Fandango

Ha! Anyone that has known me a long time that might be reading here should have known that it was just a matter of time before I wrote something about one of my all time favorite movies. This is definitely one of my favorites and I've seen it many times. Perhaps I am a little unhealthy mentally?
I believe that anyone that has no 'ties' to this movie could believe it's very average or forgettable but to me this movie is huge.

Fandango is basically about 5 college roomies, the groovers, that take off on one last adventure before they are forced to move on with their lives.

But, let me tell you what it means to me.

Most of my life I have been absolutely obsessed with Viet-freaking-nam.
As early as elementary school I can remember coming inside the house in the evening and the world news would be on. Nightly, they had a death count or report on what was going on in Vietnam. I never said anything to anyone but deep in my heart I just knew that I would wind up in Nam. Junior High kept those feelings going as anti-war marches made the news almost nightly.
Fortunately, by the time I was in high school, Vietnam was winding down and obviously I never had to go.
By that time, I had developed an interest in why this war happened. Why we were there and the meaning behind all of this.
That interest remains to this day. I have probably seen every Vietnam movie, read books on it and learned as much about it as I could and it still remains a mystery in a lot of ways.

Fandango is set in 1971 and the students are attending the University of Texas. The war was going strong and a couple of the main characters had been drafted into the military.
One of the biggest issues of the day was to serve or not to serve. Lots of young men ran off to Canada so they didn't have to fight.
3 out of the 5 in the movie were involved with the war. One was going for sure and proud of it, it was his future. Another character was indecisive and the third was definitely going to slip off to Mexico during the movie.
Most of the movie was about their conflict with one another over this issue. But, one big event drew them all closer together and changed their outlook. If you haven't seen the movie, you'll just have to watch to see what I am talking about.

Make no mistake about it, Vietnam was a poor man's war. It wasn't like World War II where the entire nation was behind the war. It was more like an Iraqi conflict where there was a lot of argument over why we were even there.
The poor kids, whether white skinned, or black, or any other race, fought this war. The rich kids got out of it, the fortunate sons as sung by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
I was a poor kid, so I would probably have been drafted if things hadn't changed. I'm pretty sure I could not have run off to Canada because I would have feared that more than getting shot at by the North Vietnamese.
Some of the men that I have met through the years that went to Vietnam were treated like garbage when returning home. Some people spit on them, some called them baby killers and other such names and generally made them feel like second class citizens.
It was a far cry from WWII treatment of veterans.

The symbolism in this movie is unreal and the manner in which they behaved was done so well it reminded me of when I was back in those days. I was younger than these guys, but we behaved in much the same way.

When I watch a movie like this, I think if I had been born just a few years earlier I would have been in Nam.
And, because of that, I also consider myself a fortunate son.