ARTS Tuesday, January 31, 1989 The Michigan Daily Page S Remembrance ,,... r ,,,,,,,Kers_ 1 Films portray the Vietnam BY ALYSSA KATZ The average age of a soldier in the. Vietnam War was 19. But what do today's 19-year-olds know about what happened back then? High school American history classes have a disturbing tendency to be cut off 'somewhere after World War II by summer vacation. Most likely, then, they'll think of Charlie Sheen, or his father Martin, or maybe Robin Williams acting in fictionalized accounts of the war. 'Films like The Deer Hunter, Apoca- lypse Now, Full Metal Jacket , Pla- loon, Good Morning, Vietnam, and Hamburger Hill have presented American audiences with a range of perspectives on the topic. Most of these claim to present an authentic view of the conflict. None, however, use even an inch of documentary footage. Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam, on the other hand, uses actual NBC News films to de- pict the horrors faced by the young soldiers and the Vietnamese people. We see men marching, terrified, through six foot tall, razor sharp grass; the utter destruction of the Tet offensive; American POW's being led, handcuffed to one another, past mobs of shouting Vietnamese; badly wounded men saying they've had enough and want to go home; even our own soldiers burning villages (in a "zippo raid", as this film's super- imposed titles tell us) and harrassing the people they are supposed to pro- tect. This film also shows us some rare moments of relief from relentless marching and hiding: some soldiers mingle with Vietnamese women at a bar; others watch Bob Hope's Christmas presentation; and, in a in- stance of sheer joy, a group of men hear that their division will be sent home. At such moments, when Di- rector Bill Couturie allows soldiers to speak for themselves and simply shows us stark images of the Viet- ...andin vapid vacuity BY ANDREA GACKI I want to be a prosthetic make-up artist when I grow up. Cecille Baun, holder of that illustrious position in the film The Siege of Firebase Gloria, rouges those fake limbs to perfection. She sprinkles a little blood on an armless trunk here, creates a mutilated carcass there. Baun does such a good job that director Brian Trenchard-Smith uses the same soldier with a severed leg in not one, or two, but three different scenes.' But like it or not, Baun's craft is overshadowed by the film's wonderful dialogue. Which superhero could best bail the Americans out of the Vietnam «War, Mighty Mouse or Underdog? This oh-so original antidote to the war Fan only be heard to be believed. And the insight! Sergeant Major Hafner (R. Lee Ermey), the man who's going to whip drug-and-peace-infested Gloria into shape, proselytizes, "There's no such thing as an atheist in a combat situation." (No, really?) Corporal Di Nardo (Wings Hauser), the barbar- ian/poet who's either torturing Vietcong prisoners or consoling orphans with a recorder, laments, "Fucking war. And they call it a police action." Gee, the impeccably dressed Vietcong only get to utter proverbs, and Chinese ones at that. And it's awfully kind of Trenchard-Smith not to depress the audience with his treatment of the Tet Offensive in Siege. His portrayal of shock and bloodshed is so boring, you just can't become upset. It also might have be- come somewhat tedious if you felt in the least way affected by the death of a cbaracter. Trenchard-Smith solves this problem by replacing all of the per- formances with caricatures. Emotions are conveyed by widened eyes, bonding inoments are heavy-handed, and "epic" confrontations are inconclusive. An bverwhelming feeling of devastation is supplanted by a yawn. What is notable about Siege is not what it does, but what it doesn't do. Fake it for granted that it's a really bad movie - a film that defies criticism because a critic wouldn't know where to start even if the labor was worth undertaking. It's a typical war B-movie. But surprisingly, the film isn't jin- koistic. The Siege of Firebase Gloria portrays the Vietnam War as futile, And this battle is no less so. "Charlie" is neither faceless nor evil. Few peo- ple live; no one escapes without scars. And at the end of the battle, there's Do winner, but the Vietcong do lose less badly than the Americans. O But if a film takes a commercial, controversial topic like the Vietnam War and neglects to make a statement or even to entertain an audience, this leads to just one conclusion: g Why? far in verity... nam experience, Dear America is an insightful document of a misguided war. Unfortunately, Couturie presents this great documentary footage within a questionable framework. Letters written home from Vietnam by soldiers and nurses accompany the sounds of bombs and machine gun fire on the soundtrack. These are read by a slew of well-known actors, in- cluding Martin and Charlie Sheen, Harvey Keitel, Willem Dafoe, Kath- leen Turner, and Sean Penn. Their presence interferes with the unfettered realism of the news footage. Many of their voices are clearly recognizable - it is hard not to envision Alex Keaton when Michael J. Fox is read- ing. The voiceovers have an inappropriate professionalism about them; there is little of the hesitation, the wavering uncertainty one would expect to hear from a soldier or nurse in Vietnam. The soundtrack is further ham- pered by Couturie's choice of music. It often sounds as if Dear America's music director turned on a classic rock radio station and recorded any- thing that sounded like it could be appropriate to the movie's theme. The upbeat music makes the film more watchable than it should be - it