Hearts and Minds (1974)

As a kid growing up in Australia and the United States during the Vietnam years, it was hard to avoid the fact that something deeply troubling was going on. Our prime minister, Harold Holt, went into the 1966 election with the slogan, "All the way with LBJ". I still remember the graffiti on the playground at the Gold Coast. As a student at the Singapore American School in 1968, all felt duty-bound to choose sides... Humphrey or Nixon.One flight to the States took us right over the top of Nam. You could look down on high and see, far below, American warplanes. Texas was another world. If you were pro-peace, you were labeled a commie, no matter how old you were.This is a documentary about American involvement in Vietnam. It doesn't focus on atrocities committed by the Viet Cong or North Vietnamese regulars, because it is about Americans. The sins of others do not justify your own. The film itself is a slice of history. Made not long after the American withdrawal, it depicts all sides of the debate with remarkable clarity using nothing else but film and interviews.This is not so much a history of the war in Vietnam, as it is an introspective look at what it means to be American. It is quite simply the best documentary on American involvement in Vietnam that I have ever seen.

It can be argued (probably successfully) that this is the ultimate bleeding heart's take on the US government's policies in southeast Asia from 1950 to 1973. Peter Davis has nevertheless made a riveting and very unsettling documentary. Relying on first hand accounts from vets, politicians, and a few grotesque "man on the street" interviews, Davis makes it clear that he's not interested in making anything approaching a balanced film. How could he when a scene of a young Vietnamese girl wailing over her fathers coffin is juxtaposed with General William Westmoreland explaining that people in the Orient do not value life? Among the more insightful interviewees are Daniel Ellsberg (who laments how five US Presidents managed to lie to the US over 25 years) as well as former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford, who admits he was wrong to go along with LBJ's policies many years before Robert McNamara (whom he succeeded) did. Ultimately this is a very sad movie about a really horrible time in US history.

I first knew about this Oscar-winning documentary when Rex Reed and Bill Harris mentioned it on their "At the Movies" program in the late '80s when they discussed Vietnam War films in the wake of the success of Platoon. I also later read about the controversial comments producer Bert Schneider read from the Viet Cong when he accepted the Academy Award that got Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra to disavow those remarks as Oscar approved. Having watched it now, director Peter Davis does a remarkable job of trying to find a balance with the various viewpoints of Americans-conservative and liberal-and that of the Asian country-persons whose loss of homes and family are the most heartbreaking scenes on film. But he also exposes how the propaganda of World War II movies may have contributed to such ignorant comments like those of former prisoner-of-war Lt. George Coker-"If it wasn't for the people, it would be very pretty. The people over there are very backward and very primitive and they just make a mess out of everything." Or this from Gen. William Westmoreland-"The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does the Westerner. Life is cheap in the Orient." One wonders if they ever regretted those remarks. Many other painfully touching moments occur that I won't mention here. With all that said, I highly recommend Hearts and Minds.

The only fully honest movie or documentary I've seen on the Vietnam War. Several movies show the suffering of U.S. soldiers who fought or were wounded in Vietnam, or readily admit that the war effort was flawed - e.g., former Secretary of Defense Bob McNamara in "The Fog of War." But none that I know of tell us what was really behind the war and how it divided the country between the jingoist or conformist hawks and the people of conscience who could not support such a bloody Ne-colonial war of aggression - "aggression," not an honest "mistake" that our media portray. It showed the Vietnamese people in their humanity, patriotism, and incredible courage in the face of crucifixion by an utterly awesome U.S. war machine. Unfortunately, the documentary's message got lost or was never seen by millions of Americans who are still in denial about what Vietnam stood for - a denial that permits the kind of character assassination by the "swiftboat veterans" that may have cost John Kerry the election in 2004.