I’ve never seen this film before. So here goes…
Robin Williams’ character, Adrian Cronauer, was indeed a DJ in Viet Nam. He’s portrayed here as an eccentric extrovert comedian, who upsets some of the stiff-necked ‘brass’.
It’s a kind of odd film, inasmuch as most American films about Viet Nam dive right in to the very obvious struggle with issues around American guilt. In comparison, this starts out seeming more like a feel-good movie. The rugged individualist sticking it to the man. As American as apple pie, and, er… napalm!?
It’s not until an hour into the film that the ugliness of war momentarily intrudes. And quite soon after that, the movie gets back to romance. Even if it’s a stilted or unrequited one.
Rather bizarrely, whilst the cast keep the film interesting enough, it’s not until three quarters of the way through the film that it notches up a gear or two, with the sequence where Cronauer is made to realise what he has come to mean to the troops. He then plays Satchmo’s ‘Wonderful World’ whilst the movie shows some of the horrors of the war!
So now we’re back into more familiar territory. The ugly and dirty complexity of war. Williams still manages to get both emotional nuance and laughs out of it. Impressive. And it’s impossible not to think on Williams’ fate. Life, eh!? And death? It’s in this film, and it’s in Robin Williams’ long celluloid shadow.
Unsurprisingly the movie and the reality of Cronauer‘s stint on air in The ‘Nam are galaxies apart. That’s Hollywood for ya’! And maybe this points to a fundamental issue with the American psyche? Is it any wonder they continually blunder into appalling geopolitical messes, when they live on a diet of dreams?