In the late 1980s, the director Francis Ford Coppola, struggling through the darkest patches of his life and career, made two films back-to-back so different in style and tone that they might more likely have come from anybody else.
In a recent interview with GQ, Coppola recounts the obvious grand notes of his career – a 10-year run where Coppola wrote the Oscar-winning “Patton,” and "The Great Gatsby," and directed “The Godfather,” “The Conversation,” “The Godfather Part II,” and “Apocalypse Now.” Few filmmakers have had a similar decades-long run.
But only a little attention was paid to what came after. Following the debacle of “One From the Heart,” Coppola embarked on a series of work-for-hire pictures to pay off his enormous debts. These films, such as “The Cotton Club,” “The Outsiders,” and “Rumble Fish,” have never garnered as much attention as what came before, though they have devoted followers.
As for 1987’s “Gardens of Stone,” about the only thing that can be said is of the off-screen tragedy – the death of Coppola’s oldest son, the budding filmmarker Gian-Carlo, who died in a freak boating accident in the midst of filming. “Nothing that I have ever experienced in my life comes even close to that profound thing,” the director said.
Looking at the movie, more than 35 years later, one sees what for any other filmmaker in the best of circumstances would be a workmanlike feature. For Coppola, even though the haze of grief, the film is a thoughtful, muted exploration of the many facets of grief – political, collective and personal.
But the film is better seen as a companion piece. Instead of looking back on Vietnam through a psychedelic haze of colored smoke, insanity and excess, “Gardens of Stone” takes place at home, and is viewed through the rituals and traditions of the U.S. Army. Because of this, Coppola had access to shoot scenes at Arlington and on bases using soldiers as extras. The film also came out during a sudden rush of big Hollywood Vietnam films – “Platoon,” “Full Metal Jacket,” “Casualties of War,” “Hamburger Hill,” “Hanoi Hilton.”
The film begins with a funeral at Arlington. One hears the sound of helicopters and radio traffic. But instead of trippy Air Cav units, we have “toy soldiers” who carry rifles without live ammo and bayonets that are never used. The Honor Guard is “show business,” according to James Caan’s character, Sgt. Clell Hazard. He has seen Vietnam and wants no part of it, but he longs to be transferred to Ft. Benning where he can train the men who will be going there. He thinks that will be better than encountering those same men after their tours are ended abruptly at the grave.
He encounters D.B. Sweeney’s Jackie Willow, a new guardsman who itches to fight in Vietnam. It is Hazard’s task to tell him that Vietnam has no front, that the war has “nothing to win, and no way to win it.”
Coppola makes much of the theatrical aspects of professional soldiery, much of which is familiar to the moviegoer. There is the easy, manly shotgun vulgarity of the barracks, the spit and polish exactitude, the barroom fight, the late night beer calls. And there are the inevitable reminders that we are in the 1960s, at the moment when the postwar consensus begins to disintegrate with each funeral at Arlington, each troop escalation, each prediction of success left unfulfilled.On Feb. 23, 1968, The Wall Street Journal wrote following the Tet Offensive: “We think the American people should be getting ready to accept, if they haven’t already, the prospect that the whole Vietnam effort may be doomed, that it may be falling apart beneath our feet.” By the time we encounter our cast, the war is breeding cynicism and doubt. The guard is doing 20 “drops,” or funerals, a day.
Caan’s character represents something different for Vietnam films of the era. He isn’t an anti-war protester, like his girlfriend at the Washington Post played by Angelica Huston. He isn’t a “parlor pink” radical, like the finger-pointing antagonist he savagely beats at a party. Caan is a fighting man who is loyal to the Army and its institutions, but feels Vietnam is a colossal mistake. He isn’t ready to turn his back on his country, but wants to save lives through training proper soldiers. That leads him to embarrass his commander, Dean Stockwell, during a training exercise, replicating the guerrilla tactics of the Vietcong. The tone is still anti-war, but it is the hatred of war bred in the career soldier.
