Oliver Stone
The period of 60s, the politics, and the social diseases are the main topics in Oliver Stone’s filmwork. In fact, as all the strong authors, we can find many biographical motives in his poetics and ideological attitudes. He himself is one of the 60s’ generation, when the energy of the liberal-left ideas dominated, and when the Vietnam War happpened, experience that changed everything. The wish to tell what happened in Vietnam is the main motive for his two films on that topic: “Platoon” and “Born on 4th of July”. There is an interview where Stone, talking about the differences between the private and the public life, says that sometimes personal history overlaps with the public events similarly as the destiny of his generation was created by a series of political deeds by the presidents Johnson and Nixon. So the negative experience that Stone had from the Vietnam War in some way was the reason for the critical note that dominate his two films inspired by that war. It is also a reason for the controversial portrait of one of the main culprits for the war, Nixon. On the other side Stone sees the JFK assassination as a victimization because of his refusal to serve the power structures which made one generation sacrified. It is the basic idea for JFK and also for his first film “Salvador” where those interests of the big and military industry make the american foreign policy.
Film which deals with the 60s too, but from another point, is “The Doors”, film about the legendary Jim Morrison.
The social diseases: violence, or more correctly, the violence through media, is topic of “Natural born killers” while the situation in football is thematized in “Every given Sunday”. In the early works: “Wallstreet” he deals with the greed as a main motive of the market speculants with big consequences and in “Talk radio” he draws a claustrophobic picture of alienated Americans.
Despite this, is “U-turn” a black, neo-filmnoir, commedy. Of cource, this is not his entire filmography. Stone has written many screenplays (his first job), but on this occasion we will only speak about his most characteristic films.
Liberal leftist
We will name Oliver Stone liberal leftist, as many use to call him, having in mind that he himself concider this label as too simple.We know that we live in a postmodern age where most of the intelectuals act from an individual position, individual ideology, and it is also the Oliver Stone’s position. But his own selfclaim, both liberal and conservative, is the position of almost all intelectuals today, postmodernists or postmarxists.Because the postmodernity is exactly that balance, that “surfing on the age” between the request for radical freedom and proggress and having a feeling for those premodernist conditions, that were destoyed during the modernism. On the other side, there is no marxist thinker today, who does not concider Marx idea about entering an age of welfare through the dictatorship of the proletariat i.e. class fight as a totalitarian idea.
Actually, the main political line in almost all Stone’s films is severe critique of capitalism as a sistem-”beast” that crashes the person to nothingness, and that sistem, according to Stone, is based on five rules: the power of money and market; state and govermental power; corporate power (which is mightier than state power); the political proccess through the power of money and media, which in most cases protect the status quo and the interests and power of their owners. We must admit that even Marx coould envie this analisys. But let put aside this paratextual claims and let see how his ideas function in the films.
Salvador
Since his first film (as a director) from 1986 Stone has strong political line. This film treats critically, of course, the American policy from the beginning of 80s, i.e. the CIA involvment in the civil war in El Salvador. Stone places his ideological attitudes through the main character, the journalist Richard Boyle,who goes to El Salvador to inform but also driven by love towards a woman (although he is cynic who concider love as a complex feeling). Since the beginning of the film, Boyle severely criticize yapies, the midlle high class of “blue tights”. Boyle criticizes the lack of passions, the conformity and the apathy of this class of the informatic society (“they rather sweat on a fitness machine than in a bed”), by what he clearly sugest that their passivity is a condition for all the dirty games that authorities make in the international policy, i.e. in South America. Boyle does not hide the leftist base of his activism. There is one scene in the American Embassy, where Boyle replies to the american military atache that he is leftist but that does not mean that all the leftists are communists. Stone ideological position is identical to that of his character.We can see that through the genre aspects of the film, the treatment of the characters (the way they are constructed) and the choise of sequences. Although Boyle is seen through an ironical distance as man with many vices, the author gives him a markant heroic aura, insisting on his romantic human motives. Stone films the holocaust of the civil war in a Broygelian monstruosity and with Swiftian satyre, being esspecially ruthless towards the rightists (whose thirst for power leads them through murdering the preacher who preaches for sanity). But although Stone has affiliations toward the leftist Stone does not miss the moment of their ideological blindness that leads them in relenlessness (in the scene where one young marxist girl coldbloodedly shoots, with bullet in the head, a war prisoner pledding for mercy). This naked satyre about the opposed parties, Stone confronts with the travested romanticity of the American Embassy, topos of “reason and democracy”. Behind that façade, built by the media starlets, CIA ‘s dirty game is going on taking side and keeping eyes shut before the brutal reality, because of the corporative power’s interests, i.e. military industry.
