"i hope this next generation of kids is smarter than i was... next time some politician tries to sell them a used war." - oliver stone, from the making-of documentary oliver stone '85-'05 marathon - film 2 (previous: salvador <- ->next: wall street) stone was one of the first directors i started following, as he was making dynamic, impactful films right when i was old enough to start picking films apart and not just escaping into them. i'm well familiar with his major films, so for this revisit, i'm watching docs or listening to commentary on the films i already know very well. the dvd for platoon comes with a good one, "a tour of the inferno". most serious movie fans have not only seen this film, but are familiar with some of the craziness behind it. that it's drawn from stone's own experience as an infantryman in vietnam. that the guys being played by the amazing up-and-coming cast were all composites of real soldiers. that stone was a tyrant on set and drove the actors to their breaking points. but they probably don't know the extent of the difficulty getting the film made. or the extent of the difficulty on set. few people could have been more surprised than the cast and crew when the film was such a huge success, winning 4 oscars, 3 golden globes, 2 baftas, and 4 independent spirit awards. that's right, this was an indie. the introduction of the behind-the-scenes doc talks about stone writing the film back in the '70s, because "i was afraid i would forget what it was like if i waited any longer..." the resulting script was too raw, deemed unmarketable by all the studios and stone couldn't get it made. they then skip past the part where he had 3 scripts turned into big hit movies in a short period, a real record in hollywood, where scripts are often bought but rarely made. after that, stone was able to get two of his pet projects picked up, salvador and platoon. i wrote in my previous review of the crazy guerilla filmmaking struggles with salvador, but stone wrapped that and almost immediately got into a similar situation with platoon. after finally getting the green light, casting, and getting ready to start pre-production in the philippines, the country started a revolution. willem dafoe had already flown there, and woke up to find tanks in the streets. the whole project went on hold again. of course, things did soon stabilize enough to fly the actors out for boot camp. the behind-the-scenes doc is divided into chronological sections, just like the actors experienced the film: induction, combat, and discharge. stone started captain dale dye on a long career as hollywood's go-to war expert when he hired him on as a military advisor. he and dye put together a brutal two-week boot camp to run the actors through, the first in what would become a tradition as dye was later hired to do for casualties of war, the last of the mohicans, forrest gump, and virtually every war movie with realistic infantry sequences since. stone created a set where every actor was now a method actor, living a complete soldier life, referred to only by their character's rank, sleeping in holes they dug, no showers, carrying gear through the jungle, getting bit, getting no sleep...becoming someone else. the realism of the film's script is carried through in the way it was shot and the performances. it's all on location, all real. by the time the actors got to set, stone had already made them exhausted and frustrated and a bit crazy. it wasn't hard to channel that into a performance. they slept in two hour shifts and woke up the next actor for watch. dye would have the special effects techs set up charges to blow up around the camp at unexpected intervals. they'd fire off rounds over the actors heads at night. johnny depp tells a story where he fell asleep on watch one night and dye snuck up on him and woke him up with a pistol behind his ear. forest whitaker tells about mark moses being given a real map (like his character) and the responsibility to get them to the shooting destination. but just like his character, he misled them and the guys had to hike hours back...whitaker honestly plotted revenge against moses. i'm always a bit concerned about stories of directors not trusting their actors to...well, act. but the proof is on screen for this film. you might've gotten solid performances from these very talented actors, but they might have been fairly one dimensional. the script isn't about developing them and adding backstory. it's about the experience of being in hell, in a world of chaos, where you don't know where you're going or why you're there or who's against you. you don't even know yourself. stone incessantly pushed and prodded the actors, driving them beyond their performances, so that in every note on the screen is a sense of ambivalence and confusion, of tamping down a gnawing desperation. charlie sheen in particular said "at one point, i didn't think i was going to get out of there... when i got off the plane, i kissed the ground at lax, i really did." this still stands as his finest and most multi-layered performance. some people realize that tom berenger's "barnes" and dafoe's "elias" are essentially playing opposite primal forces in the film, the angel and the devil on chris's shoulders. that may lead them to write this off as a simplistic morality tale, but those aren't just screenwriter's tools, those were real guys. 'nam really did have strong presences like that, dynamic men whose life philosophies got put into opposition with each other when they were stuck in "the shit" long enough. dafoe tells in the doc something i didn't know, but makes total sense in retrospect: the real elias was a native american. at home in the jungle, with an almost spiritual sense of the world, dafoe captures that feeling in elias that was so often referred to as "the noble savage" in old movies and books. but it's an appropriate term here, pitted up against the ignoble savage, barnes. the doc does not go into many aspects of the production that are more technical than some viewers might be interested in. but the film itself has fantastic cinematography by robert richardson, who would go on to split his time with tarantino and scorsese besides stone. it's a miracle they even lit some of the gripping jungle scenes in this film as well as they did. the editing by claire simpson is also noteworthy in how well they cut between shots to make the action of the firefights perfectly clear about how confusing it was, if you can follow that. the final flight as chris lifts off in the helicopter is a great showcase of this, as it cuts from his reaction to the soldiers, to him, to the trees, to him, to the mountains, giving time for all of it to wash over. but of course, the greatest credit has to go to stone, who executed his story to a t. he created a poem, a dark and terrible sonnet of war. john c. mcginley recalls the end of production, where actors suddenly disappeared from set one by one as their characters were killed off or got home. there was a terrible sense that he wouldn't get out of there and he was all alone. when he finally did, he got back to the us and top gun was the #1 movie, and he thought... "this is what america is buying? our story will never sell... we made a love story of young men dying." the '80s did not seem like a time when america was ready to embrace the reality of 'nam. to have stone take them on a trip with jefferson airplane and smokey robinson and shotgun bongs before showing them friendly frags and mai lai massacres and adagio for strings... but his vision was undeniable. because it was real. he was there. and he took all the actors there. and he took us there. it's a powerful message, a bit of staring into the abyss. it's the finest war film ever made, and one both stone and we should hope never has to be made again.