One of the criticisms of the film at the time was its emotional distance. David Ansen wrote, “One is left feeling like a stranger who’s wandered into a wake of strangers.” But I found “Gardens of Stone” has a great warmth to it, a celebration of service comradery – the flipside of Col. Kilgore’s twisted love for his surfing cavalry boys. Perhaps the best embodiment of this is the superb James Earl Jones as Sgt. Major Goody Nelson, a giant striding panther who steals every scene with his eyes and his voice. In a memorable inspection scene, a white-gloved Nelson instills fear into the guard members, except for the exacting Willow, who stares him down with the satisfaction of knowing he will pass the test.
At least at home. But halfway through the film, it becomes apparent that the funeral which began the picture is Willow’s, and the letters home structure of the film are his to Hazard, his father figure. Hazard fails to convince him about Vietnam, fails to save him, can only mourn him, and say, “I won’t forget.” In a silent scene, Hazard approaches the flag-draped casket in a bare chapel, rips off his Combat Infantry Badge, and lays it on the casket, knowing that Willow sought this decoration more than any other. One wonders if this is the filmmaker’s way of saying goodbye to his own son.
Coppola dedicated his next film, “Tucker: A Man and His Dream” to “Gio, who loved cars.” An insistent dream project of his, Coppola turned to long-time friend George Lucas for the financing of the film. Jeff Bridges plays Preston Tucker, the designer of a controversial prototype automobile. Coppola had originally seen the project as a musical, but instead made the film in the style of Frank Capra, through dramatic lights, shadows and lush colors.
Bridges plays the visionary with post-war brio, a big infectious optimism that dominates the screen without managing to come off as hokey or insincere. (He later duplicated this for “Seabiscuit.”) He is helped along in the process by Martin Landau as Abe Karatz, Tucker’s financial agent. One of the hallmarks of Coppola’s films is their flair for on-the-nose casting. “Tucker” features Joan Allen as Preston’s wife Vera, Christian Slater as his son Preston Jr., Frederic Forest as mechanic Eddie Dean, and Jeff’s father Lloyd as a senator doing the bidding of established automakers who see the new car as a threat.
Early on, as Tucker attempts to assemble his financial backers, he shows a room of bureaucrats graphic pictures of auto accident victims:
“The Big Three in Detroit have been allowed to make billions of dollars without spending one dime on safety. What I know, what you know and what the public knows is that they don’t give a damn about people. All they care about is profits. And let me tell you something, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, the entire automobile industry of America is guilty of criminal negligence. And if it were up to me, it would be tried and convicted of manslaughter.”
He later pays a heavy price for these words. Tucker is the voice of anti-corporate America, celebrating the spirit of maverick entrepreneurs who chase their dreams. As far as he is concerned, the fundamental feature of America is free enterprise, in the freest, most swashbuckling sense of the words. But with investors come contracts, responsibilities, the realities of business. Still, he is unwilling to compromise his vision, insisting the car should have seat belts, a rear engine, and other features later adopted by Big Auto. His enthusiasm draws risk-taking investors, and the attention of the enigmatic Howard Hughes, played with characteristic loopiness by Dean Stockwell.
Tucker eventually finds himself in court, with large, faceless forces gathered against him to sabotage his plans. It’s not too hard to see this as Coppola’s comment on the filmmaking process, aided by his fellow outsider Lucas. Landau’s character, scared that his past will tarnish Tucker, relates the story of how he always heard his mother say, “Don’t get too close to people – you’ll catch their dreams.” This was a mistake, he says, as she was really saying “germs.” But Coppola wants you to catch the dream, because that’s what the story, indeed the movie, indeed all movies, are about: Catching somebody else’s dream.“It’s the idea that counts…and the dream,” Tucker says, at the end, walking out of a courtroom, denied his factory yet exulting in carloads of people riding around in the only models he was able to make, taking satisfaction in the extent of his limited accomplishment.
No comments:
Post a Comment