The filmmaker looks back (and he doesn’t like what he sees)
Four decades have passed since Platoon swept the box office and the Oscars. Forty years. And Oliver Stone, with that tired look of someone who has seen too much, drops a bomb in Variety: “The United States learned nothing from the lesson of Vietnam”. Bigger words.
The interview is a melancholic journey. Stone talks about the film he filmed with only 6 million and grossed almost 138. How it became an unexpected phenomenon. But also the personal price.
“I fear that the positions I have expressed openly over the years have jeopardized my career in Hollywood”
There is the knot. The director who portrayed JFK and Nixon feels his directness took a toll on him. And look at the present with genuine concern.
The wars that do not end
For Stone, the cycle repeats itself. Vietnam, Iraq, and now what he sees on the horizon.
“The war in Iraq was the biggest disaster after Vietnam. George Bush, the worst president we have ever had. And now Trump is starting a war in Iran, playing the same game with Cuba and Venezuela”
The comparison is brutal: “It’s like with the Roman Empire. We never learn our lesson.”
Four decades later, Platoon is no longer just a movie about a past war. For its creator, it is an uncomfortable mirror of a country that insists on stumbling over the same stone. And Hollywood, perhaps, prefers not to see itself in it.
