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| Hearts and Minds |
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  (9/10)
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Runtime: 112 |
| Public Rating: 8.02 (53 votes) |
Director: Peter Davis |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Documentary |
Year: 1974 |
| Writer(s): Peter Davis |
| Distributor: The Criterion Collection |
| Reviewed by: Mel Valentin |
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Hearts and Minds, the 1974 Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Feature directed by Peter Davis, critically dissects the consequences of the Vietnam War on the South Vietnamese the U.S. ostensibly assisted against so-called “Communist aggression” from North Vietnam, and the American servicemen, their families, and the anti-war protesters at home. The familiar phrase “hearts and minds” (introduced via a President Johnson speech featured in newsreel footage) refers to the political, social, and cultural aspects of successfully conducting modern warfare. The phrase “hearts and minds” captures the indisputable necessity of winning the allegiance of the native civilian population, especially during a military occupation. Without continued and consistent civilian support, both the government and the military occupation in support of that government are doomed to failure.
Hearts and Minds opens with an almost idyllic scene: a quiet, rural village, presumably in South Vietnam, with adults at work in a rice field and children at play. A false note, however, is quickly introduced: an American soldier casually crosses the village, apparently ignoring the villagers, who in turn show varying levels of disinterest at his presence. The documentary then introduces a former high-ranking U.S. government official, Clark Clifford, the second Secretary of Defense under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Clifford succeeded Robert McNamara in 1968, after McNamara's privately expressed doubts about the progress in Vietnam led to his dismissal by the Johnson administration (McNamara was “promoted” to head the World Bank). Clifford is the rarest of government officials: involved in the highest levels of policy-making during the Vietnam War, who publicly acknowledges and accepts his own culpability in the Vietnam War, and recognizes that the premises underlying the rationale for war, and the consequences of those actions, were entirely unjustified.
Hearts and Minds then briefly reviews the early history of the Vietnam War, from the end of the French occupation of Vietnam in 1954 (according to the documentary, the United States funded fully 78 percent of the French war). A French diplomat discloses that the U.S. offered the use of tactical nuclear weapons against North Vietnam (the French refused the offer). Hearts and Minds quotes Johnson promising victory in Vietnam, and later, Nixon claiming that the U.S. involvement in Vietnam has been marked by a “degree of restraint unprecedented in the annals of war.” In newsreel footage, Senator Joseph McCarthy articulates the then conventional wisdom of geopolitical strategy in Southeast Asia, the “domino theory” (i.e., if South Vietnam was allowed to fall to Communism, revolution would spread to the other countries in Southeast Asia). Everywhere, anti-communism took precedence over democracy promotion. The specter of communism was used to support unpopular, often corrupt regimes. South Vietnam was no different, with the United States promoting a series of ineffectual leaders in Saigon who, by themselves, did little to provide a meaningful alternative to Ho Chi Minh and the other North Vietnamese leaders.
Hearts and Minds then moves from the macro to the micro level, from idealistic, often abstract government policies and their implementation, to the real-world consequences of those policies, both here in the United States and abroad. Peter Davis interviews several returning Vietnam veterans, including Lt. George Coker, an ex-POW who arrives in his hometown of Linden, New Jersey to a hero's welcome, but who, over the course of several interviews and appearances, betrays his inner conflicts and doubts about the Vietnam War. With less ambiguity, but with an equivalent effect, Davis interviews Robert Muller, a paraplegic Vietnam veteran, who discusses his initial faith in the “rightness” of the cause in Vietnam, and then his gradual disillusionment at the orders he was compelled to carry out and his treatment upon his return from Vietnam. Randy Floyd, an ex-bomber pilot, first discusses the pride he took in his professional attitude toward his work, as well as the expertise in his field; later, he chokes back the tears as he describes the growing realization of the human costs of war (i.e., the bombing of innocent civilians and his role in their deaths). Daniel Ellsberg, the former Rand Corporation analyst and State department and Defense department official responsible for the release of the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret, 7,000 page study of decision making in Vietnam from 1945 through 1968, to the U.S. Senate and the American media, discusses his transformation from implicit or tacit approval of the war and its aims, to a vocal anti-war activist (he also movingly describes his relationship with the late Robert F. Kennedy, and his encounter with Kennedy the day of his assassination). After describing the history of U.S. support for puppet regimes in South Vietnam, Ellsberg strikingly concludes that, "we weren't on the wrong side, we were the wrong side."
