M&M: War Is Hard To Portay On Film

It took me a long time to learn to appreciate films about Vietnam. I was a child of the 1950s, and I grew up with the mostly jingoistic studies of that era: “To Hell and Back,” “The Sands of Iwo Jima,” “God Is My Copilot,” “30 Seconds Over Tokyo,” “Sergeant York,” “Back to Bataan,” “Objective, Burma!” and so on. These war films of my childhood were, generally speaking, actioned-oriented. Only a few of them - “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “The Best Years of Our Lives” - asked questions bigger that those involving courage, loyalty and the obligations of duty. The Vietnam films, though, were different. They did ask those questions. In the ‘60s, most of us did. And it made the films more … difficult. Easier to appreciate as art, maybe, but hard to embrace emotionally. Did I want to put my arms around “The Deer Hunter,” for example, or “Apocalypse Now”? Not really. Same for “Platoon” and “Born on the Fourth of July,” “Go Tell the Spartans” and “Hamburger Hill”/ Dan Webster , Movies & More. More here .

Question: Which war movie is your favorite? Why?