REVIEW

HAMBURGER HILL. A Paramount
Pictures release. Written and produced
by Jim Carabatsos. Directed by John
Irvin. At local theatres.

The ad running in the daily newspaper
gives a clue as to what this movie is going
to tell its audience. Hamburger Hill, the
latest in a genre of Vietnam retrospec-
tives from the American film industry,
differs in that the trade photo shows a
company of smiling young men against a
battlefield backdrop.

The advertisements for Hamburger
Hill’s forerunners, notably the acclaimed
Platoon, and more recently, Full Metal
Jacket, showed the war in a more
sombre light. For until the advent of this
basically reactionary movie, the reliving
of the Vietnam War in cinemas has in the
main been highly critical of U.S. impe-
nalism’s most stunning defeat.

Not so with Hamburger Hill. In the
place of anguished breast-beating over
the country’s national trauma we have
an attack, John Wayne style, on all those
long-haired creeps and media wimps that
supposedly lost the war for the U.S.

Yet Hamburger Hill is no re-creation
of Wayne’s crude propaganda piece, The
Green Berets. This is the 1980s after all,
and in the cinematic traditions of this
decade, Hill is graphic in its portrayal of
the realities of modern warfare.

Indeed, much like Platoon, gut-
wrenching scenes of mutilation and
death are interspersed with depictions of
the psychological havoc war wreaks on
its participants. The issues of racism and
poverty are again aired, and telling
points are made in the gritty if at times

overwrought, dialogue. Example (black

platoon doctor to black trooper who
wants to get off active duty): “They don’t
take niggers back at headquarters. All
the white f — — — sare already there.”

And Hamburger Hill has as its
screenwriter/producer an actual Viet-
nam War veteran — Jim Carabatsos
— just as Platoon had veteran Oliver
Stone as its director.

Based as it is on the May, 1969 battle
for a piece of high ground the U.S. Army
called Hill 937, Hamburger Hill also-
seems to be bearing a message, as did its

message.

predecessors, about the futility of the
war. The cost in human lives for the
taking of the hill, particularly for U.S.
infantrymen, was astronomical, and the
movie depicts this faithfully by slaughter-
ing most of its protagonists.

Hill also uses as background music
many of the top hits of the day, including
Country Joe and the Fish’s devastating
critique of the war, “The I-Believe-I’m-
Fixing-to-Die Rag.”

Why it does so is puzzling, since the
film goes on to roast the war’s contem-
porary critics in no uncertain terms.
Soldiers in the film tell us long-haired,
flower-shirted types who oppose the war
have been dousing homecoming soldiers
with dog feces, lauding the deaths of slain
servicemen in anonymous telephone
messages to the bereaved fathers, and
stealing the wives and lovers of the men
fighting overseas, while avoiding the
draft through college deferments.

Says one embittered sergeant: “Love:
they tattoo it on their foreheads and wear
it on their flowered shirts. They’re fond
of everybody. . .they love everybody but
you.”

But hippies and other anti-war acti-
vists of the 1960s aren’t the only target.
The media too gets it in the neck, as when
Sgt. Frantz (Dylan McDermott), return-
ing with his men from an unsuccessful

Hamburger Hill

HAMBURGER HILL CAST... cheap populism attempts to mask right-wing

attempt on Hill 937, berates a television
reporter for the medium’s alleged lack of
support (which is curious, since those of
us alive and cognizant at the time recall
very little critical coverage of the war by
the big business media of the-day).

“I respect those little bastards (the
Vietnamese liberation army) on the hill
more than I respect you,” says the ser-
geant. “At least they take a side.”

But does Hamburger Hill really take a
side? Do the producers actually have the
nerve to come out in support of one of
history’s most discredited wars?

Undoubtedly, they do support it, as
they would any more recent U.S. inva-
sion — Grenada, for example (Carabat-
sos wrote the screenplay for the
pro-invasion Heartbreak Ridge), or the
ever-present threat against Nicaragua.
But Hamburger Hill avoids answering
that question.

Instead, it makes its right-wing pitch
through cheap populism, exploiting the
suffering of the mainly working-class
youth who actually did the fighting, to
try to discredit those who courageously
fought against the war in street demon-
strations, blockades or in military pri-
sons at home. It’s an underhanded way
of saying the same things as John
Wayne, and it’s not worth anyone’s
money.

