Hearts & Minds-- Intriguing Film on America's Involvement in the Vietnam War

A few of you may know that as a political science major I sometimes read and rate political books. This is my first attempt to rate a political movie probably because I generally don't watch political documentaries. Hearts and Minds is certainly a biased view of the Vietnam War. It stands on the viewpoint that America should never have trusted the government (which was proven to have lied through several administrations) and gotten involved in the conflicts in Indo-China. The film drives home that the foreign policy was not thought out and that Vietnam was a disaster from the beginning. The title Hearts and Minds comes from the Lyndon B. Johnson speech in which he proclaims that the US must take action to stop Communism.

Analysis
Hearts & Minds is an intriguing documentary because the director effectively edits in interviews chronologically with actual battle footage. The battle coverage is amazing and ironically the military learned that it could not have reporters filming the horrific events. Notice how the Gulf war and our recent coverage in Afghanistan has been carefully edited to show a "clean" war? Well this is because of the coverage that came out of Vietnam. The film includes many scenes that are familiar such as the American soldier lighting a Vietnamese family hutch on fire with a lighter, and a little girl running naked through the streets after being burned by Napalm. What’s really interesting about that particular scene is that later it shows several American GI gathering around to give her pour water on her and giving her their canisters to drink from. The scene is disturbing in the beginning but you realize that those soldiers couldn't ignore her just like you the viewer wouldn't be able to.

The film starts off by showing a commercial for the Marine Corps in which many soldiers are singing about patriotism in America. With clips from several presidents stating that Communism threatens the free world, they convinced the American public that taking action in the US was necessary. Peter Davis follows three central figures in the movie Lt Coker (a released POW) Peter Ellsberg( the man who blew the whistle on the government cover-up) and several Vietnam vets who discuss the war with regret and self-loathing.

Lt. Coker is one of the most shocking of the interviews because while on a lecture tour he says many racist and weird things about the Vietnamese. Yes I understand that he was a POW but when he proclaims that Vietnam was nice except for the people who are slow, primitive and have no value on human life, its one of the most uncomfortable scenes in the film. He should tell that to the Vietnamese man Davis edits in right after the scene with Coker, that is crying because Napalm and Agent Orange have killed all of his children. Lt. Coker also announces that the US was successful and won but the Vietnam War was one of the first major defeats for the US.

After showing interviews of soldiers explaining the joy and rush of bombing targets, Davis interviews 2 sisters who have lost their houses and relatives from the bombings. Davis leaves the camera running on the crying sisters so long it began to get uncomfortable as the viewer realizes one mans rush is another persons loss.

The soldier interviews are particularly haunting because it is well known mostly poor white men and minorities were actually sent to fight. Many vets are sorrowful about their killing and many of them have lost limbs from the battles. One Native American vet describes his involvement in using the derogative term for a person of asian descent while he was being called racial slurs in the marine corp. he wondered what he was fighting for and if it was worth losing his identity and innocence.

One part that I thought was really not useful to the film was the footages of the American GI's with prostitutes. Vietnamese prostitution boomed in Saigon because of the bartering with the GI's. The prostitutes are shown being totally disrespected and videotaped and one GI sneers into the camera, "Boy what would my girl back home think of this?" Well buddy more than likely she would be absolutely disgusted as many women who were watching this film with me were.

Peter Ellsberg is a very interesting player in the Vietnam War drama. He explains his initial idealistic assumption of weeding out the evil Communism. but then after working in Johnson's administration and realizing that Vietnam could never be won, he began speaking out about it. Instead of shredding important docs showing the status of the war and the lies he sent it to the New York Times. After the government tried to block the publishing of the papers (termed the Pentagon papers) the Supreme Court ruled 5-3 to let them be published.

The film winds up by Nixon announcing the end of the war and the establishment of a new government in South Vietnam. The film then shows interviews with innocent civilians who were tortured by this new government. Their words are haunting when the state that they were persecuted for wanting a free society and speaking out against the tyrants put in by the United Sates.

Overall
Peter Davis makes this film more hard hitting because of his editing. When one statement is made he backs up the complete opposite argument by showing footage of victims. The war footage is in your face and constant because reporters were allowed to go in and shoot film. Hearts and Minds is all at once shocking, heartbreaking and is meant to portray the Vietnam war as an unnecessary loss of life. I think it does an excellent job.