- Veterans of the Vietnam War tell about their experiences. The disasters but also the glorious moments of war. The central figure in the documentary is the scenario writer of Full Metal Jacket, Michael Herr. The veterans describe how it felt to kill for the first time and how those feelings still hunt them.—spijker_nl
- Do soldiers become murderers when they enjoy killing? Is war beautiful? Are all humans capable of monstrous acts? FIRST KILL examines these and other questions, as it explores what war does to the human mind and soul. The depth of the interviews with war correspondent Michael Herr, Pulitzer Prize winner Eddie Adams and several Vietnam veterans provide insight into the feelings that accompany violence, fear, hate, seduction and pleasure. For FIRST KILL, Coco Schrijber intends to confuse the viewer. She creates an atmosphere in which the audience loses its certainties, and is confronted with the ultimate question: Would I pull the trigger?
Coco Schrijber's challenging documentary, First Kill, confronts the guilty pleasures of warfare, such as film goers' pleasure at the voluptuousness of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now - or American tourists excitedly exploring VC tunnels in Vietnam today and describing the experience as if it were a Disneyland theme park. Closer to the action, as it were, Schrijber interviews former war correspondent and screenwriter of Full Metal Jacket, Michael Herr on the paradoxical allure of warfare. She also interviews several Vietnam veterans, most of whom describe their wartime experiences with nostalgia. Back at home and thirty years on they admit to still craving the adrenaline rush of the kill, half-aware of the social implications of admitting a taste for killing. 'They were the enemy... It's easy to pull the trigger.' Dredging the dark side, First Kill contemplates the possibility that there's a killer lurking within us all. (Michael McDonnell )
This is exactly the point that is made by the filmmaker, Coco Schrijber: In human experience (deeply ingrained in the animal brain of, at least, young males), there seems to be some kind of perverse delight (in this film, repeatedly likened to sex) in malicious violence, and, specifically, in killing. In the words of one Vietnam veteran who is interviewed, to kill a perceived enemy is "better than any dope you can get on the street...it's a high that you cannot imagine." Or, as war correspondent and author Michael Herr (writer of the screenplays for Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket) puts it: "If war was hell and only hell," people would simply not put up with it. Rather, we do it because we apparently get some kind of exhilaration (an unparalleled involvement) from the experience of stalking and murdering things. In spite of the fact that the footage consists mostly of interviews with Vietnam War veterans (both soldiers and journalists) and scenes of the tourists who visit there now (where, next to a sofa-sized Mona Lisa, they can also buy a painting of General Loan shooting that Viet Cong prisoner), it would be a terrible error to think that this film is specifically or even primarily about that particular era. It's really about American society at this very moment, in the sense that the questions it raises pertain to events in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the widespread appeal of ultra-violent video games, to explicit violence in films (including this one), and to the shootings of peers and superiors by high school students and factory workers. Deservedly, this film has won several awards at international film festivals. It is smartly and superbly filmed, conceived, and edited. A cry of concern, it is a stunningly beautiful work about the most terrifying of subjects. (Reprinted by permission from Ballast Quarterly Review)
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