Soldier's Sweetheart
by Thomas Michael Donnelly
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VHS Tape Cover Information
Actor: Christopher Birt, Georgina Cates, Larry Gilliard Jr., Mike Edward, Tony BillyDirector: Thomas Michael Donnelly
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
Running Time: 111 minutes
Release Date: 2001-04-03
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Publisher: Paramount
Studio: Paramount
VHS Movie Reviews of Soldier's Sweetheart
Movie Review: missing the point
Summary: 4 Stars
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.
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