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HEAVEN & EARTH – Kitaro
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Heaven & Earth is the third in director Oliver Stone’s trilogy of films looking at the Vietnam War. 1986’s Platoon followed the exploits of the young soldiers who were shipped off far from home and forced to endure the most horrific conditions. 1989’s Born on the Fourth of July looked at what happened to those same young men when they returned home to America, maimed and traumatized by what they had seen and done. Heaven & Earth looks at the same events from the point of view of the Vietnamese themselves. Stone’s sprawling, sometimes confusing, sometimes compelling movie stars débutante Hiep Thi Le as a simple Vietnamese woman, Le Ly Hayslip, who finds herself caught up in the violent upheaval of the Vietnam war and, inexplicably, falling in love with a kindly American soldier played by Tommy Lee Jones, who eventually takes her home with him to San Diego. Unfortunately, the film was not as well-received as its two predecessors, and today has mostly fallen into obscurity, which is a shame, especially from the point of view of its music. Read more…


