Hearts and Minds

Peter Davis created one of the most moving accounts of the Vietnam War and the attitudes at home when he produced "Hearts and Minds".

The film looks unflinchingly at the nature of power and horrible consequences of war. It is very much a pro-peace film, but uses the people who were there to speak for themselves. It also seeks to probe deeper underneath the American psyche of the times and evolves into a historical document about the violent social rupture that happened between the fifties and the sixties.

In many ways, it feels like a punch in the gut to watch the film. So many ideologies are laid bear....so many were false or misleading.

In the end, the film leaves you thinking about the price of war - and who is given the task to bear that price.

Truly deserving of the Oscar it received - and worthy of repeated viewing.

I have never been so shocked and outraged before today when I watched "Hearts and minds". We are shown stunning images of the people of Vietnam suffering from a child crying for his father, from a wife tying to get into the grave with her husband, to two sisters pained by the death of their elder sister. We were shown images of brutality from the enemies of these poor people who had absolutely nothing to show for. Their houses were set on fire, we are even shown images of the Americans kicking a man in his privates and then being smashed in the head by their weapon. It was totally shocking! Americans sleeping with prostitutes and the image that will live with me forever, was that of an American soldier shooting a young man in the head with blood gushing out and yet the camera is still rolling. Don't these people feel any shame? You get American soldiers saying they enjoyed killing those people but after watching images years later of the pain and suffering, they felt regret. It's changed my perspective forever. Something that should not have happened in the first place.

Occasionally Hearts and Minds comes over as too obvious and aggressive, as in the shockingly unflattering edits of glib, racist Americans piled one on top of another and the literal link the director draws between football and war. (Then again, I'm 31 years old and just don't know how open such racism was then, but the cuts from bigot to bigot are just brutal and perhaps it's wishful thinking on my part to assume that the director was unfair.) Also, it seems the communist NLF did no wrong that was worth putting in the film. Instead the director concentrated on eloquent nationalist sentiments. I happen to agree entirely with the assessment of the war shown in the film, but even with my sympathies it's hard not to notice that this film that concentrates so brilliantly on the suffering of real people before an evil policy focuses almost solely on the crimes of the Americans and their South Vietnamese allies. But maybe that was someone else's film to make and, at that moment in time, the director probably felt that there was enough coverage of NLF as just plain evil people. It's a small gripe about such a mammoth film. Documentary is not Truth, no retelling of an event ever is. Hearts and Minds is an unapologetically partisan film and is so much the better for being honest about it.

I'm `oriental' myself. Well, `oriental' enough that I know all those slurs and dismissive comments would have applied to my family and me. It was absolutely eerie for me to see people from Gen. Westmorland down to Americans watching parades on Main St. who had nothing but contempt for the people that to this day many swear the US was trying to save.

I'm not sure how many times I've ever seen the victim of bombing express himself outside of this film and that's sad. How many people were bombed in the last century? Millions certainly. In the US we've become so accustomed to hearing that our foreign policy requires almost annual bombings somewhere on earth. Particularly during the Clinton years, punishing through air strikes became so routine that it barely merited news coverage. These attacks may not be as indiscriminate as they used to be, but how many people in our history did that one anguished man speak for as he wept about his family and his home?

The sheer carnage on display in Hearts and Minds made the whole war film genre seem perversely sentimental to me. It's seldom helpful to hold up fiction to docu-footage, but, in this case, any number of moments from Hearts and Minds makes otherwise impressive films like Apocalypse Now! and Platoon seem like acts of bad taste.

Very good piece on the horrors of war and the stupidity which causes them. Lots of good interviews with former gung-ho jarheads who are now armless, without legs, or sitting forever in wheelchairs. Several clips from interviews with politicos of the era in which one man even went so far as to admit the entire war was a gargantuan error: "I couldn't have been more wrong in my assessment of the situation" was his comment. We really are led by fools. Other footage showed the ravages of the Viet people themselves - not just a bunch of dinks - who lost homes, families, and entire villages. The most telling scene for me was of the 2 parents mouthing their patriotic "he died fighting for freedom" gibberish in defense of a useless war which took their son away forever. Maybe this was merely their own defensive mechanisms at work but it made them appear so painfully ignorant of what was going on around them. This should be viewed by all, especially those who were around at the time and remember all the conflicting emotions.

Hearts and Minds holds much relevance for the post- Sept-11 world.

Although this film concerns itself with the Vietnam War, it is really about war in general. It explores the reasons America behaves the way it does towards other countries and towards itself, without having to come right out and tell you. It is the old writers credo, "Show, don't tell." The film bears multiple viewings, and you discover something new every time. Anybody who has loved ones in the military, and anybody who is "involved" in politics will be interested in watching this.