Customer Reviews

Soldier's Sweetheart [VHS]

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I saw this movie months ago and thought it was incredible. I then read Tim O'Brien's short story "Sweatheart of the Song Tra Bong" and realized how well the director and actors preserved the author's own words. I was impressed and intrigued at the same time. For those of you who were wondering where to find this short story, check out The Things They Carried by O'Brien....you'll be even more impressed with the movie!

Viewers who have critized this film for its "lack of realism" are missing the point: It was never meant to be realistic in the first place. If they had read Viet Nam veteran Tim O'Brien's short story "The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong," from "The Things They Carried," on which the movie is based, they would know that. The story centers around a group of unsupervised young medics stationed on an isolated plateau west of Chu Lai, where they perform the gruesome work of stabilizing the most critical cases choppered in from the battlefields of the early 1970s. One of them flies his girlfriend in from the States, just to prove it can be done. When she responds to jungle combat life in a manner that no one could have predicted, the story takes on an eerie, supernatural quality that transports it out of the realm of "realia." This is in fact one production that manages to exploit the film medium to match and even far surpass the intended effect of the literary work on which it's based, largely because the author (perhaps because he himself was uncomfortable with the material???) using the literary convention of the "story-within-a-story," constantly interrupts the narrative flow in order to call the veracity of the storyteller into question. Although the filmed version retains the outer story and uses it quite effectively, it succeeds where the book failed in conveying a believable, if disturbing, transformation of character where the girlfriend is concerned. Rather than serving as a sober answer to the question as to whether or not suitability for combat is determined more by individual personality than by gender, this is instead a war story turned gothic, which makes the point that collective guilt is often one of the ingredients of legend.

I couldn't believe that they actually made this when I first saw it on Showtime this past April. I'm glad I recorded it too, because this was one of the most heart-felt Vietnam stories I've ever seen and read. Almost as stunning as "Apocalypse Now" but not nearly as disturbing. The casting was perfect for every single role. I thought Kiefer Sutherland was the best of all of them. The girl, Georgina Cates, did a hauntingly spectacular job as Marianne.

The movie might seem on the surface to be silly and unrealistic and if you did not read the original work, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, it is quite possible to dismiss this as nonsensical fluff from an anti-Vietnam soldier perspective. Tim O'Brien was in Vietnam. The whole book needs to be read to understand the story ("The Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong") and that might be the problem in trying to present only part of the novel in a TV movie.

O' Brien (the narrator in the book) tells the readers later in the novel that the story is probably the most realistic of all those in the book. Maybe "Mary Anne" or the girl next door didn't really show up in Nam, but innocent, impressionable kids did go to Nam and did develop a killer's eye and instincts.

The story is a metaphor for those young men who went to Vietnam with no real understanding of the war or the mechanics of fighting and were turned into killing machines as a means to survive the madness there. Some literally became machines, but of course, not all did. The majority of soldiers put in their time and tried to find a sense of normalcy, but O'Brien's story points out that even the purest of people could be damned by the war.

I couldn't believe that they actually made this when I first saw it on Showtime this past April. I'm glad I recorded it too, because this was one of the most heart-felt Vietnam stories I've ever seen and read. Almost as stunning as "Apocalypse Now" but not nearly as disturbing. The casting was perfect for every single role. I thought Kiefer Sutherland was the best of all of them. The girl, Georgina Cates, did a hauntingly spectacular job as Marianne.

This movie gave a beautiful insite to the effect war has on a person. A unique setting in which soldier and civilian either losses or finds themselves. Every time I watch this movie I find myself deeply touched and find myself in Maryanne's search for herself. Often miltary style movies don't show the depth of the soul searching aspect that a soldier goes through and the psychological conflicts that can be brought back from war. In this incident the conflict was brough to the war field and Skeet Urlich portraits this loss exceptionally well. Not only was Skeet's performance exception so to were the performances of all actors involved. I have no doubt that this movie will remain a favourite of mine for the rest of my life.

I once lost a love, my first love, I loved her with all my strength, with all my heart and mind... Since her, I never felt anything for anyone, because of the fear of being hurt once more. This movie made me feel again the powerful feelings, emotions that I felt for her and when I lost her, it made me cry, it made me see that love is what really matters. Even if it means that you could lost the love one. To those of you that lost a love, you really have to see this movie, it will make you see that love is the most powerful feeling someone can feel. With love you can take anything, you can beat anything, you are the strongest. Without it, well you are just one soul among others. Let me just say that the movie ends and I stood quiet, understanding the depth of the feelings that the movie released. One of the best movies that I ever saw. Brilliant.

