Edward Thomson(Coll

In this digital age, it is a privilege to be able to study the pages of the Book of Kells online, but every year many people travel to Dublin to admire the original work. Perhaps only an encounter with the manuscript itself can allow us to appreciate fully the true scale of this masterpiece, and how the intricacy of this Insular art functioned as a gateway to the divine. Work | Book of Kells | ID: hm50tr726 | Digital Collections (tcd.ie)

Exploring the Book of Kells - Online Course FutureLearn (a free account is available)

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The Book of Kells (thamesandhudson.com)

The idea of what a Vietnam War film should be is today something so fixed that its clichés can be seemingly summed up in only three short words: ‘back in ‘Nam’. Helicopters, booby traps and hippies versus overzealous patriots, the vision of Vietnam presented in American cinema exists in an ecosystem of tropes and themes, inseparable from how the War itself is viewed today. These very tropes, however, mask the question, which is the focus of this essay, with preconception: how does American cinema react to the inescapable ending of all these visions of Vietnam – failure and withdrawal? From the earliest era of Vietnam films, dominated by such jingoistic efforts as John Wayne’s The Green Berets (1968), to the now-classic insanity of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), this question proves itself to be a useful lens through which to view the reaction of American cinema to the events of the Vietnam War.

The most obvious place to begin is with The Green Berets, the first film to depict dramatically the events of the Vietnam War, which even predates America’s withdrawal. Prompted by John Wayne’s own personal visit to Vietnam in 1966, which inspired him to make a film to combat what he saw as the American media’s bias against the War, the film exists in a strange twilight of American optimism where it has no need to even address the possibility of failure. What is perhaps most useful about The Green Berets as compared to other films of the Vietnam War is that it serves as a perfect reference point as to how Americans wish they could have viewed the conflict in an ideal world, of victory over Communism.

Produced in collaboration with the US Military, who provided all of the military equipment and uniforms necessary, in addition to allowing for the film to be shot on the Fort Benning military base in Georgia, it feels today like a cheap piece of propaganda, signalling at any possible moment the virtue of America’s struggle. The plot is almost frustratingly obvious given the film’s aim. A sceptical reporter comes to Vietnam to accompany the grizzled Colonel Mike Kerby (John Wayne) and to see the action of the war first-hand. He is converted to America’s cause over the course of 142 minutes of straw-hats, helicopters and ‘gook’ raids. Certain characters exist for no other reason than to act as signs of American benevolence, such as the orphan child Hamchuk, who is taken in by the soldiers of an American base under constant threat of VC attack. His character arc is painfully predictable; he forms a close bond with one of the soldiers, the mischievous but likeable Sergeant Petersen, who is killed in action at the film’s conclusion. Distraught at his failure to return, Hamchuk is inconsolable until John Wayne emerges to take him under his wing, strolling along a suddenly apparent beach into the sunset, telling Hamchuk, ‘you’re what this is all about.’

John Wayne as Colonel Mike Kerby in The Green Berets

The visual aesthetic of The Green Berets is crucial in presenting Wayne’s idealised vision of the Vietnam War: it feels like a World War Two film. The weapons on display might be sparkling new, heavily reliant on the newly introduced M16 rifle pointedly on display in this extended-length recruitment drive, but every other aspect of the set design feels more at home in The Battle Of The Bulge (1965) or The Longest Day (1962) in that Vietnam itself is only ever very loosely implied. Filmed in Georgia, the VC emerge from the woods, not from the jungle, while seemingly only one faux-Saigon set was ever produced, with the same single street reused three times from different angles across the film.

This lack of anything particularly Vietnamese can border on the comical at times, with the character of Colonel Cai, for example, an ARVN liaison defined by his obedience to the will of the American characters, scripted to speak in an entirely insensitive form of broken English, the cringeworthy joke ruined only by the perfect English accent of the actor playing Cai. If The Green Berets had only ever become a critically-panned last gasp of the John Wayne style of film making, panned by critics such as Renata Adler for having been ‘completely incommunicado, out of touch’, its story would be merely an amusing one. Knowing, however, how successful it was, grossing over $80 million within three months of its release, and the amount, therefore, of young men it might have