diminishes the impact that the documentary footage has on its own, and gives the images additional meanings which are not necessarily inherent. Another fundamental problem with the film is Couturie's weak at- tempt at presenting a historical per- spective. Subtitles provide explana- tions and dates of the events we see, as well as statistics, but these are of- ten distracting. Sometimes, he re- moves us from the intensity of the war by taking us far from the action in East Asia: every so often he inter- jects scenes of events outside of Vietnam, including President John- son's 1967 State of the Union Ad- dress, the Kent State shooting, and John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" film. Ironically, this last clip is a re- minder of Imagine: John Lennon, a documentary film that is more suc- cessful than this one because its makers primarily let the documentary footage speak for itself without em- bellishment. If only the makers of Dear America had used a similar style of filmmaking, they could have created an eye-opening document of the Vietnam War experience. DEAR AMERICA: LETTERS HOME FROM VIETNAM is play- ing at the Michigan Theater. The Cowboy Junkies have received wide critical acclaim for The Trinity Sessions, even earn- ing praise from the man who called Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band "gooey pap" - Lou Reed, whose "Sweet Jane" the Junkies cover on the LP. TimmiUns injects Junkies wi*th haunting vocals BY MARK SWARTZ IT'S been so long, I can't remember if it really hap- pened, or if it was just one of those dreams that stays with you. I had just crawled between the icy sheets of a motel room bed, after nine or ten hours on the road. Outside my window, the crickets were having a war, and a har- vest moon hung big and brilliant in the night. I didn't plan on getting to sleep for awhile. Then, from the next room, I heard someone singing to herself. She was whispering a soft country melody, maybe by Patsy Cline. I thought I could just make out the clink of ice cubes in a glassful of bourbon. Her voice, poised and willful, echoed out along the plains for miles and miles. When I first heard The Trinity Session, the major label debut by Toronto's Cowboy Junkies, I was pretty sure I had found the voice behind the motel wall. She was Margo Timmins. With a consistently haunting vocal performance, Timmins leads the band through a selection of thoughtfully chosen covers and artfully rendered originals in the country blues domain. The record is beautiful. Now I have the chance to speak with Timmins un- der the pretext of writing this preview for the Junkies' show at the Blind Pig. Somehow, I know it wouldn't be right to ask her, so we just talk about the record in- stead. She tells me about all the work that went into the preparation of The Trinity Session, which was recorded in 14 hours by Margo and the other Junkies: her brothers Michael and Peter, and bassist Alan Anton. "If you're going to sing a Patsy Cline song, or a Hank Williams song, you better be damn good at it," she says. "Otherwise, it's an insult." To reassure her, I promise that she had indeed done a damn good job, and I even hint that her cool delivery is an improvement over Hank's warble. She doesn't like that: "No, not improvement. You can't improve on Hank Williams; he's untouchable. We just want to be as valid." She elaborates, "'I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry' is a song written at one time by a person in one world. I come from another world." Thinking she had made a joke, I laugh sympathetically, but I am met with a disapproving silence. I hope I haven't blown it. I push on with my interview, warily. I inquire about the dominant mood of the record which to me is somber, deliberate, at times even murderous. "But I also see a hopeful side," she counters. Personally, I fail to see the hopefulness of one of the originals, "To Love is To Bury," a scarifying dirge about icing your own husband, and I tell her, but again, she points out my misunderstanding. "In order to have pain, you have to love, and in order to love, you have to have pain," she lectures without irony. "She loved him. She killed him. But she did love him." I have so much to learn. THE COWBOY JUNKIES perform at the Blind Pig at 8 and 10 p.m.tonight. Both shows are sold out. MAINTAINING A CA, LL FO R CAN D DTES Get inolved with MSA and yo ment f VM r ISO Candidates needed for: President and Vice-President of MSA In competition, it takes more than skill to come out ahead. Victory is a hard-won product of intense concentration, tenacity and determination. Ongoing success is even more elusive-the result of superior coaching and motivating surroundings. Because Watkins-Johnson introduces all these elements into the workplace, we're able to maintain an edge in an industry that's known for competition. Our micro- wave components and systems have always captured the highest marks for defense, communications, and commer- cial applications. Last year alone, we in- troduced 362 new products, and achieved sales figures of $264,000,000. Watkins-Johnson. Right now, we're look- ing for recent graduates with a BS, MS, or PhD in one of the following disciplines. Openings exist in our Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Barbara, Scotts Valley, CA; and Gaithersburg or Columbia, MD facilities. Disciplines: EE . ME Physics Engineering On-Campus Interview Dates: Wednesday & Thursday, February 8 & 9 * LSA * Natural Resources * Rackham * Art El Please contact your Placement Center or phone Michael Avina, Watkins-Johnson 1 _ __r-. ra 'IQ ' L ..l.iin ._. s ni o I I