My son brought this wonderful movie home for me to watch. He was so impressed with it that he talked for hours about it afterwards. There is also a book but I cannot find it. The acting was excellent, the story incredible, and the camera work beautiful. A truly beautiful love story from within the jungle of Vietnam and a stirring tribute to one woman.

This one of the better movies I've seen in a long time. It's not what you expect from a war movie at all. It has everything it, action, drama & a love story all wrapped into one. Truly a great movie. You must see it.

In "The Things They Carried", Tim O'Brien combines images from his personal experiences with thoughtful storytelling in order to capture the reader's imagination and take them into a world which they may never otherwise see. A world created out of the chaos and confusion that exists as a result of war and internal emotional conflicts. He calls it a work of fiction.
As a war veteran I can appreciate the struggle of how challenging it is to tell a true war story. To bring back its character and relive it. Not merely to verbalize it, but to actually illustrate the story with words. An observer will never truly understand the moral, the underlying points, or even the emotional effects, unless they have lived it. You could tell someone a million different stories about how the dead look, what they smell like, what they sound like, what goes through your mind when you see them and how everything you experience is interrelated. However, until you actually encounter these things for yourself, a story is never truly recounted except by those who were present. The personal history never receives its justice. This is, perhaps, why when we (veterans) tell these stories, we add in details that are not necessarily true, except that they are true and necessary, in order to bring back the realism that was once a part of their being. The best way that O'Brien relates to this aspect of personal history is in the chapter "Good Form". O'Brien describes why truth is manipulated. He says, "I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening truth"(pg. 203).
It is for this reason that veterans rarely recount their stories. It is difficult to put into words the immense frustration that sets in when so much effort gets put into a story, and when it is finished, no one seems to appreciate it. People are always waiting for the "moral" or the "point" of the story. And sometimes there is not a point or a moral. More often than not things just happened. O'Brien relates to this very subject matter in the chapter "How To Tell A True War Story," in which he states, "A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it" (pg. 76). Furthermore he goes on to say that, "If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil."
Sometimes it may be easier just to say that a story or a book is fiction. Doing this allows the author to escape from the bonds of reality. It opens up the freedom to change the details and manipulate the story in order to give a proper account that will do more justice to the memories than one that is nonfiction, one that lacks the color necessary to paint a picture in someone else mind. One that is as vivid as the one that exists in the mind of the storyteller. This changing of the facts is again recounted by O'Brien in chapter seven of his work. In it he recounts how Mitchell Sanders was telling the story of the patrol that went up into the mountains, and how they had heard sounds and how he had added in more details that were not true in order to bring the story to life. O'Brien recounts, "In many cases a true war story cannot be believed. If you believe it, be skeptical. It's a question of credibility. Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn't, because the normal stuff is necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness" (pg. 79).
Chapters like "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" may contain some fact. The whole chapter could be real. However to me it is more of story within a story. It explains that there is a certain innocence that is lost when someone becomes a part of the thing we call war. Something from which you can never go back. I believe to some extent, that this was the truer meaning of O'Brien's story of the Mary Anne character. Perhaps it is both a reflection of how war stories are more true than we admit to believing, but more so it is a reflection of how someone who seems so innocent and naive can travel to a place that seems to strip them of all that they once were. This is what war does to a person. It is an emotional scar that never truly heals. And so you are never the same person walking out that you were coming in. We may deny this, but in the end the person that goes over there dies, and the one that returns is nothing but a replacement.
O'Brien has taken his own experience's and added in some details that are appropriate in order to tell a story closer to the heart than a simple account of the past. At times he strips these stories down to the bare essentials, and at other times he fabricates nearly all of the detail. Yet perhaps this is crucial to the storytelling process. Perhaps as O'Brien says, the "story truth is truer sometimes than the happening truth." If that is so, then here you have an example of a story-truth that leaves us wondering about one mans experience's in the jungles of Vietnam.
This movie is based on a story-truth. It is not really meant to be a true, factual account. It is meant to make you think.