Rolling around at Rock Bottom

By Tanya Saleh

[1] Stranded in Mexico and rolling aimlessly in wheelchairs, Willem DeFoe and Tom Cruise portray two drunken, hopeless veterans freshly rejected from a society into which they thought they could bury their traumatic war experiences. This scene marks the pivotal point in the movie, in which Ron Kovic is brought to “rock bottom” in order to reform his perception of the Vietnam War and, moreover, of the American government. It begins with Charlie’s residual rage at being teased by a Mexican girl. His verbal and physical abuse leads the taxi driver to eject him and Kovic from the cab and leave them stranded in no man’s land. Once stranded, it appears that Charlie has already given up on life, reacting to this abandonment as if it is a mere addition to a long list of others -- “Fuck the whores. Fuck the cab drivers. Fuck Mexico . . . Fuck Nixon, fuck Vietnam, fuck ‘em all.” Kovic, still somewhat levelheaded, begins wheeling around in search of a rational solution to their problem, but the camera abruptly shuts him out. As the focus settles on Charlie’s glassy-eyed, psychotic gaze, he expresses his most traumatizing grievance from the war, saying, “They made me kill babies, man. Lil’ good babies. You ever have to kill a baby?” Once again Kovic shifts into view, brushing off Charlie’s question and again attempting to deal with the situation at hand, detachedly repeating, “We gotta get back to the villa.”

[2] In making these shifts, which continue as their bickering escalates, Stone seems to be pitting overt trauma against levelheadedness, brutal honesty against removed denial. Kovic continues to deflect Charlie’s provocations, wheeling ahead of him as if trying to escape his guilty conscience, which is literally following him as Charlie probes, “Whaddaya mean, ‘okay’? You ever have to kill a baby, you ever have to kill a little good baby?” To intensify his verbal assault, Charlie begins discrediting Kovic’s service in the war, making claims that the audience knows are untrue: “You never killed a baby . . . you never put your soul on the line, man.” Kovic’s attention is caught for a moment; he refutes Charlie, and they circle one another, seemingly at par in frustration. Because these provocations bring Kovic to confront Charlie, it is evident that it is the falsity of Charlie’s claims that get to him. Charlie brings his provocations to a peak, exclaiming, “You never fought that war, you weren’t even there, man!” This is the last straw -- a brief silence permeates the scene, and Kovic turns around to confront Charlie, unable to control his anger at such false accusations. This breaking point is significant because it speaks to the high esteem with which Kovic holds his own honor; only after discrediting his effort and loyalty could Charlie evoke an emotional reaction from Kovic.

[3] Their ensuing physical fight, in all of its spitting, hitting, and finally wrestling out of their wheelchairs, is pathetic and strange almost to the point of being humorous. Because this type of physical confrontation is presumably abnormal to the audience, perhaps Stone included it in this scene to further emphasize how little the veterans were understood by “normal” society. This scene seems to posit that their ostracism from society can be traced not to societal factors such as the insufficient care-giving institutions or mass public condemnation of the war but to the intrinsic inability of the veterans to reintegrate themselves into a morally bound society after committing such irreconcilable atrocities as killing “little good bab[ies].” Additionally, their fight takes them both from partial to full debilitation, both physically and emotionally. When they initially fall out of their wheelchairs, the situation turns entirely hopeless -- two men stranded in the desert without food, water, or even the most basic form of mobility. They have hit rock bottom and a way out is nowhere in sight. This situation appears to physically represent the figurative stalemate that the course of their lives has reached and shows that this trip to Mexico did not allow them to escape their problems but only to “pause” their journeys. By physically rendering them entirely immobile in this scene, Stone metaphorically suggests that they can only advance, or heal emotionally, once they address the crippling burdens they took on during the war.

[4] Along the same vein, Stone seems to be sending a message of solidarity in this scene. Charlie and Kovic are both crippled, and by fighting, they plunge themselves into a situation in which there is no winner and each is worse off than before. This physical chain of events also applies metaphysically; because they are among a small, marginalized group of people who understand each other, by turning against one another they reverse their healing processes and isolate themselves further in their personal anguish. In its normative implication that Vietnam War veterans must band together and attack the source of their afflictions (the United States government), this scene indirectly foreshadows the scene in which Kovic and a group of veterans protest the war and publicly denounce America’s motives in waging it.

[5] The helpless feelings surrounding the image of the crippled veterans lying alone in the desert is short lived, however, when a Good Samaritan pulls over to help them. At this point, Kovic seems to fully shed his denial and decide that they must confront the force that crippled them in every aspect. Dilapidated and panting, he laments, “Do you remember things that made sense? . . . Before we all got so lost? What are we gonna do, Charlie?” The image of them lying adjacently in the sand, sweat soaking through their tattered clothing, composes an almost too-perfect depiction of “rock bottom” as they are physically and mentally exhausted by their postwar lives, and can literally nor figuratively advance any further under their current circumstances. They are rescued from abandonment by chance, and the treacly orchestra music forecasts that they are now prepared to rescue themselves mentally by confronting their afflictions. As the car pulls away into the sunset, the music gains percussion and quickens in tempo, suggesting an uplifting and promising future for the veterans. The camera slowly withdraws from this picturesque scene, and the audience is left with a cathartic optimism.

[6] As a stand-alone display, this scene speaks to the personal trials and tribulations of the veterans of war and the effort they must put forth to overcome their trauma. Within the context of the movie and the even wider historical context, however, this scene shows how profoundly the United States’ foreign policy can affect individual people, especially those who are called upon to carry out its ambitions abroad. This movie and this particular scene are arguably Stone’s assertion that American policymakers must consider the societal reverberations they may inflict upon their own country before sending off the forces to do their bidding.