Jim Markel Sr. thinks everyone should take a trip to Vietnam. The food is so good that he gained weight while he was there. And the beaches are just fantastic.
“They’re really getting tourist oriented over there,” he said. “I’ve talked to people who have been on a cruise to Vietnam.”
Markel Sr. was last in Vietnam in 2018. But it took him a long time to get there.
Markel Sr. served two tours in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The first was 18 months in 1964-1965, as a Private in the Army. He returned as part of the Army Special Forces, the Green Berets, in 1969-1970.
He volunteered to go. And volunteered to go back.
“It just didn’t seem like the job was finished,” Markel Sr. said.
After he returned Stateside in 1970, he never went back. He was suffering from PTSD, though he wasn’t even aware that the term existed at the time.
“For years afterwards,” he remembered, “I was miserable.”
He spent more time in the Army, and eventually wound up in the Marine Corps, which sent him to Billings in 1985.
So much of the war in Vietnam was unfinished. Markel Sr. became yet another in a long list of folks irreparably hurt by America’s involvement in Vietnam, who had never been given a chance to heal.
This trip was an attempt to do that. For Markel Sr. to not just heal himself, but his family, too. He brought along his son, Jim Markel Jr. And lucky for everyone else, they brought along cameras to capture it.
The Markel’s trip back to Vietnam is the premise behind “Return,” a new documentary made by Billings-based filmmakers Pete Tolton, who directed, and Stan Parker, who produced. “Return” makes its world premiere, a special “home-town sneak peek” on Saturday evening at the Babcock Theatre.
The film has been in development for years, long before plane tickets were bought or travel plans were set. The first tentative interviews started six years ago.
“Stan and I have been friends with Jim Jr. for a while, and we’d always talked about doing a trip together,” said Tolton. The trio had worked together on some marketing for Red Oxx, the Billings luggage company Markel Jr. owns.
“I’ve always been interested in film,” said Markel Jr. In addition to the Red Oxx work, he’d worked with Tolton and Parker on “Makoshika,” a 2016 documentary about the Bakken oil boom directed by Jessica Jane Hart that Tolton and Parker also had credits on.
“We just hit it off,” Markel Jr. explained. “We worked well together. The three of us,” he paused. “Well, four of us now.”
The Markels had always talked about doing a trip to Vietnam. Markel Jr., who also served in the armed forces, had been overseas but never to the country his father served in.
“It was just the right time,” Markel Sr. said.
They spent 21 days in Vietnam filming.
“When I first got off the airplane,” Markel Sr. remembered, “the smell, the heat, the people, it all hit me at once. I was back. It was just like that.”
He was uneasy, and considered turning right back around and getting back on the airplane.
“But then we got greeted by a really nice guy,” he said. “And we had a guide and a driver. It was fantastic.”
They managed to visit every place that Markel Sr. had served during his time in the country.
“They haven’t changed,” Markel Sr. said about the spots that they stopped at.
He also immediately picked back up Vietnamese, a language he hadn’t used in 45 years.
“It just came back,” Markel Sr. said. “It was unreal.”
“That was really cool to see,” added Tolton, the director.
The whole documentary shoot was very loose. They had no permits, had asked no permissions from the Vietnamese government.
“It was quick and dirty,” said Markel Jr.
“We shot on mirrorless cameras,” Tolton said. “Little ones, so we could pretend we were tourists.”
There’s still some distrust with the Vietnamese government. But none with the Vietnamese people.
But the big thing that everyone involved in the documentary was amazed at were the Vietnamese people.
“This documentary is about the people,” Markel Sr. said. He was particularly concerned about the South Vietnamese who had fought with the Americans during the war.
“They went through a lot after the war,” he said. “We were supposed to get them out. But we didn’t.”
Getting to see what had happened in the country after he’d left was very emotional for Markel Sr.
“I get uptight just thinking about it,” he said.
That emotion is all over “Return.” Because this isn’t just Markel Sr.’s story. It’s Markel Jr.’s, as well.
“This experience made [my father] who he is,” Markel Jr. said. “Our interactions are influenced by that.”
Markel Jr. was born in a foreign country. He was raised on military bases throughout the world.
“That puts stress on a family,” he said. “So you move on, learn to operate as an island.”
This process of returning to Vietnam and getting to spend time together and frankly talk about their relationship, it helped bridge that island.
In Vietnam, the place that caused so many wounds in his psyche, Markel Sr. finally found closure.
“I’d recommend it for anyone who has PTSD,” he said. “If you face the situation, you can find healing. I found it to be a healing experience.”
Letting cameras into that healing took a lot of trust. This was so personal, so intimate. The Markels had to be okay with being filmed as they reached these revelations.
“It’s one thing to say you’re a filmmaker,” Markel Jr. said, “but it’s another to tell someone’s story and have their trust. It’s a big responsibility. And you only get one chance at it. I had my own relationship with Pete and Stan that I value greatly. They were able to extend that relationship around my father, as well, and tell his story.”
“I only want to take 25% credit for this film,” Markel Sr. added. “The other 75% goes to [Tolton and Parker].”
After a while, Markel Sr. said, he stopped even noticing that the cameras were there. The moment was big enough to brush off any distractions.
And the story needed to be told.
“I want to help someone else,” Markel Sr. said. “I can’t relate to Iraq and Afghanistan, but I can tell them what I faced. And how I’ve overcome. It never goes away. But it helps.”
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