This weekend the library will host a viewing of Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July and film historian Dr. Martin Haas will reflect on the US value system leading to war and the struggle of a young man learning to accept the consequences of Vietnam for himself and the nation.
Thinking about this topic led me to wonder about other complementary films in the library’s collection which delve into the psyche of Vietnam veterans. In Search and Destroy, a decisively opinionated guide to the cinematic legacy of Vietnam, author Jack Hunter focuses on a compelling group of films in which the main characters are troubled vets. He cites films such as Coming Home and Scorsese's Taxi Driver as examples. Hunter notes that these drastically different films share something in common; they directly address America’s sorrow and guilt in the aftermath of the war. Not surprisingly, as the years distanced Hollywood from the war, well known movies such as Forrest Gump and In Country and even Good Morning Vietnam (although not the story of a returning vet) were much softer and the characters more sympathetic.
If these films lead you to wonder more about the effect of this “conflict” check out the docudramas Be Good, Smile Pretty which chronicles the loss shared by children whose fathers were killed in Vietnam and Hearts and Minds which chronicles the war from a psychological perspective.