Boyle’s defeat is an autoreflexive anticipation of Stone’s defeat, whose film, as well as Boyle’s photography is lonely voice in the desert, voice of an outsider and looser. Before the wide apathy of yappies that enables the corrruptivity of the sistem and the falsization of one glorified order of values.
Vietnam
In two of his early films: “Platoon” and “Born on 4th of July” Oliver Stone deals with the war in Vietnam. The lost youth, “innocence” as it is written in the subtitle of the film is also part of his personal experience from the Vietnam war. But, what is more important, Stone even in the War in Vietnam finds the corruption of the sistem behind the propaganda façade, instead of patriotic defence of fatherland. Both “Platoon” and “Born on 4th of July” have the same dramatic structure: the naïve youngster touched by the patriotic propaganda voluntarily goes to Army facing up with the mistake as soon as he reach the battlefield. In “Platoon” the accent is put on the battlefield fights. There are socio-ideological moments here also (“only the poor go to war”) but the screening of fear, panic, the abandonment is dominant. This film is special because it erases the classical distinction between the front and the rear, erasing the whole architecture of war strategy that is usually given in the war films, and screens the chaos of a subjugated war.The enemy is invisible, he is everywhere, his presence can be filled and when someone shoots he does not know whether it is the sound of the bushes or the enemy or the previous patrol.
But the war chaos is nothing compared to what awaits back home, says, somehow, the sequel of “Platoon”,”Born on fourth of July”. Not only because of the budget restrictions (sounds familir, isn’t it?) military hospitals are not able to give proper care but the whole society is totally disinterersted in the resocialization of the war veterans. The scene of Republican presidental election is strong political moment in the film where Ron Kovic is not allowed, literally he is pushed out with his invalid car, to say his attitudes about the mistakes done in Vietnam. He becomes activists of the antiwar movement. The thing that Stone wants to say is that the war in Vietnam was one big mistake.
Rome
Another big theme connected with the 60s is the assassination of the president Kennedy in the film “JFK”. Stone does a huge research work, he constructs the film on the age between the documentary and fiction. He gives a lot of information in order to convince us that government thesis (through the Waren commission) that the assassination of JFK is done by the citizen Oswald, a psychically disordered man, is an ordinary stupidity. With great narative and technical skill Stone shows us that one man can not do all the shooting in such a short time that day. And when more than one man is involved that means there is a conspiracy. In the film, Stone does not tells to whom Kennedy stood in a way, i.e. who is the conspirator, but with a metonimian montage, in a chiarroscuro atmosphere, he clearly aludes toward those that have a corporative power. In an interview, Stone says that those who’ve seen Kennedy as someone that can lessen the American/Soviet confrontation and threaten their bussiness interests decided to eliminate him using the many pro and anti-Castro groups in America. This film is also a strong voice against the mimicry game of the big policy and it’s devastation of the democratic values for the solely materialistic interest.That, bloody, “Roman” political arena is more vividly shown in the film inspired by the most controversial american president, Nixon. Although the film rises polemics about the authencity of the character, the psychological prophile, or some political decisions made by Nixon. It is an important movie, because it clearly shows how the politics function, against what Stone fights his whole life.
