Over the course of one weekend, a group of seemingly sane men gather in the woods of rural Oregon to pretend-play they’re fighting in the Vietnam War. They don thick-framed glasses, wear helmets with phrases like “Sock it to me,” “Ramble on,” and “Soul Brotha!” scrawled on them, watch “Easy Rider,” receive wounds through randomly-selected “casualty cards,” and hunt white middle-aged men wearing the familiar black outfits of 60’s-era Viet Cong, exchanging potshots with all-too-realistic weaponry. The mood is somewhere between grim and celebratory. On the first night, a demure captain encourages the faux-soldiers to exchange their personal war stories for the last time — because “Tomorrow… we’re in Vietnam.” The question that all of this necessitates 7mdash; and that the documentary In Country, directed by Mike Attie and Meghan O’Hara, explores — is “Why?” Unfortunately, it’s a question that the documentary largely leaves unanswered.
The biggest clue to the reenactors’ fascination with Vietnam is to be found in the current or former military careers of many of the participants, many of whom have served tours in either Iraq or Afghanistan. As such, the study of the experience of Vietnam war reenactment ends up being a study of the life of military men generally, particularly those who have difficulty readjusting to civilian life. One of them, Charles “Tuna” Ford, states that it was more of a shock coming back home from Iraq than it was going to Iraq in the first place. In an early scene, we see him dressing his young children up in authentic military paraphernalia; his wife yells to the kids, “did you get the bad guys?” before offering them s’mores.
While for some reenactors the role-playing experiences appear to be a relief from the hardships of civilian life; for other, older participants, the ritual appears to serve a more cathartic or ruminative function. One of them, an actual Vietnam vet named Hayden Baumgartner, describes the first time he came out to one of the reenactments, pointing at his temple and saying, “Up in here, I went back.” Another veteran present is Vinh Nguyen, once a soldier in the South Vietnamese army. Nguyen states that in hearkening back to his time with the ARVN, he’s hearkening back to stronger, more whole version of himself, an image of himself as he was in 1975. Perhaps the best reason given, though, is by a high-schooler named David Safina-Massey, who states that he likes the war reenactments because they’re so “real” — delightedly inhabiting a space where this can both be true and the opposite of true at the same.
As you can imagine, all of these competing motivations and implications lead to somewhat of a moral quandary. Is the gleeful reenactment of a disastrous and horrific avenue of American history a form of tribute or trivialization? Is it a way of avoiding issues that likely require a great deal of therapeutic exploration (as multiple reenactors mention suffering occasionally from PTSD)? Is it the realization of an impulse that maybe shouldn’t be realized? After all, it’s hard to ignore the violent eagerness of “Tuna” Ford, who admits that he wanted to go to Iraq because he thought it would be cool to walk down the streets with a gun, and who describes the euphoric experience of using high-power explosives as “indescribable.” “If we’re out there, and we take contact, don’t be afraid to fuckin’ fire,” he advises newcomers to the Vietnam role-playing experience. “We’re infantrymen; we’re here to fuckin’ fire.”
Unfortunately, while there are a great number of meaty topics to tackle here, In Country focuses too much on the experience of the war reenactments and not enough on the motivation behind them. The film draws connections between the soldier’s experience in Vietnam, the re-enactor’s experience, and the re-enactor’s personal experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, but isn’t quite clear what point it’s trying to make by doing so. When directors Attie and O’Hara intentionally disorient the viewer by cutting between archival footage and modern-day reenactment, it’s unclear if they’re trying to be critical of the re-enactors, underline the war experience that they’re attempting to recreate, or simply provide a jolt for the viewer. Furthermore, the most fascinating topics — the experience of the veteran, the complexities of military life, the desire to relive horrific experiences — lie as dormant as fish just beneath the water, visible but never quite reached. There are plenty of interesting things to think about and see here — it’s just a shame they aren’t quite seen through.