To what extent does Oliver Stone's Vietnam Trilogy represent the truth about the realities of the war?

Essay from the year 2000 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Peace and Conflict Studies, Security, grade: 71% (Distinction), Monash University Melbourne (School for Social and Political Inquiry), course: The Vietnam War, 20 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Oliver Stone is probably one of the most controversial film directors in Hollywood. His films - like JFK or Natural Born Killers - often receive enthusiastic praise as well as fierce criticism. A subject that frequently reoccurs in Stone's work is the Vietnam War. Stone, who is a veteran of the war, wrote and directed three films that directly deal with the conflict and which he calls his 'Vietnam trilogy': Platoon, (1986) Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and Heaven and Earth (1993). Apart from those, many of his films make references to Vietnam, most obvious JFK (1991) and Nixon (1995) and to a lesser extend The Doors (1991). This essay focuses on the three films of the Vietnam trilogy. To what extend do they represent the truth about the realities of the war and how are they influenced by the director's own experiences as a GI in Vietnam? First I will give a brief Biography of Oliver Stone, followed by a chronological discussion of the envisaged films with reference to the questions presented above. Due to the large nature or this topic, I will only broaching some of the numerous aspects and interpretations of the films. [...]