newcritics

Path to War was the last film in the topsy-turvy, up-and-down, but never dull career of director John Frankenheimer. He made it for HBO, which was the only outlet that could back a three-hour film of suits around desks discussing the buildup and bombing patterns of the Vietnam War. In a career of amazing highs — The Manchurian Candidate, Seconds, The Train, Seven Days In May, Ronin, 52-Pickup, The Iceman Cometh — Path to War ranks high, even if it doesn’t have some of the expansive widescreen action sequences he is best known for. But in its editing rhythms, compelling storytelling and attention to detail, it is pure Frankenheimer. He died of a stroke at age 72, after completing this film in 2002. Path to War is an epitaph any director would be proud of.

The film is anchored by a riveting, complex performance by British actor Michael Gambon as Lyndon Johnson, one of the most Shakespearean of presidents. Even more than Nixon, Johnson is the ultimate tragic figure of ‘60s politics, trapped between his genuine desire to advance an ambitious agenda of civil rights and helping the poor and disenfranchised and his inheritance of a war in Southeast Asia that slowly swallows up his presidency. Johnson is one of those politicians you don’t see anymore — a person who craved and worshipped power, but wanted to use it for good. He was big and persuasive, boisterous and wily, and cunningly crude: an effective elbows-out in-fighter. As played by Gambon, he has a habit of putting his big frame right up close to you and using all his body English to make you see things his way. A full-metal LBJ jacket was probably a hard thing to resist. And yet, Gambon also makes you feel the internal pain and stress that Vietnam brings to Johnson, the sense that all he has worked for is slipping away from him. There is nothing sadder than Johnson clambering into the War Room to anxiously await results from bombing runs or stalking through the White House kitchen in search of some kind of emotional solace. Or the silent grief as he faces the growing stack of letters to dead soldiers’ parents that he must sign.

The best parts of Path to War are the meetings, as Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (Alec Baldwin) and the Pentagon brass encourage Johnson to continue escalating the war, making promises that if we just commit more troops we can surely bring these barbarians to heel. There is no way Ho Chi Minh can be smarter than the buttoned-down, best and brightest Ivy League holdovers from John F. Kennedy’s administration. But he was. And he destroyed them all. As is happening now in Iraq, we were ignorant of our history and more important, ignorant of theirs. Under-secretary of state George Ball (Bruce McGill) and adviser Clark Clifford (Donald Sutherland) try to argue LBJ away from Vietnam, but the pull of American military and historical tradition is too strong. Communism, the domino theory, they were all accepted dogma. It would have been hard for any president to resist it. And it keeps going wrong for everybody — for McNamara, once a shining star during the Cuban missile crisis who keeps advocating for a war he personally believes is hopeless; for Clifford, who starts out as a moral exemplar but eventually compromises his ideals, too, to help LBJ stay politically viable. Frankenheimer keeps ratcheting up the tension: McNamara’s family ulcers, LBJ’s volcanic explosions, the jettisoning of Great Society initiatives, the growing chants of protesters outside the White House and Pentagon walls, all leading up to a confrontation when Clifford tells LBJ: “We only advised you. You decided.” The harrowing look on LBJ’s face could easily be the one on King Lear’s, as that simple truth seems to reverberate inside his skull.

This is a film marked by superb, old-school acting. Sutherland’s Clifford is one of his finest performances: calm, judicious, analytic but quietly forceful. Baldwin has a tougher job because he has to play McNamara’s opaqueness, and Baldwin is better mocking power as he does on 30 Rock than playing it straight. The often overlooked McGill is marvelous as the conscientious Ball, who can say more with a disapproving look in his eyes than a long speech. And it may take you awhile, as it did me, to even recognize Felicity Huffman under that dark wig as Lady Bird Johnson.

In the end, of course, it’s impossible to watch Path of War and not think of the path we have taken to Iraq. In Vietnam, we simply were ignorant of that country’s history and suffered from a hubris about our own superiority and military might. You’d think we’d have have learned a lesson that would resonate for longer, but history does tend to repeat itself and we are once again in a quagmire. In both wars, there seems to be a sense of pride in powerful men that won’t let them honorably back away when they know they should (George Ball makes the point that all good calvarymen know when to retreat.) Inside the White House then, they knew they couldn’t win Vietnam and persisted. Inside the White House today, they know they can’t win Iraq and persist. Pride or political gamesmanship seems to be more important than young men and women’s lives, and that is truly unforgivable. The big difference of course is that George W. Bush is hardly the same figure as LBJ. They’re both from Texas, but from different mindsets and backgrounds. LBJ wanted to do good, and did some with the social programs that he initiated. Bush is just part of the same venal, self-dealing Republican mentality that began with Nixon and has never really ended. But as much as historians may want to rehabilitate LBJ, I don’t think he will escape the judgement of Vietnam. It was his most important decision and he came up lacking. On the other hand, unlike any other president, he did the honorable thing and stepped down. That hasn’t happened since, on either side of the aisle, and it will bode well for Johnson’s legacy.

Frankenheimer’s Path to War captures Johnson’s unique complexity and the pressures he faced. It’s a brilliant examination of how even the best of intentions can go horribly awry.

(Cross-posted at The Shamus’ site, Bad For The Glass: www.badfortheglass.blogspot.com)