Gardens of Stone Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.0

Gardens of Stone Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 26, 2020

If you’ve never been to a fully appointed military funeral service, it is both one of the most impressive and most moving things you’ll probably ever experience. The picayune attention to detail of the attending service members, with their almost robotic movements and crisp gesturing, and of course the ceremonial flag folding and devastating gun salutes and bugle playing of the tune colloquially known as “Taps” can well up significant amounts of emotion in even the hardest of hearts (and I speak from experience, as I have attended military funerals, including one for my own father). Gardens of Stone focuses on the so-called “Old Guard”, the Honor Guard that accompanies fallen soldiers on their final journey and which conducts military funerals with such admirable precision. There’s therefore an understandable sadness suffusing the film, but there’s also a meta aspect which both commentator Jim Hemphill and director Francis Ford Coppola refer to in supplements included on this disc, though perhaps unsurprisingly given the tragedy involved, Coppola is pretty discursive about it. As both Hemphill and Coppola discuss in their separate bonus features, Coppola was in a financial bind during this era, dealing with the wake of the disastrous closing of Zoetrope Studios and the massive rejection of One From the Heart, and found himself owing tens of millions of dollars to creditors who were more than willing to take any assets that Coppola had. Coppola therefore started accepting so-called “works for hire”, churning out a series of films to help pay off his debts that Hemphill mentions have tended to be lumped together as “lesser Coppola”. Gardens of Stone was just such a “work for hire”, and Coppola had already started pre-production with a cast that included Griffin O’Neal, and, per longstanding Coppola tradition, with his son Gian-Carlo attached as the videographer of the shoot (as Hemphill also gets into, Coppola was at the forefront of all sorts of techniques that were scoffed at back in the day, but which have become standard operating procedure in the film world in the interim, including “video assist”, so that directors can have “instant playback” of takes to review). Tragically, Griffin O’Neal and Gian-Carlo Coppola went for a joyride of sorts on a speedboat on Memorial Day weekend in 1986, and a freak accident led to the death of Coppola. O’Neal was quickly replaced (by Casey Siemaszko), but suddenly a film already laden with grief and mourning due to its subject matter had a whole new layer of sadness attached, and it's almost unfathomable (at least it is to this parent) that Coppola could persevere under such conditions.

Perhaps in the cinematic equivalent of misery loves company, Coppola begins the film with the military funeral service of a soldier who is also introduced via some narration he provides as the film immediately segues back to tell his story. Beginning the film with his death serves as an almost shocking conceit, one which Hemphill compares to the similarly "corpse narrated" Sunset Boulevard, though in this case the death is perhaps made even more visceral due to the military ceremony depicted in the film's opening moments. As Hemphill gets into, the almost fetishistic aspect to the military funeral services depicted in the film can tend to be a distancing tactic, with ceremony replacing sublimated emotion, and that very fact may have played into Coppola's use of this scene as the opening. In any case, the story revolves around a young man named Jackie Willow (D B Sweeney), a new recruit to the Honor Guard, and crusty elder Clell Hazard (James Caan), who kind of considers the Honor Guard beneath him (he wants to be training actual fighters).

One of the kind of interesting things about Gardens of Stone, especially since according to some of the supplements this received more "technical assistance" from the United States Army than any film since John Wayne's The Green Berets, is how it shows how some of the very members of the Honor Guard, including Clell and his cohort "Goody" Nelson (James Earl Jones), are outright dismissive of this kind of service. Even later, one of the corpsmen is heard dissing a ceremony, saying he just wants to get out of there as quickly as possible, though at least in that particular moment there's the Siemaszko character telling him to knock it off. It gives this film a kind of weird off kilter feeling at times, one that is a rather odd mash up with other more arguably "rah rah" elements like the father and son relationship that develops between Willow and Clell, and how Willow is indoctrinated into the ranks of the officers.

Part of the subplot of Gardens of Stone is the fact that Willow wants to see active duty in Vietnam, an aspect that some may find surprising given broad perceptions that no one wanted to serve there, but that of course sets the stage for the film to loop back on itself. There are also two romances worked into the story, one between Clell and neighboring apartment dweller Samantha Davis (Anjelica Huston), and another between Willow and his eventual wife Rachel (Mary Stuart Masterson). But this is one film where it's more of a "bromance" angle that probably takes center stage.

Gardens of Stone Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Note: Powerhouse Films provided only a check disc for the purposes of this review.

Gardens of Stone is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Powerhouse Films' Indicator imprint with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. I didn't receive any supporting press documentation with the check disc, but Powerhouse's website has a generic "high definition remaster" statement on its page devoted to the film. This is by and large very nice looking presentation, one with a natural and appealingly organic appearance with a generally very well resolved grain field. There are a couple of unusual spikes in grain that are sometimes matched with slight fluctuations in densities, but overall this has a nicely suffused and very natural looking palette. Detail levels are also very good for the most part, but what look like perhaps some second unit material documenting soldiers attending to graves look just a bit softer than the bulk of the presentation.

Gardens of Stone Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Gardens of Stone features an LPCM 2.0 track which capably supports this dialogue heavy film. The film features marching band music (and Carmine Coppola's score also features band instruments), and that, along with the occasional sound effects like the report of rifles, reverberate with good force and clarity. I noticed no issues whatsoever with regard to any damage or other issues.

Gardens of Stone Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Francis Coppola: War at Home (1080p; 16:15) is a kind of heart wrenching piece with the beloved director, and it may serve as more of an emotional snapshot of Coppola as much as anything, since he states repeatedly he has virtually no memory of the actual shoot.


• Audio Commentary with Jim Hemphill is occasionally a little intermittent, but gets into a wealth of information, including some long contextualizing about Coppola post-Zoetrope that's interesting. He also touches on some of the personal trauma surrounding not just Coppola, but also James Caan, who was returning to films after a five year absence (Coppola also addresses this in the supplement above).


• The Guardian Interview with Anjelica Huston (1080p; 1:51:51) is an audio supplement culled from an interview conducted by Adrian Wootton at the National Film Theatre in London on December 7, 2006. This comes with a warning about technical limitations. This plays as an alternate audio track under the film itself. The interview lasts around an hour and five minutes.


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:39)


• Image Gallery (1080p)

Since Powerhouse only provided a check disc for the purposes of this review, I can't opine on any extra disc material, but their website mentions an insert booklet, and typically Powerhouse's are very well done.

Gardens of Stone Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It seems evident to me based both upon his interview included on this disc as well as Jim Hemphill's analysis in his commentary that Coppola was probably in shock when he made this film, and it has a certain dreamlike quality. What I personally found a little odd about it is that despite having a seemingly built in emotional wallop, I wasn't ever overly moved, and in fact found some of the proceedings contrived. That said, this film features absolutely stellar performances all around by a very committed cast, and as Hemphill also states in his commentary, even "second tier Coppola" has its own pleasures. Technical merits are generally solid and the supplemental package very interesting, for those considering a purchase.