Hearts & Minds (1974) - film Review

"We weren't on the wrong side, we were the wrong side."

                                                       - Daniel Ellsberg

Director: Peter Davis

Runtime: 112 minutes

Budget: $1,000,000

Cast: George Bidault 

         George Coker 

         Daniel Ellsberg

         Clark Clifford  

I have never seen a more damning documentary regarding U.S. foreign policy than director Peter Davis' film, Hearts and Minds (1974). Winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1975, the film examines the U.S. role in Southeast Asia from the early 1950s all the way up until 1974. At the time of filming, South Vietnam was still under U.S. occupation and Richard Nixon had yet to resign the Presidency. While quite controversial for the time, even now, nearly forty years after its initial release, it still has the power to anger, shock and divide politically.

First, if you are expecting a completely balanced look at the war in Vietnam, you might walk away from this film disappointed. However, if you choose to avoid this film because of this fact, you will be missing out on one of the most eye-opening examinations of the war and its consequences, particularly the effect it had on soldiers, politicians, journalists, the American public and more importantly, the people of Vietnam themselves. Through usage of actual footage and photographs, including interviews with troops as they are engaged in battle, Peter Davis paints a horrific picture of brutality, death, and the utter futility of U.S. involvement in the conflict. Warning: this film contains numerous disturbing scenes of death, torture and nudity (related to prostitution). Davis isn't afraid to shy away from the carnage with his camera. More importantly, he brings us face to face with Vietnamese civilians whose lives have been irrevocably damaged by the long and bloody conflict.  It is available to watch as a DVD release from Criterion, a download from iTunes, or better yet, check it out for free on YouTube here:

While perhaps it is manipulative to intercut scenes of the homecoming celebration for U.S. POW George Coker and his speech wherein he tells the jubilant crowd: "you must not be afraid to send me back", with scenes of troops suffering in combat, it succeeds in making one realize the cost of that sentiment. One of the most disturbing sequences shows the burial of a South Vietnamese soldier wherein his mother has to be physically restrained from throwing herself into his grave. This sequence is intercut with an interview with U.S. General William Westmoreland (commander of all U.S. forces in Vietnam from 1964-1968) where he matter-of-factly states that: "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient." Coker seems to share this sentiment when he tells a class of schoolchildren, in answer to a youngsters question of "what does Vietnam look like", that: "If it wasn't for the people, it was very pretty. The people there are very backwards and primitive and they make mess out of everything." More shocking is when he explains to the class that "some of you will probably be sent to war one day." How is this acceptable in our democratic society, that children must be groomed for war? Must we treat conflict as inevitable?

George Coker, grooming our children for war?

Davis' examination of torture is an unsettling look at something most policy makers claimed the U.S. took no part in. Yet there on the screen is footage of prisoners being water-boarded, beaten, kicked, and brutally hit with the butts of machine guns. A former CIA officer describes an interrogation which ended with the prisoner being thrown from a helicopter. A Vietnamese woman described the torture she underwent at the hands of the U.S.-supported South Vietnamese. For months she was tortured and starved. "You cannot imagine the beatings" she wearily says. These interviews are intercut with footage of a U.S. Colonel denying our use of torture on the "Nips" and Colonel George S. Patton III gleefully expressing his satisfaction with "what fine killers" our troops are.

Davis fills his film with informative interviews with former U.S. policy makers, generals, officers and Vietnamese citizens. These interviews help to establish a brief history of the conflict and to discuss U.S. involvement (of which the soldiers provide harrowing first hand accounts). It is not easy to endure. Ultimately one learns that the Vietnamese had fought invasion from the Chinese for over twelve hundred years, and then resisted French colonization for nearly a century (the U.S. funded 78% of re-colonization efforts after World War II) before finally gaining their independence in 1954. Then the U.S. entered the fray, determined to overthrow the democratically elected government of Ho Chi Minh, a massively popular leader and revolutionary who had repeatedly petitioned our government for support. Minh was convinced (after studying the American Revolution and our constitution) that the U.S. would support the Vietnamese effort to emerge from the shadow of colonialism. Instead, the U.S. spent billions propping up a corrupt and murderous, totalitarian regime based out of Saigon in the South. Each President was expected to support the U.S. position without question.

Five successive U.S. Presidents (from Truman to Nixon) misled and lied to the American public in order to justify and secure support for our involvement. The Soldiers interviewed for this film were all quite shaken by their experiences. One former pilot is haunted by the thought of someone napalming his daughter. Another tells a horrifically comical story about an accidental napalming of his trench wherein 35 of his fellow soldiers were either killed or severely injured.

This is an eye-opening documentary that I will not soon forget. Nothing much can be said in defense of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. We engaged in a brutal war of attrition and genocide on a massive scale. During our "invasion" (it is hard to see it as much else) of North Vietnam we dumped millions of tons of conventional and biological weapons upon civilian populations (including villages and hospitals). We burnt down villages and destroyed civilian crops, livestock and food supplies. It is staggering the amount of destruction we wrought upon the peoples of Vietnam. An interview with a Vietnamese coffin maker is unsettling in its look at the production of coffins for children: "I make 900 a week" he says, "sometimes more." Another heart-wrenching scene is with a farmer raging with grief at the death of his daughter, killed in a bombing run. He bitterly yells: "Here is where my daughter died! She is dead. The pigs survived." Regardless of your understanding of the conflict which cost the lives of over 2 million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans. This a film that must be seen. For those of you who believe we were fighting in a righteous cause of liberation and freedom, I will simply quote one of the Vietnamese journalists interviewed in the film: "what kind of freedom can you bring us?"

Thems the facts

theJackal