— Dan Keeton

New book

re-creates

dismantied
history

It was erected in 1938 opposite Niaga!
Falls, a striking, sculpted arch intended!
commemorate the 100th anniversary of
Rebellion of 1837-38 in Upper Canada. Bt
less than 30 years later — ironically on
100th anniversary of Confederation —
was torn down and the pieces of this um!q!
work of Canadian art left to weather 2
Niagara Parks ‘maintenance yard.

The story of that arch, known as th
Pioneer Memorial Arch, its origins and
political-setting to its dismantling are tob
explored in a new book by Mark Fran
Slated for release later this month, it will b
entitled The MacKenzie Panels: the strang
case of Niagara’s fallen arch.

Frank, a former manager of Progté
Books and an occasional writer on cultuf
affairs for the Canadian Tribune, first cat
across the pieces of the dismantled arch!
the maintenance yard. Sculpted in bas-reli
by renowned Ontario sculptor Emanu
Hahn from the line drawings of C.
Jeffries — famous for his drawing,
Farmers Rebellion of 1837 — they com
memorated the pioneering history of tt
early settlers. But they had already begun!
disintegrate from years of having been l¢
out, uncovered.

Frank’s discovery began a lengthy call
paign, later assisted by the Toronto Histo!
cal Society and the Ontario Heritag
Foundation, to have those panels that coul
be restored brought to Toronto and finall
housed at Mackenzie House.

The book includes some 37 photograph
including many from the author’s own fill
as well as from archival sources.

Few people outside Toronto know of th
existence of the MacKenzie panels but fews
still know of the government's reasons fo
tearing down this part of Canada’s cultulé
heritage in 1967. Frank explores some ¢
those reasons which were rooted in th
politics of the time and in the repeate
efforts of both historians and governmet!
officials to trivialize the contribution of W:
liam Lyon Mackenzie and his role in th
1837 Rebellion.

Priced at $9.95, the book is expected to D
in stores in early October.

—

Glasnost bringing new life to Soviet theatre.

If you go in for traditional theatre,
summer is not the best time to be in
Moscow as established theatres go on
tours abroad or to distant cities within
the Soviet Union.

However the new studio theatres
which are springing up like mushroom:
remain in town.

And with the more prestigious com-
panies away they can enjoy a bit of the
limelight.

Some studio-theatres have regular
premises adjacent to the parent theatre
like the Sovremennik on Clean Ponds
Boulevard.

Others have separate premises like an
experimental studio of the Steel and
Alloys Institute which has staged an
ambitious production of a play based on
Kirghiz writer Chingiz Aitmatov’s The
Executioner’s Block.

Here in a basement the audience sit

10 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, SEPTEMBER 16, 1987

split into two halves facing each other,
with the tiny stage on two levels between
them. ayaa

Using a minimum of stage props, the
young company very sucessfully recreates
the themes of Aitmatov’s novel — drug
taking, religion, hypocrisy, hangovers
from feudal past.

Other experimental studios perform in
Palaces of Culture belonging to trade
unions, factories or institutions.

A satirical review of Yuli Kimh’s
songs Don’t Desert Me, Spring has
played to packed audiences at the medi-
cal workers’ union Cultural Palace on
Pravda Street.

A young company which is very pro-

fessional and musically proficient, their —

gentle satire probes smugness, and show-
iness, boastfulness and hardened atti-
tres, in a spirit of optimism and good
fu.

One scene shows a young woman in
mac and headscarf weighted down with
two full shopping bags. She sits in centre
stage and sings:

Well at last I’ve more or less done the

shopping for eats and drinks. Could Ion _

my own birthday sit down for at-least a
sec?

Not heavy handed didactics, but sub-
tle social comment which is far and away
more effective judging by the audience’s
enthusiastic reaction.

The studio theatres with their young
talent epitomize the spirit of renewal
which is all round here today.

All theatres are now working under
the new economic conditions. Actors are
having to pass new proficiency evalua-
tion and the elected Artistic Councils
decide who earns what and how many
staff are needed. -

This means retained actors are earning
more pay and theatres have been able to _
rid themselves of mediocre actors whose
heart was not in their job.

The new economic conditions and
greater independence of theatres indicate
the overall shake-up in Soviet theatre
and the artistic results are tangible
— enthusiam, innovation, new works,
challenging and bold productions.

Theatre has always been popular here
with its rich traditions of Meyerholdand —
Stanislavsky.

And people have always hung around
at theatre entrances eyeing people com-
ing up for a possible spare ticket to sell
them.

But now there’s a new heightened
interest in what is on at the theatre.

— Kate Clark
Morning Star