"Different skin, same suffering." Only a director such as Oliver Stone, who is not afraid to take risks and say what needs to be said could make a set of films so daring and powerful that they almost beg to be watched. For those who don't know Stone himself fought in Vietnam. He has since made, not only three of the best films on Vietnam, but three of the best war films period. The first is the award-winning Platoon, followed by Born on the Fourth of July and finally this one. What makes this trilogy so good is that instead of making three war films he has made on war film and two other character studies to accent it. Also these films are not just about huge battles and high body counts like a lot of today's war films. Stone is just as concerned in showing the war going on inside every man on the battle field just as much as the war at hand. Platoon was based on Stone's personal experience in Vietnam, he made an atmosphere where every step could bring death and there was no sympathy. It was hailed as a masterpiece, winning Stone an Oscar for best director and also placing it as one of the greatest war films ever made. Instead of travelling back to Vietnam, Stone decided to follow up Platoon with a look into the decayed life of a worn down veteran. When We Were Soldiers came out last year it was praised as being one of the only films to show that the soldiers were just as human as your or I. Obviously these people didn't see Heaven and Earth because this film bases itself almost entirely on showcasing the life and struggle of a war victim. The only difference here is that it is the life of the enemy. Can anyone honestly say that while watching a war film they think of how whenever an enemy is killed it is someone's son or brother dying or, how the war is effecting the innocent ones? I can say that I haven't and this film has helped me see Vietnam through an all new set of eyes. That is why Stone is such a great director, even though he fought and killed these people he still finds it in his heart to show both sides of the story. This film often gets mixed reviews and I guess that is because it is being compared to Platoon, but to say that one is better than the other would be missing the point. Although they are entirely separate films they all function as one entity and must all be seen in order to see Stone's vision, and a hell of a vision it is, these are three of the most realistic and horrifying war films to date. This is the true story of a young, Vietnamese girl named Le Ly who lives in a small village that is being ravaged by war. The inhabitants spend most of their day peacefully growing rice because it is their only food source. "We worked like slaves and all we wanted was a bowel of rice and another day alive" says Le Ly's father, a line that is important towards the second half of the film. She is then taken away and tortured for information. These torture scenes are brutal ad were particularly hard to watch due to their brutal realism. She is then released on a bribe from her parents that has the whole town questioning their ties with the government. She is the taken away by the Viet Cong and raped because they suspected she gave away information. Her and her mother then move to the city to become servants but are soon asked to leave after Le Ly gets pregnant with her masters son. She then meets Steve; a solider that she thinks just wants sex before he goes home. It turns out Steve is a nice guy. The two get married and go back to Chicago to live in America. Suddenly she sees that America is not what it is cracked up to be. Even though she now has more she was at least happy at home in Vietnam. Now she finds herself seeing tables of food wasted and is living with a family of plastic people who are following the American dream. The film actually functions as two separate works. The best being the first half that is possibly the saddest and most heart-wrenching depiction of a war stricken human being these eyes have ever seen, it truly is powerful stuff. When Le Ly and Steve move to American it stops being a war film and Stone gets a little carried away. He chooses an other-the-top style of direction to show every American as shallow pigs who are blinded by all their material possessions and look down upon the relationship. "They don't understand, but I do." Says Steve. But Stone is smart in how he shows that even though America has much more than Vietnam that doesn't mean it is better. In Vietnam you had to work together and function as a team in order to achieve anything. Everyone loved each other and the people were happy with that. In America it is either push or be pushed, there is no sympathy for anyone. Although this was a smart way to contrast the war, after an hour and a half of watching the horror of Vietnam I felt a little obscure when then film suddenly changed from a war picture. Especially when just coming out of hardships that are enough to twist anyone's heart into knots. This then levels off and we are left with a study of bigotry and how one mans possessions can corrupt his mind and blind his eyes. Stone shows us that although war can leave a life torn and mangled, the people who came out of it are not cold and alone. These people are human beings as well. I don't think people realise this because in most war films we don't see the face of the enemy, they are just nobodies who have set out to be killed. This film helps us realise that they can love, they can hurt, they can feel and the can bleed just like the rest of us. Stone has not just placed a solider and a Vietnamese girl together and sees what happens. He has placed a human and a human together to see how they adapt and grow as one and as separate parties. We see how certain things react with certain emotions and how certain feelings are flared in different situations. Le Ly is not some character that has been made up; she was a real life human being who went through real life struggle. She was a human who lived in a human world. Stone does a fabulous job at showing that Le Ly was a human and he gets us so deep inside of her we can't help but feel for her. Stone filmed on location and the scenery is beautiful. Stone soars his camera across the stunning green plains, through the swaying rice fields, atop the tree and up into the shimmering blue sky. His use of scenery also helps to feel the tragedy when all the beauty is swept away and the horror of war begins. Stone also wrote the screenplay which he based on the two memoirs written by the real life Le Ly. Again he does an amazing job if showing the horrors of war, but this time without using mounds of violence. He also does a great job of contrasting the life in Vietnam as compared to that in America by making them seem like almost separate worlds. I also love the dialogue in this film. It is touching, heart-breaking and empowering all at the same time and that is rare in war films. The acting is also superb from Hiep Thi Le as Le Ly. This girl can show all of her inner torture yet innocence just through her eyes. Tommy Lee Jones is also good as her partner yet enemy Steve. Both of the actors show their humanity on their faces and their struggle in their eyes and easily change emotion from environment to environment, even from minute to minute. Because Stone can make a film like this, showing and saying what many would be afraid to, he truly is one of the greatest directors of our time (only being matched by David Lynch). It is nice to see that someone cares enough to show us that even though they were our enemy, the people of Vietnam were just as effected by this war as anyone in America and that they people just like us. Even though the two films following Platoon didn't reach the success or praise of the first film, Stone has made has made a great American trilogy. Three war films that have just as much to say as they do to show and it would be a tragedy to pass any of them up. Whether you are interested in Vietnam or just want a war film with something more than endless violence, this one is worth checking out.
Review of Heaven & Earth
