For over a century now, cinema has been obsessed with exploring the horrors of war on film. From the very beginning, there has been a push to explore the Civil War through the guise of films like The Birth of a Nation (1915) and it has paved the way for more honest and transparent narratives regarding World War I and World War II, reflecting these heroes who stood in the face of danger and proved to the world the power of the individual. These stories are the mythologies that create heroes, making us believe that justice will conquer over evil at every turn. Even as recent as 1917 (2019), there have been ways to advance the story, making us see them both as technical achievements and more personalized and experimental forms of entertainment.
But if there’s one group that’s generally missed from the war movie narrative, it’s the Black American. This isn’t to say that they’re nowhere to be found, but the popular consensus finds very few examples of veterans getting stories that would turn them into the heroes on par with their white peers, leaving them without much of a reason to believe that their voice matters. This isn’t true. If you study history outside of academia, there are plenty of examples of stories that have been overlooked simply because they don’t follow conventions, fit inside a box.
That is what makes Da 5 Bloods (2020) a rather vital narrative that feels like an explosion of inspiration popping out of every frame. Much like director Spike Lee’s other films, he has become eager to reflect a marginalized community in the world of film and make their narratives matter. Nowhere has that felt more necessary than with the Vietnam War, where we’ve had dozens of masterpieces… but all from the perspective of white auteurs who have a very different view of being trampled on, ignored by a public who themselves saw the war as controversial and entirely avoidable. Nothing reflected the division that America was about to face quite like the lack of parade soldiers received when they returned home.
This isn’t a story about then, but what it all means now in the present tense. The audience gets flashbacks to the Vietnam War, where bullets were flying through the jungles and the uncertainty was just as dreaded. However, that’s not where the story wants to focus its attention on. It wants to move onto the bigger picture.
It does so by introducing the story not with any of the soldiers, but with an interview with Muhammad Ali, who famously refused to fight in the war believing that he had no skin in the game. Why would he go somewhere else to murder the impoverished communities when there are similar problems in America? It’s the struggle of self-worth in a war that was fought for the gain of white leaders, who themselves chose to prolong the war solely that they’d get pity points in the presidential election.
While the film features some grisly images, Lee has taken to heart the value of archival footage. There’s no use in recreating the violence when the real images are even more troublesome. In a Powerpoint-style approach, Lee presents a side of the Vietnam War that is full of murder, brutality, and destroying a community. It’s graphic and even those with strong constitutions may become upset with it. What this does is create an implicit understanding of the trauma that “da five bloods” are likely to have when we meet them. They have lived a whole life since The Vietnam War, and yet it’s so much a part of their identity.
It starts with a reunion, and one over a round of drinks and a party in a club as they discover what everyone has been up to over the past few years. There’s talk of having their own businesses and self-sufficiency. There’s even Paul (Delroy Lindo), who has become known as a supporter of “President Fake Bone Spurs,” and proudly wears a Make America Great Again (MAGA) hat, reflecting a contradiction later brought up in the film: no Blacks voted for him, and yet here was this supporter who believed in his cause. He took opioids for pain relief and in a lot of ways was the most interesting and complex character in any Spike Lee movie ever.
The argument can be made that a lot of the imagery that Lee captures is meant as a commentary on cinematic depiction. There are constant references to Apocalypse Now (1979), including a boat ride set to “Flight of the Valkyries.” There’s another part where they discuss the depiction of First Blood (1982) and why it’s all ridiculous, desiring to see something more relevant to their experiences. With that, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that leads to the ultimate journey of the film: a dive into the jungle to find hidden gold.
Yes, that sounds a bit goofy, but it’s a red herring for something greater. The soldiers are going through a rich history of America’s fraught relationship with Vietnam. In one case, there is an affair that produces a Black-Vietnamese daughter. There’s also the search for their fallen comrade Stormin’ Norman (Chadwick Boseman), who died in the war and whose death weighs heavily on Paul. He has PTSD worse than anyone else, imagining ghosts and doing everything not to snap as people coax him into situations that he doesn’t want to. A situation involving the buying of a chicken goes south, causing the first of many utterances of an unnamed Vietnamese man saying “You killed my father!”
The motif shows the divide that these characters have with the land that they are in. Whereas the first act is largely a tender drama about identity and where they all stand, the journey into the jungle is a radical shift that finds them confronting more of the active themes of the war. The theme of murder and pillaging becomes clearer as the presence of gold and capitalism runs into (at one point literally) landmines that show the foolishness of these men arguing over something so trivial. These gold bars that they have been searching for have a lot of value, but is it more than a human life? Considering how they’re treated back home, that argument isn’t so easy to understand.
Similarly, Mudbound (2017) is a film that explores a different conversation between the past and present in regards to the war. During WWII, two different soldiers have their lives intersect. Ronsel Jackson (Jason Mitchell) and Jamie McAllan (Garrett Hedlund) both come from the rural Mississippi but find their cultural statuses being brought into question when they return home. When Ronsel is invited to visit the McAllan family, it leads to a lot of paranoid eyes, wishing that he go away and leave them alone.
