|
Michael Grigsby's haunting Granada television documentary is perhaps the
first sustained treatment on film of the phenomenon of the 'Vietnam veteran',
later a familiar cultural archetype, and in particular a recurring character
type in Hollywood feature films. The vivid quality of some of the fictional
Viet-vets is in no way prefigured by the three real war veterans recently
returned to small-town Texas who are the subjects of Grigsby's film. The camera
observes them in awkward silence as well as in speech, for to varying degrees
they struggle to articulate their feelings about how the war has affected them.
Among other things this makes it immediately obvious that these men are not used
to being asked to recount, let alone reflect upon, their recent experiences. The
film includes no war footage, and is instead filled with gentle pastoral images
of rural and small-town Texas, leaving the viewer to imagine what searing
memories may remain stuck in the subjects' heads.
The quiet and sympathetic approach is in keeping with almost all Grigsby's
films, dedicated to giving a 'voice to the voiceless'. As distinct from some of
his more outspoken films, however, a political agenda is not to the fore and the
film is a more straightforward exercise in humanism.
A number of Grigsby's other television films enjoyed a later life on
non-theatrical film circuits, but I Was a Soldier has remained generally unseen
since its first screening. Seeing the film today, viewers are likely to be just
as moved by it as those who tuned in in 1970. They are also likely to wonder how
life has treated its likeable but haunted, inarticulate subjects in the years
that have followed.
Patrick Russell
|
1. Back home (5:09)
