1999: Victory Without War

One of William Shakespeare's lesser-known plays, Titus Andronicus was staged in New York by award-winning theatrical director Julie Taymor in an acclaimed 1995 production, before her widely praised Broadway version of The Lion King. Taymor revisits that production for her first motion picture, with the addition of a star-studded cast. Roman General Titus Andronicus (Anthony Hopkins) has returned from defeating the Goths in a bloody battle, but the victory has left him with mixed feelings, as the war took the lives of several of his sons. Titus is reminded by his first-born son Lucius (Angus Macfadyen) that their faith demands the sacrifice of an enemy prisoner as a gift to the gods for their victory. Titus chooses the eldest son of Tamora (Jessica Lange), the Queen of the Goths, who has since been taken hostage by Titus's troops……

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it, and the story of the wars fought in Vietnam from the 1940s to the 1970s is one from which many lessons can be learned. Initially a conflict involving a wounded post-war France attempting to re-take and hold its former colony, the fighting in Vietnam would become less a battle over territory and independence, and more an ideological battleground where the contrasting philosophies of east and west would meet head-on in an explosion of politics, culture and napalm.

Unlike any other Century the last 100 years has provided filmed conflicts and adventures covering World Wars and many other sweeping military actions. All too often these huge conflicts have been taken at face value. The story has unfolded in newspapers and film clips in a way which has left historians to piece together the final jigsaw. But even now have their efforts given us the true picture?