Directed by Michael Verhoeven
A five-man US fireteam dig in at the Bon Song Valley (represented by the Bavarian forest) to await the end of the Easter truce with the Vietnamese. A Vietnamese girl passes by and the team rape and kill her. One refuses to take part and escapes to report the incident, but it is dismissed by his superior.
Germany Germany 
A German film about the Vietnam War, legendary for shutting down the 1970 Berlin Film Festival, where it was entered to the festival, but removed from the competition by Jury President George Stevens for failing to "contribute to better understanding between nations", which led to the jury disintegrating, other directors withdrawing their films in protest, and the festival ultimately being cancelled two days early, with no prizes handed out.
The film depicts the kidnap, gang rape and murder of Phan Thi Mao (which later also was the basis of De Palma's Casualties of War), but adds a deliberate distancing effect by transferring the action of the film to the German forest, and casting only German actors for all the parts…
Der „Zwischenfall auf Hügel 192“, bei dem während des Vietnamkriegs 1966 einige US-Soldaten eine junge, unschuldige Vietnamesin in ihre Gewalt gebracht, vergewaltigt und ermordet haben, vom deutschen Regisseur und Darsteller Michael Verhoeven übertragen nach Süddeutschland, wo auf einer Waldlichtung die verstörenden Ereignisse fiktionalisiert nachgestellt werden, mit einem Ensemble (darunter auch Verhoeven), das bayerische Mundart spricht. Zuvor sind die Vorbereitungen des Filmteams zu sehen. Ein gewagtes, irritierendes Konzept, das dank starker schauspielerischer Leistungen und einer ebenso klugen wie intensiven Inszenierung aufgeht. Gelangweilte Soldaten verlieren sich im tödlichen Exzess. Das Kriegsgrauen ist nicht lokal verortet, sondern überall präsent. O.K. steht ein Zitat von Karl Kraus voran: „Der Menschheit ist die Kugel bei einem Ohr hinein und beim andern hinausgegangen.“ Dem ist nichts…
A brutal, boldly Brechtian provocation, Verhoeven (not that one) and his fellow New German pranksters turning the Bavarian Forest into the setting for an especially grotesque American war crime. “A Bavarian Vietnam drama, now that’s heartwarming.” The casualty of war as the erosion of the soul, the soldiers’ days of boredom and mounting purposelessness translated into the ease with which they see nothing but an object as a young Vietnamese girl passes them by. “Now we’ll get something to play with!” The film famously shut down the Berlin Film Festival because jury president George Stevens found it anti-American, though the fact Verhoeven that stages this as a thoroughly German nightmare suggests the abysmal as a state of mind defined more…
Dramatization of a Vietnam War incident where GIs raped and murdered a peasant girl. The agitprop qualities seemed kinda basic and uninspiring to me, Brecht or no Brecht, but I love that George Stevens got so fuddy-duddy about the movie's anti-USA stance that he resigned from a festival committee and the whole festival collapsed around him.
PS: Eva Mattes at sixteen!
Watched at archive.org with subs from open.subtitles.com .
Shoutout to Wim Wenders (😘) for putting political questions aside during the Berlinale whilst this film literally shut down the Berlinale in 1970 because it’s so damn political and controversial - The Berlinale is by definition political since its creation in 1951 !!!
For a film that caused potentially the second biggest controversy at a film festival (Berlin), the idea that is film is utterly forgotten from history scares me.
I have been obsessed with seeing this film for nearly two years. Who knew it would take my buddy 20 minutes to find it and send it to me.
