Big Sky Doc Film Fest: A Green Beret's journey back to Vietnam

Vietnam veteran Jim Markel Sr. was advised by his physicians that returning to the Southeast Asian country may well serve as a palliative for his post-traumatic stress disorder. Healing was a powerful instinct he had long desired, and he was receptive to the recommendation.

Indeed, Jim learned of other aging ex-soldiers who’d never suitably healed from their harrowing mental anguishes born of the smoke and danger of death. Saigon collapsed in April 1975, and decades later many of them returned as open-minded seekers, pilgrims keen to make well their unhealed emotional baggage. Desperate to address his own lingering disturbances, Jim told his son, Jim Markel Jr., that, at age 74, he was earnestly contemplating such an undertaking.

In turn, Jim Jr. informed a pair of his friends, Stan Parker and Pete Tolton, two artistically inclined spirits in search of their first feature film directorial project. (All four men are Billings residents.)

“One day Jim Jr., started talking about how his dad was talking about Vietnam, in a way that he hadn't been talking about it before,” Parker said. “It seemed like he might be ready to go back. He had been talking about it for a long time, but then it developed into something more seriously.”

Origins of ‘Return’

At first, Markel resisted the idea of being part of such a documentary. He served in Vietnam in 1964-65 as a regular enlisted army officer and later returned for a second tour in 1970-71 as a member of the 5th Special Forces Group. He said that he wasn’t convinced that his own experience was compelling enough to warrant the effort, and he didn’t understand precisely what the two filmmakers saw in him or his life. Pete and Stan explained their vision to respectfully and naturally convey one veteran’s tumultuous, dramatic path to healing. Ultimately, Markel chose to embark and he and his son invited Parker and Tolton to come along.

“We considered that that idea was a good one since it was recommended by a treatment provider,” Tolton said. “But we also knew that it would be troublesome territory for him and we didn't know what kind of feelings and memories and behaviors it would arise in him through revisiting these places of trauma and these devastating memories.”

To better contextualize their subject matter, Parker and Tolton researched the history of the Vietnam War with eager alacrity, seeking to better grasp all of the knotty issues Markel had touched on in their previous conversations.

“I frankly struggle to stay in that mental territory for too long because it's so heartbreaking,” said Tolton. “I'm not a very good researcher on matters of war or human suffering. I don't have the kind of emotional stamina for it. But we did a ton of prior research by going through old news clips as well as government-sponsored information from the U.S.”

The directors agreed beforehand that the film would take a level, even view of the conflict, respecting both the general prescribed account and anti-war narrative. Neither of them had any significant direct experience with the war (which extended from 1955-1975), no family members among the 58,220 U.S. military fatal casualties mourned, and they weren’t old enough to have watched the gruesome saga on the TV from their living room sofas, the way that millions of Americans did.

“We tried not to say that anything was a certain way,” said Tolton. “We tried to give every bit of information a discernible origination point, and also to imagine it as a piece of the story as how it could be influential or important to our characters. When we're showing these old newsreels, the ones that are paid for by the U.S. government, we did it to indicate how Jim Sr. might have built his pro-America philosophy and ideologies, at least as they were in his youth.”

Depths of vet’s despondency told

Both Parker and Tolton honored from the start the notion that Vietnam veterans and their families are not monolithic: some defend all of the stated anti-Communist intentions of the U.S. government and military wholeheartedly even to this day; others see the conflict in cynical, less straightforward terms.

In Markel’s case, before the visit he never raised objections about the war’s origins and never questioned whether he or his assignment or his country was right or wrong. He spoke frugally about his activities and remained tight-lipped about the details of his time served. Post-war, he could never find anything to match the frenetic stimulation of combat, always trying to replicate or capture that same adrenaline rush. But other occupations and activities left him bored stiff and he quickly lost interest in them. Regret and self-loathing fixed him firmly.

“Jim spent so much time chasing the thrill, trying to relive the high,” said Tolton. “And he really felt certain and sure about what he was doing at the time. When you combine that sureness, that danger, that fraternity, the sense of usefulness, and all of the excitement all in one, I can certainly see why that is a really hard thing to reproduce in other situations, or safer situations back home. I can see why it's addictive. I can see why it's appealing, despite all the violence and hardship that comes with it.”

Deluged by endlessly negative, desperate thoughts, Jim even contemplated suicide; the most despondent depths of his PTSD he kept secret. Jim Markel Jr. only learned of the full tortured agony of his father’s post-combat experiences after viewing the completed film.

In the summer of 1976, North and South Vietnam were in the end unified. Saigon turned into Ho Chi Minh City, and Hanoi became the capital of the new Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Parker and Tolton accompanied the Markels to Vietnam in spring 2018, spending three weeks zigzagging the former South Vietnam and even crossing through what was once the Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone, a dividing line that existed from 1954 to 1976. (The one scene filmed in ex-North Vietnam finds them hunched and lurking in one part of the approximately 9,500 miles of tunnels that formed the immense web of the Ho Chi Minh military supply trail.)

Through the experiences of Markel Sr. — the intense mental and at times physical discomfort of the subject – the filmmakers created something that is beautiful — lucid and vivid, and yet lyrical and personal, a significant work of consciousness and a profound homage to the methodical craft of storytelling.

“Every single person involved in a conflict like Vietnam has their own personal experience with it,” said Parker. “To me, real understanding comes through collecting stories. I feel like our work as filmmakers, it's adding and finding more voices worth adding to the conversation, and for us to tell an empathetic, patient story about those people.”

Sacrifice finds healing

Eight months after Markel Sr. returned to Montana from Vietnam, he attended a Marine Corps Ball in Billings and, with the recent trip still jerking at his heart strings, the 75-year-old spoke candidly to the audience about the discordant sentiments swelling since then. At the podium, not only did an inexplicable regret stir within him, but a certain great tenderness lit about him.

“I admired his willingness to mention in front of a couple hundred committed military people that he had misgivings about his military actions,” said Tolton.

Parker said that the film belongs to everyone, not just veterans or people who are specifically interested in U.S. social or geopolitical history, and both filmmakers emphasized that the picture is not dark or morose or filled with red rage but something bright, resilient and uplifting, honoring the bravery and intrepidity of someone who chose to join the U.S. military and served with affinity.

“Being a filmmaker doesn't mean prying into painful memories or singling people out for no reason,” said Parker. “But it does mean having a general sense of awareness and being ready for having empathy and understanding and having that willingness to receive someone’s story when they are ready to share it.”