"I've been in the Army twenty-six years and I can tell you it's a con. For a grown man to be trapped in wars, it's embarrassing, humiliating and absurd." - A. Jones
"I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn. The more you kill and burn, the better you will please me." - US Brigadier General Jacob Smith
If Sam Fuller directed a war drama set in Vietnam, it would probably look something like Ted Post's "Go Tell the Spartans." Indeed, "Spartans" has all the hallmarks of Fuller's WW2 era war films ("Fixed Bayonettes", "Steel Helmet", "Big Red One"). It's shot on a low budget, is aesthetically plain but functional, it's primarily dialogue driven, its conversations sparkle with the blunt minimalism of 1940s/50s pulp, it's socially conscious without being pretentious, and it touches upon a number of big issues in a number of simple but not simplistic ways.
The plot? It's 1964, and American forces have yet to fully commit to an invasion of Vietnam; they still see themselves as "military advisers". One such "adviser" is Asa Barker (Burt Lancaster), a US Major tasked with commanding a poorly-manned outpost in South Vietnam. Barker is battle-weary, tired, and hates having been repeatedly skipped over for promotion.
The film's second act watches as Barker assembles a team and sends them off to scout a small hamlet. Once there, this team proceeds to build a defensible base camp. Behind the camp is a graveyard containing 302 french soldiers. Above the graveyard is a placard which reads, in french, "Stranger, tell the Spartans that we remain here in obedience to their orders", a reference to the Battle of Thermopylae, in which a Spartan army held back a larger force. The implication, of course, is that Vietnam held back the French and Japanese colonialists and will likewise hold back the incoming American neo-Imperialists.
Rare for a film about Vietnam, "Go Tell the Spartans" deals with the difficulties US soldiers had working together with ARVN, or South Vietnamese, militiamen. These portrayals initially verge on the propagandistic – the ARVN are sadistic and are "correct" in massacring women and children, all of whom are "proven" to be "communist" spies – until the film begins to offer a variety of other conflicting perspectives. Some have complained that the film engages in scapegoating, putting most of its more extreme crimes onto the ARVN, and this is true to an extent. We see, for example, ARVN officers torturing civilians into "falsely" admitting they are "communists", but the film makes it clear that this is all US policy anyway.
"Spartan's" characters are all cleanly drawn. One soldier is a skilled and experienced grunt, but the weight of war eventually gets the better of him. He commits suicide, firing a bullet into his own brain. Those who don't suffer combat stress find themselves killed by overeagerness and complacency, whilst naive idealists are brought down to earth. Elsewhere we see selfish careerists, cowards, nutty patriots, downright psychopaths and even several racists who deem American wounded soldiers to be "more human" than their "disposable" South Vietnamese allies. Because the film is stripped down, minimalist, these feel more like theatrical abstractions than poorly written clichés.
The Vietnamese, meanwhile, are an eclectic cocktail. The film humanises the Vietnamese, North and South, yet doesn't shy away from portraying violent or duplicitous Vietnamese characters on either side. And all the while, the film, unlike more vague pictures like "Platoon" or "Hamburger Hill", never ignores the elephant in the room: the fact that Vietnam was essentially a nation seeking freedom from foreign occupation; the United States sided with the French colonialists, turned down offers to assist Vietnamese independence movements for decades, artificially divided the nation as a pretext for war, scuttled local elections, engaged in regime change, put in place dictators in the South and set about killing 3 to 5 million, blanket bombing the country and bathing it in all manners of chemicals, weapons and other abominations.
Whilst "Go Tell The Spartans" is mostly unremarkable acted, Burt Lancaster is excellent in his role. He's a cranky old man, always juggling logistical problems, incompetent leaders/soldiers or trying his best to play games of military realpolitik. The absurdity of flawed intelligence reports and hokey psy-ops programmes irk the Major, but he's seen it all before.
Vietnam era war flicks tend to end with a once idealistic soldier surviving and so becoming hardened and cynical (in "Full Metal Jacket" we witness the reverse, the cynic conning himself into naive participation). In "Go Tell the Spartans" everyone dies but a character called Courcey (Craig Wasson), an idealist whose enthusiasm for the Vietnam War turns sour. "I'm going home, Charlie, if they'll let me," he says during the film's climax. The war's a bad idea, director Ted Post affirms, the Spartan-like Vietnamese destined to make the white man pay (though in terms of their actual objectives, the Americans wholly "won" the Vietnam War). An on-screen caption then emphasises the date "1964", an ironic counterpoint to the massive mobilisation of western hardware which the film knows is on the horizon.
