It has become very fashionable amongst uninformed opinion to mock the French military heritage . John A Nagi's best selling book Learning To Eat Soup With A Knife is a modern day bible of counter-insurgency warfare and chronicles the differences between America's failed conflict in Vietnam and Britain's spectacularly successful conflict against communist terrorists in Malaya in the 1950s . One of the major keys to British success was developing a French strategy learned in the Indo-China war of the ink spot strategy , a military counter-insurgency technique America dismissively ignored in Vietnam . That said there's different factors in winning and losing wars and when the British tried the Ink Spot strategy in Helmand province Afghanistan it was next to useless . Likewise the final outcome of the French Indo-China war was defeat for the colonial French after the pitched battle of Dien Bien Phu . But let it never be said that a bloody defeat requires less courage than a bloody victory and 317TH PLATOON tells of a bloody French defeat
I came in to this film knowing absolutely nothing about it except was directed and written by Pierre Schoendoerffer who was present at the battle of Dien Bien Phu as a cameraman and in 1992 made the epic war film featuring the battle . In short what Schoenddoerffer doesn't know about the French Indo-China war isn't worth knowing and expected him to translate this to screen
I was not disappointed . I've never seen a war but do know about the hot humid hell of monsoon in Asia and the director translates this very well to the audience where cloths are never dry and no matter how much liquid is consumed a thirst is never satisfied . Leeches and insects are always a problem and if a man suffers a small wound infection leading to gangrene is a threat . In this part of the world it's not only the enemy a White European has to fight but also the environment itself
This helps to give a very real sense of time and place to the story that plotwise is very familiar to war film aficionados . The story itself is very simple of a platoon stuck behind enemy lines and having to fight their way to sanctuary . It does contain a very European film making style , one of cinema verite , of naturalistic light and sound recording and of choppy editing giving the audience a slightly disorientated feel but this in keeping with the film . If you're expecting the expressionistic nightmare of APOCAYLPSE NOW or the emotional roller-coaster of PLATOON then you'll be disappointed because that's not what 317TH PLATOON is trying to be but in its own way it's as effective as any Hollywood 'Nam epic
A couple of things don't work . One is the audience might have to know the background of the conflict in order to understand why the platoon seemingly become stuck 150kilometres behind enemy lines . Another plot point is why the platoon have to open fire and give away their position to a passing Vietminh battalion when they could have laid low and bypassed it but these are minor flaws in a film that deserves to be better known about a counter-insurgency conflict that is totally forgotten . With Afghanistan being in the headlines for twelve years it might be a good idea to remember the quote from Marx that " History repeats itself first as tragedy , secondly as farce "
I came in to this film knowing absolutely nothing about it except was directed and written by Pierre Schoendoerffer who was present at the battle of Dien Bien Phu as a cameraman and in 1992 made the epic war film featuring the battle . In short what Schoenddoerffer doesn't know about the French Indo-China war isn't worth knowing and expected him to translate this to screen
I was not disappointed . I've never seen a war but do know about the hot humid hell of monsoon in Asia and the director translates this very well to the audience where cloths are never dry and no matter how much liquid is consumed a thirst is never satisfied . Leeches and insects are always a problem and if a man suffers a small wound infection leading to gangrene is a threat . In this part of the world it's not only the enemy a White European has to fight but also the environment itself
This helps to give a very real sense of time and place to the story that plotwise is very familiar to war film aficionados . The story itself is very simple of a platoon stuck behind enemy lines and having to fight their way to sanctuary . It does contain a very European film making style , one of cinema verite , of naturalistic light and sound recording and of choppy editing giving the audience a slightly disorientated feel but this in keeping with the film . If you're expecting the expressionistic nightmare of APOCAYLPSE NOW or the emotional roller-coaster of PLATOON then you'll be disappointed because that's not what 317TH PLATOON is trying to be but in its own way it's as effective as any Hollywood 'Nam epic
A couple of things don't work . One is the audience might have to know the background of the conflict in order to understand why the platoon seemingly become stuck 150kilometres behind enemy lines . Another plot point is why the platoon have to open fire and give away their position to a passing Vietminh battalion when they could have laid low and bypassed it but these are minor flaws in a film that deserves to be better known about a counter-insurgency conflict that is totally forgotten . With Afghanistan being in the headlines for twelve years it might be a good idea to remember the quote from Marx that " History repeats itself first as tragedy , secondly as farce "