The decay of capitalism
Stone’s atitudes towards “the decay of capitalism” can be seen in several films. Picture how the social evil eats the sistem from within and makes it so impossible for the people that should live and be happy with it.
In “Wall steet” Stone shows the world of the market speculants. He, again, uses the same scheme, young boy losing his innosence, to show the brutality of capitalism. There is a Balsakian situation where the greed makes people forget their human esssence and makes them be indifferent when they destroy thousands of people lives by financial machinations. The plot takes place between the market speculant Gordon Gekko who misuse the naïve broker Bad Fox for his own financial apetites. And this go so far that the victim becomes the company where the boy’s father works.
Similar relation but in football, Stone gives in the film “Any given Sunday” where he shows the team owners, who, in order to make profit, go over every human morality. They treat the football players as a lifestock and manipulate the fans feelings. Stone uses the metaphore of sport as a chivalry to display the heartless deeds by the big football “players” (This also sounds familiar, isn’t it?)
In “Talk radio”, Stone researches, again, a marxist theme– the alienation among people. Through the radioshow, people, talking about their frustrations, even the dirtiest ones, try to fill the lack of private communication, creating an absurd situation, where the talkshowman becomes a victim (and he is murdered) of a frustrated listener (and it is based on a true story). Stone, once again, withdraw the deep illness of that monstruous sistem where the human feelings are put in a classical capitalistic relations (the radio station has owner, and the showman is just an employee).
In his most controversial film “Natural born killers” Oliver Stone once again deals with the media, their Bauldriardistic hiperextensitivity in the public space of the contemporary capitalistic society. Using satyre and grotesque of Tarantino’s screenwriting the omnipresence of media is stressed in relation with another contemporary world disease – the violence. In a grotesque autoreferential mood by using tv forms (tv series, reportage, documentary) he shows the sea of blood that goes everyday from tv sets into the home of american families, and having a counterefect, the increasing of violence in everyday life.
Leftist in the form
If we look upon Stone’s art through Adorno’s aesthetics that says the discharmonic society seeks for discharmonic art, then we will agree that it is the Stone’s case.
Oliver Stone is familiar with experiments and he is brave in it. He never follows the well known Hollywood cannon and he always seeks a style that will most adequately express the topic. Stone experss the frenetic speed of modern society by creating a unique cinematic stylke, with amazingly dynamic camera, with lot of cuts, with fast change of the shooting ancles, with rich soundtrack in dealing with the tipical postmodern topics as in “Natural born killers” he uses postmodern retorics: metafictionality (tv play in a film) autoreferentiality (Malkolm and Malory are conscious that they are film characters); the explosion of signifiers (serial killer’s topic evolves into mass killler one). When he wants to come close to reality he create an factious fiction (using adequate colour and black’n’white tehnique) as in “JFK”. In “Born on 4th of July” and “Platoon” he reaches the spirit of time by rich choice of music hits from that time. In “Any given Sunday” he puts the camera in a position of a player, in order to bring the beauty of the game from within, and in “Talk radio” the lack of private space, and the alienation among people is brought by placing the whole film in the clausthrophobic space of the studio.
Ideological constancy
From the above, we can conclude that Oliver Stone, despite the different topics, always has a clear ideological position and constancy in his attitudes. His (positive) characters are always from the middle working class and they carry the positive values, dignity, honesty, moral, patriotism, the belief in society and justice. The rich, the powerful, the people that have the authority are the negative ones, without mercy, Machiavelists that don’t have anything sacred. They make the democratic sistem corrupted and they bring the democratic values down.
Even when they are losers, Stone heroes find their life motives in the fight with the corrupted and those that make it such. Stone does not have romantic illusions that the individual can win the men in power that are always hidden behind the power of the sistem and are always connected in their interests. Maybe bigger effect, from an reception point could be reach if he confronts a group to the group, oligarchy, but it seems that he decide to stay on his liberal trust in the individual and it’s basic role in one true democratic sistem.