Search - Various Artists :: Platoon (1986 Film) - And Songs From The Era

In a musical collection that is as much soundtrack as it is score, Oliver Stone's Platoon is a breakthrough for its ability to embody the extremes of the human condition in Vietnam. While most of the songs by themselves are commonly found as representative of the era, together they become a personality. Smokey Robinson's soulful and heartfelt "Tracks of My Tears" is offset by the down-home pride of Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee." In turn, they are challenged by the escapist fantasies of Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" and Otis Redding's "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay." The glue that held these social groups together in Vietnam, however tenuous this bond, was the common experience of combat. Here this combat takes form as Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. Barber's violins play first at the aftermath of the torching of a Vietnamese village and then again as the undercurrent for Charlie Sheen's reflective monologue at the film's finale. Each time, they embody the pain and anguish of the previous moments, searching for cause but finding only loss and despair. The strings become the screams of the wounded, the souls of the lost, and the conscience of the living, and in so, the Adagio for Strings itself serves as a testament to an experience that must be faced to be understood. --James Stockstill