Last Year in Viet Nam

Last Year in Viet Nam (1971)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Oliver Stone's first and only student film is about a man returning home from Vietnam and not being able to fit in. We see him throw away the stuff he got while serving and then he heads out to walk around NYC. I can't say that this is a masterpiece or a film where you'd take a look at it and say that you could tell Stone would turn into a great filmmaker. From interviews I've read with Stone it seems his professor wanted him to look at his own life and try to create a film about how he was feeling so Vietnam would certainly be an obvious choice and it is somewhat interesting seeing his early ideas of the war compared to later movies like PLATOON and HEAVEN AND EARTH. Some of the most memorable footage here comes from stuff that was shot in Vietnam and it mixes in well with the New York stuff. There's a lot of cross cutting between stuff and I'll admit that at times I wasn't sure where the director was going but this is still worth seeing if you're a fan of the director.

Oliver Stone's one and only student film, Last Year in Vietnam, is definitely not the sort of thing to take as any kind of "masterpiece" or revelatory piece into what Stone's career would be like. The only real kind of revelatory, I-can-tell-this-guy-made-it quality to the film are the abstractions, scattered about. This is even more of a post-war outpouring than Platoon is in its own fragmented way. What we get are several minutes of a man in a hotel room, reeling from coming back from Vietnam with bad vibes in him, and we see some of these visions. It's nothing very shocking or outrageous, and there aren't any crazy theories posited in the film. If anything one of the strengths of the work is how it's amalgamation form lets one see into the mind of this character. And, of course, in its obvious way there is an amateurish quality to it, of a guy still figuring out his own style over a decade before he would find it in a regular (at least for him) narrative. But as someone who's seen his share of student films, I have seen a lot worse. The archival footage of Vietnam and whatever else comes from outside the hotel are the best bits, and its short enough to not overstay its welcome- just enough to ruminate over, in a quietly sad way, about a mind in post-war delirium.

7.5 / 10

Featured on the DVD "first works". The film shows a man trying to forget his Vietnam Memories by throwing his war-memorabilia (photos, medals) away. Through the story mixed are fragments he shot while stationed in Vietnam. This gives the film some debt.

The movie was shot while he was studying at NYU, a teacher there convinced him to look into his own experience's for making a good film. Being a Vietnam veteran it was obvious he chose that as a subject. The theme about a veteran trying to cope with his war experiences is a subject that comes back in several of his later movies, particularly in Born on the 4th of July.

It is a pretty good first and worth watching.

I watched this short film on a dvd called First Works. It contains the first films of great filmakers like Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, and Oliver Stone. I expected nothing from Stone's first film and wasn't sure whether they would show this one or Mad Man of Martinique. I was absolutely amazed by the emotion of Last Year in Viet Nam and the way he portrayed a veteran living in New York. There was no dialogue, however, the images and music created the perfect experience. This is the greatest short film I've ever seen.

10 out of 10