“I think now, looking back, we did not fight the enemy; we fought ourselves. And the enemy was in us. The war is over for me now, but it will always be there, the rest of my days as I’m sure Elias will be, fighting with Barnes for what Rhah called possession of my soul. There are times since, I’ve felt like the child born of those two fathers. But, be that as it may, those of us who did make it have an obligation to build again, to teach to others what we know, and to try with what’s left of our lives to find a goodness and a meaning to this life,” protagonist Chris Taylor soberly remarks as Platoon closes. Pretty thoughtful words for a rather graphic and disturbing film–and sentiments that sum up brilliantly the significance of this BP winner.
In his final words to Platoon‘s viewers, Chris identifies his main conflict as with his fellow American soldiers and within himself, opposed to with the soldiers of the Viet Cong whom he actually physically fights. While much of the film deals with the military altercations between American and North Vietnamese forces, there is also an obvious divide between the American soldiers, with half following the heartless and cruel Sgt. Barnes and the other half admiring the more honorable leadership of Sgt. Elias. Just like with Americans at home during the war, for Chris and his comrades Vietnam and the U.S. troops’ purpose in being there is a hot-button topic about which no one can agree. Rather than come together to solve a problem, the Americans, home and abroad, bicker and antagonize each other, leading to the troops’ vulnerability and unpreparedness to appropriately respond (physically, mentally, and emotionally) to their surroundings and attackers.
Furthermore, Chris tells viewers that the enemy is within the American soldiers. He explains this idea further when he equates his two commanders, Elias and Barnes and their hatred for each other with the war for his soul that is waged between good and evil–Elias representing good and Barnes evil. Elias and Barnes (spoiler alert) don’t make it to the end of Platoon. In a shocking act of betrayal, Barnes murders (or facilitates the murder of) Elias, leading to the famous scene in which Elias gives up his life with his arms reaching toward the helicopters in the sky while the Viet Cong shoot him from behind. Toward the end of the film, Chris, convinced of Barnes’s guilt in Elias’s death, kills a wounded Barnes after he asks for a medic. In effect, then, evil kills good, and a man torn apart by the conflict of good and evil within himself eliminates evil. But Elias and Barnes (and thus, good and evil) live on within Chris, so he says, warring over his soul.
What Chris realizes is that Vietnam and his experiences there have changed him. Good and evil have become blurred, and it is as if those two opposites have become his “fathers.” He is the child of goodness and evil, and the deeds he is asked (and at times required) to do are both good and bad. He can’t always clearly determine what is right and wrong anymore, but he recognizes that they exist and that both affect him deeply–just like Elias and Barnes did.
For Me Then…
Chris’s last lines reminded me a lot of Marlow’s thoughts in Joseph Conrad’s classic Heart of Darkness. As Marlow journeys up the Congo River in search of his fellow countryman Kurtz, he recognizes an evil lurking within the surrounding jungle and is shocked and horrified when he realizes later that the same evil is within him as well. He is not immune to the draw of the wildness of the jungle, and there is a twisted joy in the darkness he finds in his soul.
Likewise, Chris comes to Vietnam–as a volunteer infantryman–with a naïve mindset and the hope that he can make a difference there. What he discovers is that he is a nobody, a cog in a broken machine. He intends to do what is right and serve his country, but what is right becomes murky in the Vietnamese jungles where his own commanders fight each other. Evil isn’t just present with the Viet Cong, but is also within Chris’s comrades–and himself–too. Chris confronts the evil of Barnes, but he isn’t any better than Barnes when he chooses to administer justice himself by executing his wounded superior officer. In the end, Chris, like Marlow, must come to terms with the evil within himself and the realization that he will spend the rest of his life trying to hold that evil at bay while he seeks some sort–any sort–of goodness and meaning in this world. The meaning that Chris seems to find (also expressed by director Oliver Stone in his Oscar acceptance speech) is that by telling his story to others at home perhaps another such disaster like the Vietnam War can be avoided. This is the hope that Chris wants to cling to as Platoon closes. Still, I can’t stop thinking about Marlow at the end of Heart of Darkness as he drifts into the cloudy and hopeless future of his life, confused and disillusioned by his past experiences. Chris might realize the struggle of choosing right in a world full of wrong, but telling stories of past mistakes isn’t a guarantee those wrongs won’t be repeated.