Whereas Da 5 Bloods pulls largely from cinematic references for its visuals, director Dee Rees fills Mudbound with era-appropriate cinematography based on artists like Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, and Walker Evans. The music is full of life, even featuring original music by Mary J. Blige to symbolize the aching heart of the south. It’s a period piece that feels lovingly recreated, even if it’s commenting at every turn how two men who achieve equal goals in the war can be treated so differently when returning home.
It’s a study of racial segregation that begins on a familiar note. Despite being a war veteran, Ronsel has to learn how to be respected by his white peers. It definitely does happen, but the journey is slow, finding small moments of understanding through nobility popping up throughout the film. It’s one of those endearing stories about how racism is a thing that clearly does exist, but through time it slowly goes away, being replaced with this bigger and more profound understanding.
While both films are rooted in the feeling of war, Mudbound is more obsessed with the modern timeline. As it jumps around to different flashbacks, it connects pieces that explore how these characters have come to be impacted by their own decisions. Given Mississippi’s general stance on racism, it’s interesting to watch the changes in action, making for a sense of growth that makes the story inspiring, reflecting something that is having an honest discussion on a tough issue while depicting it as something that still needs to be mended.
The issue, if there is one, is that Da 5 Bloods has no time for sentimentalism. The man known for his angry approach to filmmaking has gone out of his way to create another film that’s vibrant with purpose. As the opening images would suggest, this is supposed to be an uncomfortable confrontation of ideas that we’ve taken for granted, questioning in equal measure the Vietnam War as well as modern politics. Why is it that these men feel inclined to search for gold and snap at each other? It puts them in danger’s way while opening them to a vulnerability that they’re not ready for.
It isn’t just the landmines under their feet. It’s the reality that there are Vietnamese men after them, eager to steal their gold. After all, these men killed their father. Maybe not them specifically, but they symbolize a side of America that is unpleasant and performing acts of violence just to uphold an unjust system. It’s all chaos and the eventual presence of a capitalistic white man shows how this is all being programmed to benefit the white man, who has pitted these two groups against each other for their own gain. It’s the Vietnam War all over again.
Still, what is maybe the most provocative moment is a flashback that finds Stormin’ Norman growing annoyed to discover that the F.B.I. have murdered Martin Luther King Jr. He doesn’t understand why they need to keep fighting, themselves lost in the jungle. They need to fight the way at home, and the fact that he never got back creates its own tragedy. Norman never got to reach his goal, and it came with Paul feeling tormented that he failed his friend. In a scene involving Norman’s ghost, Paul is forgiven, as Norman doesn’t believe that he was murdered by any negligence of Paul.
If there’s a big difference between Mudbound and Da 5 Bloods, it’s that the former is set entirely within the past. There’s little that is implicit about its ties to modern race relations. Everything is period-appropriate and manages to alter how the romanticized imagery of the south is wrong, making a story that’s more accurate. It’s also the more visually stunning of the two, managing to create this provocative piece of art. The soundtrack is perfectly orchestrated, recreating the feel. It plays with conventions in such a way that it’s commenting on these perspectives from within its own genre.
Da 5 Bloods however is an erratic film that is set in the modern age to the point that it incorporates archival footage from Black Lives Matter protests. It references significance Black figures from the war that Lee immortalizes as having value, making this about more than one era, but the whole American experience. Even the soundtrack manages to shift the Vietnam War motifs by including protests songs by the like of Marvin Gaye and other Black artists. So much of the film is about recontextualizing what we know about war and placing it from a Black perspective. By doing so, it asks what stories are worth listening to. With images of Black Lives Matter coming towards the end of the film, it reflects the need to keep the actions alive.
That is the biggest difference between Lee and Rees. Rees is completely absorbed in the era and having a conversation that has more of a focused quality to it. As a result, it feels more like a feel-good period piece. Da 5 Bloods is arguably lacking a focus for a bigger purpose, reflecting his eagerness to make up for decades of Black actors not getting war movies to the point that this is as much as an Apocalypse Now as it is First Blood. It’s also a history lesson, ending the whole narrative on a quote from King, believing that he is conflicted about the freedoms that America has.
Da 5 Bloods is a story that manages to be as much about the lingering impact of the Vietnam War as it is what it does to cultures psychologically. Without any fault of their own, the men who return to Vietnam become burdened with a legacy of murder and brutality that they didn’t personally execute. They were just pawns on a bigger chessboard. By bringing up these questions, it asks us why we treat war veterans so poorly to the point that they would give into desperate actions like this, leading them to have an identity and financial crises along the way.
In some ways, Mudbound gets off easy because of how straightforward and singular its goals are. While both of these films have conversations about race relations in America, Mudbound feels like it has a more conventional approach to matters that is satisfying, making one understand the plight in the past tense. Meanwhile, Da 5 Bloods has a survey of history so rich that one can argue it spans decades and centuries of frustration into 2.5 hours. Even then, it feels like the whole story is an ellipse to a bigger narrative, though it’s still important to understand what’s being said so that hopefully it will be seen as a past tense problem one of these days. It’s doubtful that it will come anytime soon, but one can hope.
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