Gardens of Stone

Gardens of Stone is a 1987 American drama film directed by Francis Coppola, set among the soldiers of the U.S. Army's Old Guard at Fort Myer, Virginia, during the Vietnam War. The title refers to Arlington National Cemetery, whose rows of tombstones the Old Guard tends through its ceremonial burial duties. The film stars James Caan, James Earl Jones, Anjelica Huston, D. B. Sweeney, and Mary Stuart Masterson, and is based on Nicholas Proffitt's 1983 novel of the same name.^{1 • 2}

Production

Redwood Productions acquired the film rights to Proffitt's novel in 1983, but nothing came of that; the film was eventually made by Tri-Star Pictures as a Michael I. Levy production from Zoetrope Studios, with a screenplay by Ronald Bass.¹ Principal photography began on 22 May 1986 in the Washington, D.C. area, at Fort Belvoir, Fort Myer, and Arlington National Cemetery.¹

Army cooperation. The production received extensive assistance from the U.S. Army, which made the forts and cemetery available, trained the actors in Army drills, provided an Army band, uniforms, equipment including two helicopters, and some 600 real-life soldiers as extras. The film company reimbursed the Army for its services. Lt. Col. John Myers, the Army officer overseeing the filming, said no other film had received so much Army assistance since John Wayne's The Green Berets (1968).^{1 • 10} In exchange, the Army demanded and received the right to review the script. It asked for foul language to be removed and for scenes to be reworked for technical accuracy; a scene in which a widow spits on her husband's grave, and one in which a sergeant strikes an enlisted man who flunked inspection, both present in the novel, were cut.¹

Death of Gian-Carlo Coppola. Less than a week into production, on 26 May 1986, Coppola's twenty-two-year-old son Gian-Carlo, who was working as a video camera operator on the film, was killed in a boating accident on the South River near Annapolis, Maryland. Griffin O'Neal, who was driving the boat and had been cast as "Wildman," asked to be released from his contract a week after the accident; Casey Siemaszko replaced him and his scenes were reshot. Coppola insisted the shoot continue, checked himself into DeWitt Army Hospital at Fort Belvoir for exhaustion, and resumed production afterward.¹

The crew included cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth, editor Barry Malkin, production designer Dean Tavoularis, and composer Carmine Coppola.^{1 • 3}

Release and reception

Producers had planned a December 1986 Los Angeles qualifying run for Academy Award consideration followed by a nationwide Easter 1987 opening, but those plans did not materialize. The film opened on 612 screens on 8 May 1987, taking in $1.6 million in its first three days and $5.3 million after a month.¹

Reviews were mixed. Roger Ebert, film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, gave it three stars, writing that no particular moment could be faulted and praising the performances, especially the chemistry between Caan and Huston, but finding that the film "doesn't add up," that it is "content to be a slice of life" and "every moment is right, and yet the film as a whole is incomplete."³ Pauline Kael, longtime critic of The New Yorker, wrote that the film "probably comes closer to the confused attitudes that Americans had toward the Vietnam War than any other film has come, and so its own messiness seems honorable."⁶ Desson Howe of The Washington Post called it "a handsome but fragmentary film that can't decide which story to tell," while crediting superior performances from Jones, Caan, and Sweeney.⁷ Vincent Canby, writing in The New York Times, asked why Coppola had directed "a screenplay that's alternately lame and utterly confusing" that "builds to no point."⁸ The aggregated Metascore is 54, described as mixed or average.⁴

Place among Vietnam War films

Unlike most American films about the war, Gardens of Stone is a home-front film: it depicts the military burial rituals at Arlington National Cemetery rather than combat, and scholar Michael Anderegg grouped it with Platoon and Hamburger Hill as films exploring the memorializing of the war in popular cinema.¹¹ Producer Michael Levy described it as "a promilitary, antiwar Vietnam film," a contrast with Coppola's own Apocalypse Now (1979), which Levy noted would more likely be described as antimilitary and antiwar.¹⁰ The film's end credits dedicate it to the 3rd U.S. Infantry, the Old Guard of the Army, at Fort Myer, Virginia.¹

References

1. Gardens of Stone (1987), AFI Catalog of Feature Films
2. Gardens of Stone, Sony Pictures Entertainment
3. Roger Ebert, "Gardens of Stone" review, Chicago Sun-Times, May 6, 1987
4. Gardens of Stone critic reviews, Metacritic
5. Gardens of Stone, Rotten Tomatoes
6. Pauline Kael, "Nannies and Noncoms," The New Yorker, May 11, 1987
7. Desson Howe, "Lines of Lead in 'Gardens of Stone'," The Washington Post, May 7, 1987
8. Gardens of Stone, Turner Classic Movies
9. Sheila Benson, "'Gardens of Stone' Brings Vietnam Home," Los Angeles Times, May 8, 1987
10. Peter S. Canellos, "Coppola's Gardens of Sorrow," The Washington Post, August 2, 1986
11. Michael Anderegg, Inventing Vietnam: The War in Film and Television

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026

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