8/10 - Underrated. See Pontecorvo's "The Battle of Algiers" and "Burn".
"I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn. The more you kill and burn, the better you will please me." - US Brigadier General Jacob Smith
If Sam Fuller directed a war drama set in Vietnam, it would probably look something like Ted Post's "Go Tell the Spartans." Indeed, "Spartans" has all the hallmarks of Fuller's WW2 era war films ("Fixed Bayonettes", "Steel Helmet", "Big Red One"). It's shot on a low budget, is aesthetically plain but functional, it's primarily dialogue driven, its conversations sparkle with the blunt minimalism of 1940s/50s pulp, it's socially conscious without being pretentious, and it touches upon a number of big issues in a number of simple but not simplistic ways.
The plot? It's 1964, and American forces have yet to fully commit to an invasion of Vietnam; they still see themselves as "military advisers". One such "adviser" is Asa Barker (Burt Lancaster), a US Major tasked with commanding a poorly-manned outpost in South Vietnam. Barker is battle-weary, tired, and hates having been repeatedly skipped over for promotion.
The film's second act watches as Barker assembles a team and sends them off to scout a small hamlet. Once there, this team proceeds to build a defensible base camp. Behind the camp is a graveyard containing 302 french soldiers. Above the graveyard is a placard which reads, in french, "Stranger, tell the Spartans that we remain here in obedience to their orders", a reference to the Battle of Thermopylae, in which a Spartan army held back a larger force. The implication, of course, is that Vietnam held back the French and Japanese colonialists and will likewise hold back the incoming American neo-Imperialists.
Rare for a film about Vietnam, "Go Tell the Spartans" deals with the difficulties US soldiers had working together with ARVN, or South Vietnamese, militiamen. These portrayals initially verge on the propagandistic – the ARVN are sadistic and are "correct" in massacring women and children, all of whom are "proven" to be "communist" spies – until the film begins to offer a variety of other conflicting perspectives. Some have complained that the film engages in scapegoating, putting most of its more extreme crimes onto the ARVN, and this is true to an extent. We see, for example, ARVN officers torturing civilians into "falsely" admitting they are "communists", but the film makes it clear that this is all US policy anyway.
"Spartan's" characters are all cleanly drawn. One soldier is a skilled and experienced grunt, but the weight of war eventually gets the better of him. He commits suicide, firing a bullet into his own brain. Those who don't suffer combat stress find themselves killed by overeagerness and complacency, whilst naive idealists are brought down to earth. Elsewhere we see selfish careerists, cowards, nutty patriots, downright psychopaths and even several racists who deem American wounded soldiers to be "more human" than their "disposable" South Vietnamese allies. Because the film is stripped down, minimalist, these feel more like theatrical abstractions than poorly written clichés.
The Vietnamese, meanwhile, are an eclectic cocktail. The film humanises the Vietnamese, North and South, yet doesn't shy away from portraying violent or duplicitous Vietnamese characters on either side. And all the while, the film, unlike more vague pictures like "Platoon" or "Hamburger Hill", never ignores the elephant in the room: the fact that Vietnam was essentially a nation seeking freedom from foreign occupation; the United States sided with the French colonialists, turned down offers to assist Vietnamese independence movements for decades, artificially divided the nation as a pretext for war, scuttled local elections, engaged in regime change, put in place dictators in the South and set about killing 3 to 5 million, blanket bombing the country and bathing it in all manners of chemicals, weapons and other abominations.
Whilst "Go Tell The Spartans" is mostly unremarkable acted, Burt Lancaster is excellent in his role. He's a cranky old man, always juggling logistical problems, incompetent leaders/soldiers or trying his best to play games of military realpolitik. The absurdity of flawed intelligence reports and hokey psy-ops programmes irk the Major, but he's seen it all before.
Vietnam era war flicks tend to end with a once idealistic soldier surviving and so becoming hardened and cynical (in "Full Metal Jacket" we witness the reverse, the cynic conning himself into naive participation). In "Go Tell the Spartans" everyone dies but a character called Courcey (Craig Wasson), an idealist whose enthusiasm for the Vietnam War turns sour. "I'm going home, Charlie, if they'll let me," he says during the film's climax. The war's a bad idea, director Ted Post affirms, the Spartan-like Vietnamese destined to make the white man pay (though in terms of their actual objectives, the Americans wholly "won" the Vietnam War). An on-screen caption then emphasises the date "1964", an ironic counterpoint to the massive mobilisation of western hardware which the film knows is on the horizon.
8/10 - Underrated. See Pontecorvo's "The Battle of Algiers" and "Burn".