Coppola only in the films second wave of release. When people talk about Apocalypse Now they recall most often two flamboyant scenes, both involving crazed Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall). First, theres the sight and sound of Duvalls air cavalry helicopter unit flying to the accompaniment of Wagner s The Ride of the And then theres his speech about how he loves the smell of napalm in the morning. That gasoline smell. It smelled like . . . victory. Those moments are unforgettable, and surely Duvall deserves his Academy Award for delivering them. But other moments stand out now also, moments filled with equal vulgarity. The sight of a soldier in the very befrom ginning of the film water-skiin- g his wake upCapt. Willard's boat ending Vietnamese fishermen as well as Vietnamese women washing their sums up in a matter of secclothes onds the colossal arrogance of war. And a brief sequence, just before Willard's arrival at Kurtzs compound, in which we see mostly black soldiers defending an indefensible bridge is particularly heartbreaking. Explosion of Rage And one can never forget the explosion of rage by the character named Chef (Frederic Forrest), who blurts out during an attack on a Vietnamese family, including a woman who was only trying to save a puppy, Lets kill all of em! Why not! Why not!" Together with the notation in Kurtzs journal, "Drop the Bomb. Exterminate them all, Francis Coppola's Apocalypse Now succeeds in taking us into the very heart of darkness that was a war that didnt have the common sense to be fought to time-tomb- s. JliJnter). ' Media Replay of War But now, as the national media replays the war a decade after its conclusion. the time is ripe to reassess jle major films about Vietnam, to e which will last and why, which jsdfeady seem dated and why. Select-eicare the three key for three that .(Jims of the Vietnam era jocgKerned themselves most seriously a war that tore two nations japart. SHdeo stores report a resurgence of interest in these three films; you rplght want to compare notes after JtcTeening them yourself. rXpocalypse Now (1979): The general line on this film during its original release was that it captured the awesome, hideous, helicopter-fille- d niatjals of Vietnam better than any ;MJier picture, that it had a fine fix on ijft vulgarity of American involvement in other peoples affairs, that tilt first two hours of the picture were but then dothing short of superb mere was that ending, that confusing Francis finding that writer-directQnppola himself admitted he wasn't sul-he liked. : , Problems for V levers That created problems for a lot of tfiewers as they sat in the theater, thinking to themselves, in effect, tyhen does the ending begin? Is this t)ie part Im not supposed to like? Cdppola probably did his film a disservice by releasing it with an unfinished tag; one of the truisms in the .mpvie business is that you should ifcver give the public a reason not to see your picture. And that feeling is reinforced after seeing the film again, twice in fact, in tjie last three weeks, because Apocalypse Now holds up better than any qHhese pictures, its ending notwithstanding. Thats because the first two hours of this picture truly are mesmerizing. as we follow young Army Capt. Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) on his journey upriver in Vietnam to kill renegade Green Beret Cell. Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who has set up his own jungle kingdom among the natives. Col. Kurtz, its easier to see now, simply has taken the war to its logical extreme, and in so doing he has embarrassed his superior officers, Vho in utter the film argues, prefer to fight a more sanitized war. But thats madness on top of ipadness. the film argues. ; As for the ending, what Coppola turns out to have been debating is oply the last few minutes of the pic de-3- F ... be won. "The Deer Hunter (1978): Talk to people who saw The Deer Hunter when it first came out and you will hear such comments as, It's the most powerful film I've ever seen, It depressed me for days or "I got stink- - e men they claim to love and yet barely know. Thats why at the very end of the film, as they sit in their bar and sing "God Bless America, we understand ing drunk after seeing that picture, because I had to. But there Is a certain shock element in The Deer Hunter that cant have the same voltage more than once. That, of course, would be the visual leitmotif of the film the Russian roulette sequences in which American soldiers and South Viet- namese citizens play with killing themselves for the amusement and profit of others. Its a tribute to actors Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken, who are forced to play and then choose to play Russian roulette more than once in the film, that we accept these scenes as much as we do after seeing them multiple times. But those flamboyant scenes, much like the helicopter scenes in "Apocalypse Now, are overshadowed now by less explicit scenes. There is no sadder moment in "The Deer Hunter" than the walk through town the Green Beret veteran Robert De Niro takes with his friends sweetheart (Meryl Streep) upon his return home to Clair-ton- , Pa. She has just told him, I'm so glad youre alive. But hes still in a state of shock, incapable of responding to her or attending his welcome-hom- e party. And he's equally embarrassed. at the end of their walk, when he is embraced by friends at the food store where Streep's character works. Can't Erase Horror What makes that scene so sad is that here is one of the few Vietnam veterans in the movies (as well as real life) who was welcomed home as why Meryl Streeps character changes the lyrics of the song to "land that I loved rather than land that I love." Her love for our country may return sometime in the future, but right now she is filled with a quiet rage, and we so understand. Conventional Story "Coming Home" (1978): The plight of the Vietnam veteran and his family is the subject of this film, which seems the weakest of the three reviewed here. Thats because "Coming Home has the most conventional story and a couple of big stars in its cast. It feels more like a movie than the two other films. Coming Home is about a love triangle, created and destroyed by the Vietnam war, with Jane Fonda playing a mousy Marine wife, married to a gung-hmajor (Bruce Dern). When he goes off to Vietnam, his wife volunteers to help in a veterans hospital, where she falls in love with a former high school classmate (Jon Voight), now a bitter, crippled veteran. The war will cripple Derns character, too, eventually driving him to o suicide. What is this movie telling us, that the average veterans only hope is to to have a volunteer nurse as beautiful and as giving as Jane Fonda? Surprisingly, the a hero, and yet even that can't erase the horror. The special triumph of The Deer Hunter" is that it lets us get to know, better than any other Vietnam film, the young, working-clas- s men who actually did fight the war. In Apoca-lys- e Now" the men in Capt. Willard's boat are introduced to us only by a couple of sentences of narration. In The Deer Hunter we see these soldiers at work in a steel mill, at play in their bar and on a hunting trip. We celebrate their weddings, we visit their churches and we meet the wo Tribune Advertising Policy distributed. 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