Institutional dependence

Rating: 9/10 (20 September 2009)

This is a rather old film on the Vietnam War. It has aged. The denunciation of the censorship that existed in the US forces in Vietnam, is still efficient, but it deals with the past. The Vietnam War is finished. The humor about the ex-Vice-Président Nixon, is of course a lot less efficient today, because a lot of time has gone by. The vision of the war is still very mild, though it emphasizes, still, the fact that the Viet Congs were everywhere, and it states in a very few sentences the real motivations of these young people who joined the fight against the Americans : personal, victims all around them, and the fact that they were at home, and the Americans were not. But the film has taken, since its first release, a completely new meaning, more allegoric but also tremendously strong. This time it has do only with the functioning of an institution, no matter which, that has to respect some norms coming from above and not from its audience, its public. It has to do with censorship and the desire and tendency of some people to refuse it in the name of the good old freedom of expression and of the press. Just this point, repeated quite many times, shows how strong such a functioning is. But the film delves into the human relations that come along with this general functioning. Those who detain authority in this institution feel frustrated by those who rebel against the censorship they try to impose. And it reveals that the former will try to do anything they can do get rid of the troublemaker : they will send him on an impossible and death-ridden mission, hoping he will be killed ; then they will build up a file trying to show that he is a traitor and has to be courtmartialed, and then they will condescendently move him out of the way with a nice speech on generosity, clemency and even compassion. This denunciation of this terroristic functioning of any institution, public or private, is still valid and full of relevance. On that level the film has not aged one single iota. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Paris Universities II and IX.