While the film is not exactly anything to write home about, it is a pretty damning look at how the rest of the world sees the actions the US and it’s soldiers have done and the evils they leave in their trails.
this is a rough watch and i think that it is effective at what it set out to do (bring the realities of the actions of americans in the vietnam war home to a domestic audience by casting domestic actors in every role to show the...sheer inhumanity of these actions) but i don't know if it's a "good movie"
effective as a message, as a polemic designed to hit citizens in the face and wake them up though, but i don't know how effective it was, historically, at getting its message out.
i think about a pair of similar horror quotes that float around in my mind
"do to humans what we do to animals and you have a horror…
Cynical and sinister--from a benevolent, Brechtian distance, if that helps. The savagery is felt extra acutely due to the schoolful badinage which tees it up: just another unserious day of tricks out in the quartered wilderness, or so the smooth, conniving camera would have us believe. An impressive mixture of gritty, bestial evil with clever choreography and negligent banter. The afterword whiskey exposition and casual de jure dismissal loses some of the vehement steam which had preceded, but at Berlinale and times hereafter: Fuck the USA (from a Brechtian distance, if that helps).
A harrowing film that depicts a handful of American servicemen in Vietnam detaining, brutally raping and torturing, and then killing a 16-year-old girl. Director Verhoeven employs the kinds of post-Brechtian cinematic dramaturgy associated with 60s Godard and which was extensively aped in something like Bertolucci’s “Partner,” but for properly political reasons (i.e. not just style). Verhoeven operates in a more classically Brechtian manner insofar as his explicitly political narrative unfolds like a theatre piece and the destruction of the fourth wall’s diegetic sanctity aspires to engender political reflection in the audience about what were then ongoing war crimes.
Camerawork, performances, and editing lay out the Brechtian dimensions in their pertinent traits during the film’s opening. Camerawork reflexively reveals how shots…
o.k. é o primeiro filme que assisto de Michael Verhoeven (sem relação com o Paul) e minha curiosidade surgiu após descobrir que o filme foi diretamente responsável pelo cancelamento da 20ª edição do Festival de Berlim. O filme, que se passa durante a Guerra do Vietnã, reencena o Incidente na Colina 192, no qual soldados americanos foram responsáveis pelo sequestro, estupro e morte de uma garota vietnamita. Embora curto, o.k. se arrasta por algumas cenas, especialmente no início, optando por concentrar todo seu ponto mais forte na cena mais brutal do filme, pela qual foi acusado de “conteúdo antiamericano” pelo júri do festival de Berlim, que votou por sua retirada da competição. Em sua conclusão, o.k. é um filme inconstante, que visa apresentar uma mensagem poderosa contra a violência, mas que falhas em sua execução impedem que a obra como um todo seja tão marcante ou memorável como promete devido à sua importância histórica.
Based on the same war crime that inspired Casualties of War, this black and white drama eventually focuses on a group of soldiers torturing and raping a Vietnamese civilian out of sheer boredom. The operative word there is unfortunately "eventually" though; it is halfway in before the soldiers set their sights on their victim to-be, and while there are some neat tracking shots over them sitting and waiting in bunkers, the film falls into the trap of becoming boring while depicting boredom. A bigger issue though is the intrusive title cards that keeping popping up throughout. These chapter headings come with such insanely upbeat music that is absolutely jarring in such a grim story. The choice to bookend the film…
"o.k." ist einer dieser Filme, wo die Begleitumstände eigentlich interessanter sind, als der Film selber.
Als Michael Verhoevens Filmnachstellung der realen Ereignisse um die brutale Vergewaltigung und Ermordung eines vietnamesischen Mädchens (gerade 16: Eva Mattes) durch amerikanische Soldaten nach einem Protest des Jury-Präsidenten George Stevens zum Abbruch der Berlinale 1970 führte, ging der Film in die Geschichtsschreibung als "Skandalfilm" ein.
Inszeniert nach den Brecht'schen V-Effekt spielt das Ganze aber im Bayerischen Wald, und die Darsteller sprechen alle Bayerisch (ich war froh für die hochdeutschen Untertitel auf der DVD).
Damals, als die Fronten arg verhärtet waren, muss "o.k." auf ein sehr gespaltenes Publikum gestoßen sein.
Und obwohl mitunter wirksam, kann der Film doch nicht ganz seinen agitatorisch-didaktischen Habitus abschütteln.
Interessant an…
