I saw Coppola's film twice, once because of his reputation, and the second time to see if I was missing anything. It was a very long two hours to discover that I hadn't.The film is beautifully shot, the script looks like it is going somewhere, and we wait for something to happen. And we wait.The film feels exactly like Waiting for Godot. In both the play and the film, nothing happens. Two major differences between them is that in the play, the author (and the audience) knows nothing is going to happen, and the film doesn't know this. The other huge difference is that "nothing happens" in the play in a fun and entertaining way, while the film...doesn't.James Caan tries very hard playing a military man, but he looks and sounds like James Caan wearing a uniform. I never got the sense that I was looking at an actual soldier. His character is quiet and distant, and we are supposed to relate to him on an emotional level, as he is the core of the film.POSSIBLE SPOILERS: Unfortunately, we can't, despite the fact that the film tries to build a relationship between him and a peace activist (we know how many soldier/peace activist relationships there were then), Angelica Huston, who seems as convincing an activist as Caan is a soldier. So what are we left with? That is the question that haunted me throughout the film.There is the obligatory confrontation between the stereotypical long-haired unappreciative liberal and James Caan at a party. The liberal attacks Caan verbally, then lays his hands on him (peaceniks are like that). Caan responds by punching him several times in the throat, then while the hippie liberal is lying face down in the dirt gasping, grinds his face into the dirt with his shoe in the back of the guy's head, as if he is putting out a cigarette. Someone has to pull him off the guy.This scene was carefully set up as a central moment in the film. What was the point of it? I guess (and I found myself guessing at a lot of the deeper meaning of some of the dialogue and scenes), it is to show that Caan is a soldier who has seen too much war, is in a place he doesn't want to be in (burying young dead soldier's whose sacrifice is scorned) when he would rather be fighting, and is surrounded a nation hostile to the war and the soldiers who fight it.However, if Coppola wanted to present that, he should have presented it differently than this. The effect of the scene is to make us either want to call a cop and have him taken away, or to get the hell away from him to avoid brushing into him accidentally and having the same thing happen to us.In the end, Caan tells his peace activist girlfriend that he has decided to sign on for another tour of duty as an "errand of mercy" to try to save more young lives from being senselessly wasted.The movie ends shortly thereafter, with Caan saluting a dead soldier's coffin at a funeral.But let's back up here for a moment to the poignant moment when Caan tells Huston he is going back to 'Nam, to save young men's lives.Caan knows this is a losing war. He is at a critical juncture in his life; he can do something truly difficult and brave at this point, and at a personal cost much higher than going back to war: he could, as a soldier, publicly speak out against the war and its senselessness, and the horrors he has seen; the deaths of his soldiers, and the slaughter of Vietnamese citizens by troops. He would be seen as a traitor to the military of course, but he would be speaking his mind, truthfully, (as he has privately to his girlfriend and his friend James Earl Jones), could testify before Congress, and could join the cause to end the war. If his efforts helped to shorten the war by even a few days, that would have saved hundreds of lives, more than the few he hopes to save.His offering to return to Vietnam sounds very noble, but is comparable to a Southern officer in the Civil War offering to return to the front lines; to what point? To die along with the rest of the men in a losing war? There is no flavor, let alone poignancy, to this statement by Caan. And at the end, that is reflected in his salute to the dead soldier's coffin, whom he may be joining soon; and just as senselessly.Not a good or profound statement by Mr. Coppola, if he was trying to make one.

The garden is Arlington National Cemetery, where soldiers fallen in combat are interred under the watchful eyes of the Old Home Guard, a spit and polish regiment of self-styled Toy Soldiers organized for one purpose: to honor the dead, with pomp and circumstance. It's hard to imagine a better setting for a home front reflection on the horror of Vietnam, half a world away, but any war film so far removed from the battleground runs a risk of being too remote and detached, which is exactly what happens here. What could have been a stateside companion piece to 'Apocalypse Now is', instead, a strangely inert melodrama insulated from any genuine feeling for the era. The notable cast is let down by a sometimes overwrought screenplay (step forward, Ron Bass) with little to offer except a surrogate father/son relationship torn apart by the distant war. All that remains are some tantalizing hints of what the film could have achieved, as seen in the contrast between the formal precision of military ceremony and the illogical slaughter in Southeast Asia.

It's Dec. 4, 2005 and I've just watched "Gardens of Stone" on T.V. The importance of this movie is impossible to rate as it specifically addresses the absolutely critical and horribly unfortunate issue of our collective ability to forget. In this case, forgetting how completely morally indefensible and reprehensible is the nature of war. We don't remember. Remembering would make it too difficult to aggress against each other. So while we couch our forgetting by using beautiful words like "honor" and "character" we continue to wage war for what we believe are the "noblest" of reasons. This film, while not being preaching like me, calls into remembrance the reality that is war....body bags...orphaned children...blown off limbs...sheer chaos...destroyed lives and land. This film makes us remember that nobody wins in war. I expect excellence from Coppola and, par usual, he delivers as do some unforgettable performances by a stellar cast. "There is no such thing as a good war or a bad peace."

It's strange how Hollywood still feels the constant need to pursue its glorification of the military when every other nation's film industry has pretty much moved on from the war film genre. Of course, America is a nation that has been engaged in more conflicts than most other nations in the past half-century and, while that isn't intended as a criticism, it does perhaps provide the key to America's seemingly endless fascination with the arena of war in all its guises.Coppola's return to the theme of the Vietnam war is as different from its predecessor as any two films with the same backdrop can be. The story of Gardens of Stone takes place in America, amongst the soldiers detailed to bury the bodies that are shipped back to Arlington National Cemetery from the scene of the conflict with monotonous and terrifying regularity. It is a relatively meditative and introspective study, weakened by a thinly drawn pivotal character (Jackie Willow, played by D. B. Sweeney) who is incredibly one-dimensional for a film that is attempting to offer an insight into the mentality of the soldier away from the battlefield at a time of war. James Caan, in his first movie role for five years, makes good use of a much stronger role as Sgt. Clell Hazard, the experienced soldier frustrated by the impotence of his position, who believes he should be fighting in the field or at least training youngsters on how to stay alive out there instead of burying them when they come back. Both he and James Earl Jones in another good part, display a healthily jaundiced view of the war. Angelica Huston also has an important (if slightly ineffectual) role as the individual caught in the middle who opposes the war but understands Hazard's reasons for wanting to fight. Jordan Cronenweth's camera-work is worthy of praise here, softening Huston's angular features and making it possible for her to convincingly play a gentler and softer character than she normally does. All other characters are strictly genre stereotypes.Unfortunately, any good work by the principle members of the cast is spoiled by a weak and unconvincing storyline that fails to involve the viewer – the 'tragic' ending is particularly unmoving, although it may have a greater impact on American audiences whose families were more closely involved with the conflict. At a time when Vietnam films were all the rage, Coppola is to be applauded for choosing a different – but no less relevant – perspective, but any message he may have wished to deliver is hopelessly weakened by a mediocre script and uninvolving storyline.