I went to university in the US and the scars of the Vietnam war still linger. The best class I went to was a Vietnam history class where a Vietnam Vet came and spoke. The greatest way I could explain the experience is that no one moved.
For an hour and a half, he spoke eloquently and effortlessly about his experience learning to be a chopper pilot and the decisions he and his team had to make. It was astonishing listening to him and thinking at that point he was younger in Vietnam than I was taking the class and I would have probably fallen apart in the same situation. It was so visceral and confronting.
Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan (Dir. Kriv Stenders) tells the story of the battle of Long Tan that involved ANZAC forces fighting against the North Vietnamese in 1966. It focuses on soldiers from the Delta Squadron led by Major Harry Smith (Travis Fimmel) and constantly asks questions about leadership and purpose.
I want to be clear this film does not address the fact that the ANZAC’s are foreign invaders and nor does it deal with any of the nuance or complexity around the nature of the fighting. However, to the film’s credit, it doesn’t set up the ANZAC’s as a morally good entity either. It sets up that there are two sides that are both trying to survive but since we don’t ever learn about any of the North Vietnamese soldiers it’s hard to argue that one side might have been portrayed in a better light.
Throughout the film, there are many times when soldiers question their higher-ups. The cavalier young Private Paul Large (Daniel Webber) publically admonishes Major Smith for a decision. Major Smith asks to be reassigned but is told to follow the orders of his commanding officer. All of these interactions are because the commanding officer didn’t explain the purpose of the decisions and the person having to do the job didn’t trust that the decision was a smart one. These all come to a head when their lives are on the line during the final stand. When the purpose and objectives are clear people are better at following orders.
The fight scenes were filmed in a very gritty, in the dirt manner. There were very few flashy shots and CGI wizardry. I think this was made purely due to budgetary constraints but it made the whole world intensely more gripping. Because of the proximity to the action, you felt more involved with the story. It wasn’t about thousands of digital people fighting thousands of other digital people.
This is not a perfect film, it doesn’t address, nor try to, the bigger political issues about the quagmire that was the Vietnam War. It isn’t a showy film, nor did it have a huge budget that we have come to expect from these types of war films. But it does make you feel for the characters and the situations that they are in.
At the end of the film, everyone sat in their seats to watch the credits of the photos of the actors and the real soldiers that they were portraying. Just like the Vietnam class all those years, the silence meant we were affected by what we have experienced, and isn’t that the point of art, to make you feel something?
By Luke McMeeken-Ruscoe
August 2019