MOVIE REVIEW : ‘GARDENS OF STONE’ BRINGS VIETNAM HOME

Blood from Vietnam seeps insistently through Francis Coppola’s finely wrought and consummately well-played “Gardens of Stone” (selected theaters), even though the war is a continent and an ocean away.

The film is set in 1968 among the tranquil rolling hills of Arlington National Cemetery, its perennial greenness a rebuttal to the business of the place. There, although the men of the Old Guard, the Army’s ceremonial burial unit, make their “drops” around the clock, the war rages only on television and in the consciences of the characters.

What emerges is a compassionate study of the members of a specialized Army unit and of their women: stoic, angry, anguished. With a little stretch, it can be seen as a metaphor for the nation itself, with its pockets of support, tolerance--or absolute opposition to the war. Because Nicholas Proffitt, who wrote the original novel, was an Army brat and an Old Guard himself, then a Newsweek correspondent and bureau chief in Vietnam, it is a rare insider’s view.

We’ve seen the Army as a brotherhood before, a great many times, but in Coppola’s hands the fascination of this extended family is spun to its limits. The movie is full of Army fathers and sons, real and surrogate. It’s also about pairs of lovers: James Caan and Anjelica Huston, with the wary patina of experience; D. B. Sweeney and Mary Stuart Masterson, aglow with youth and unwarranted optimism.

Proffitt took pains to humanize his officers and non-coms; Ronald Bass (“Black Widow”), who adapted the screenplay, extends the civility. We’re inured to cliches of the top sarge as a no-class, fire-breathing dragoon; Caan’s Sgt. Hazard is quietly knowledgeable about Oriental rugs--he knows his Shiraz from his Bokhara and he can turn out a decent dinner for four if he has to.

Hazard and his closest friend, Sergeant-Major Goody Nelson (James Earl Jones), dedicated lifers both, are the inverse of the dehumanized, dead-end sergeants of “Streamers.” They, or certainly Hazard, care so much about their foredoomed “baby” recruits that Vietnam--the first American war in their experience that’s clearly unwinnable--is a torment. And to Hazard, service as a “toy soldier” in the Army’s show battalion seems ludicrous, when his own experience could be used to prepare these boys for an enemy he knows.

Pro-Army, anti-Vietnam. It is a passionate impasse, played out by full, good characters and fine performers.

Yet in spite of its cast and the film’s taut beauty--Jordan Cronenweth’s pure, unfussy photography, Dean Tavoularis’ evocative production design, Barry Malkin’s succinct editing and the costuming of Willa Kim and Judianna Makovsky, which makes one of fashion’s ugliest eras bearable--”Gardens of Stone” falls short of the heart-rending magnificence it might have had, even short of the novel’s bitter sense of loss, because of the manner in which the film makers have framed their story.

Jackie Willow (newcomer Sweeney, in an impassioned debut) is the movie’s young protagonist, most adept and gung-ho of new recruits. Son of a master sergeant who had served with Hazard and Nelson, Willow’s view of Vietnam is heartbreakingly simple: It’s a place for him to fulfill his lifelong dreams of glory.

Coppola chooses to bracket his film with the military rites of Willow’s funeral, seen once when we are uninvolved spectators and the second time when every face in the ceremony has assumed a special meaning for us. It’s a daring idea, challenging us to let the movie work on our intellect more than on our sentiment. But the approach that rules out sentiment also rules out suspense.

One could argue, I suppose, that no one with half an eye to the casualty lists from Vietnam or to story construction would give odds on Willow’s chances, anyway. Or that Coppola is no stranger to construction where the audience knows a character’s fate before he or she does. And it’s done to keep the action contained to that metaphoric graveyard, where no matter how hard the teams work to bury the dead, Vietnam keeps ahead of them.

Clearly, Coppola did not want to return to those jungles, except via the desperate TV footage of the period. It’s his choice.

But so is this exemplary cast. To have Caan back for the first time in five years is to admire all over again his innate strengths as an actor: his givingness, his corner-of-the-mouth self-deprecation, his straight-ahead, unmannered perfectionism. Jones seems returned to us with all his recent movie excesses planed away: He doesn’t hide behind that amazing voice of his, he simply is the tower of strength, humor and character that Goody must be.

Seen more briefly are Dean Stockwell as Hazard’s commanding officer; Larry Fishburne (memorable as “Cotton Club’s” elegant black gangster) as Flanagan, Casey Siemaszko as Wildman, whose military career will take such an astonishing turn, and Dick Anthony Williams, as the semi-insane volcano 1st Sgt. “Slasher” Williams, who intimidates by invective. (The film’s R rating is for its notably accurate use of Army vernacular.)

The film’s women are equally strong: Huston is Samantha Davis, Washington Post reporter and peace activist, the outsider who sees everything military from the audience’s viewpoint, and Mary Stuart Masterson is Rachel Feld, the Army brat from the officer’s side of the fence, who knows the military score far better than the idealistic Willow.

Lonette McKee is glowingly sassy as the senator’s aide who is also Goody Nelson’s lady. Carlin Glynn (Masterson’s real-life mother) as Feld’s mother creates with almost no dialogue a vivid picture of what life with a martinet career officer can be. (It’s an all-family affair for Masterson, since that colonel-father is played by her own father, Peter Masterson.)

And for all its lack of suspense, “Gardens of Stone’s” intelligence and its unsimple characters make it a notable attempt to deal with that war. When Willow shruggingly dismisses the enemy as people who will fire at aircraft with bows and arrows, Hazard’s retort, “How are ya gonna beat an enemy that fights planes with bows and arrows?” cuts right to the heart of the matter.

‘GARDENS OF STONE’

A Tri-Star release from Zoetrope Studios. Executive producers Stan Weston and Jay Emmett and Fred Roos. Producers Michael I. Levy, Francis Coppola. Director Coppola. Co-executive producer David Valdes. Screenplay Ronald Bass, based on the novel by Nicholas Proffitt. Camera Jordan Cronenweth. Production design Dean Tavoularis. Editor Barry Malkin. Costumes Willa Kim, Judianna Makovsky. Music Carmine Coppola. Art director Alex Tavoularis. Set decorator Gary Fettis. Sound design Richard Beggs. Supervising Sound Editor Gloria S. Borders. With James Caan, Anjelica Huston, James Earl Jones, D. B. Sweeney, Dean Stockwell, Mary Stuart Masterson, Dick Anthony Williams, Lonette McKee, Sam Bottoms, Elias Koteas, Larry Fishburne, Casey Siemaszko, Peter Masterson, Carlin Glynn.

Running time: 1 hour, 51 minutes.

MPAA-rated: R (persons under 17 must be accompanied by parent or adult guardian)