In another interview, General William Westmoreland, the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam (1964-68) remains unrepentant about supporting the Vietnam War and the United States goals and aims in Southeast Asia. In discussing the Vietnamese, Westmoreland engages in a casual, offhand racism (he calls the Vietnamese backward and primitive, lacking civilization, and valuing human life differently than Westerners). Davis contrasts Westmoreland's statements with footage of young Vietnamese children, dressed in traditional mourning clothes, grieving over their dead father. Westmoreland also reiterates his long-held belief in the necessity for a wider, more prolonged war (i.e., the bombing and subsequent invasion of North Vietnam, which most critics estimated would mean, at minimum, another 500,000 soldiers in North Vietnam, subject to a completely hostile population). Like General Westmoreland, Walt Rostow, one of President Johnson's National Security Advisors, rejects the position that the Vietnam War was unjustified, illegitimate, and begun and maintained under incorrect or false assumptions (presumably, even with hindsight, Rostow would have supported U.S. involvement in Vietnam, with an even greater escalation of the war in its early stages).
For a contemporary audience with a limited understanding of the Vietnam War, however, Hearts and Minds might prove to be a difficult, confusing documentary film. Hearts and Minds provides the audience with only a brief, cursory introduction to the decades-long U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Hearts and Minds presumes that the audience will provide its own context for the Vietnam War, its origins and other relevant background information. Hearts and Minds was made when the Vietnam War and knowledge of the war by a then contemporary audience would be presumed, due to media exposure, reporting, and direct personal experience. Hearts and Minds will also be disquieting for another, unrelated reason, the real-world tangible effects of U.S. military power brought to bear on those we meant to assist: the documentary filmmakers include footage of Vietnamese dead and wounded, including now iconic images of children escaping from a napalm attack (in particular a young naked girl stumbling into the arms of a sympathetic American servicemen) and a mother carrying her dead child. Hearts and Minds also shows us another, more brutal side of our involvement in Vietnam: a South Vietnamese general, Nguyen Ngoc Loan, summarily executing a suspected member of the VietCong. This footage, taken by an NBC crew, has also acquired iconic status (as has the black and white photograph taken simultaneously by Eddie Adams, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his photography).
Hearts and Minds ventures briefly into North Vietnam during the Nixon administration. The footage was apparently taken after the United States renewed bombing North Vietnam in late December 1972, both in response to a new North Vietnamese offensive in the south and to improve the U.S.'s bargaining position vis-à-vis the North Vietnamese at the so-called Paris Peace Talks, negotiations which themselves were begun in 1968. A young farmer's grief is exposed to the camera (and the audience). He describes his love and affection for his three-year old daughter, killed by a U.S. bomb (his mother also died in the bombing, while his farm animals survived). Peter Davis contrasts this moving footage with President Nixon speaking at a White House event for returning POW's where, to raucous applause from the audience of U.S. servicemen, their families, other government officials, and the media, he describes the renewed bombing of North Vietnam with satisfaction.
Hearts and Minds, however, can be justifiably accused of lacking balance in the presentation of the North Vietnamese as anything except well-intentioned nationalists, who never committed any atrocities or war crimes of their own. Besides the interview with the North Vietnamese farmer, the documentary filmmakers behind Hearts and Minds refuse to explore North Vietnamese actions during the war, both toward the South Vietnamese themselves who either didn't support their policies or were simply seen as obstacles to their goal of forcing the United States to withdraw from South Vietnam. Although an American POW is interviewed at length for the documentary, Hearts and Minds fails to mention the harsh, often inhumane treatment of American prisoners-of-war by the North Vietnamese. Nonetheless, Hearts and Minds remains a groundbreaking achievement in the documentary format. Hearts and Minds is also a timely reminder the consequences of military adventurism abroad regardless of the intentions, ideals or policies in question. As such, Hearts and Minds bears an unsurprising (and uncomfortable) resonance with the current occupation of Iraq. The United States was fiercely divided over our continued involvement in Vietnam. It remains to be seen whether the war on Iraq will be equally as divisive.
© Mel Valentin, 28th September, 2004
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