Hearts And Minds [1975]

Customer Reviews:

A first-hand mosaic of the Vietnam war.......2007-07-29

This is an excellent documentary and I did not find it unduly harrowing, as is perhaps suggested by other reviewers. There is no narrative, instead news clips and interviews are pieced together to allow the content to speak for itself. Interviewees include soldiers and civilians from all sides, including Walt Rostow and William Westmoreland. The latter appears in the film to be startlingly unsophisticated and his views on the `Asian lack of appreciation for the value human life' are chillingly juxtaposed with footage of grieving families of South Vietnamese military casualties.

I've read a lot about Vietnam, but nothing that I have read has been as effective as watching `Hearts and Minds' in providing me with an appreciation of the human dimension to the conflict.

Powerful and harrowing but worthwhile.......2007-03-12

An exceptionally good documentary. I love documentaries and rented this because it got good reviews and I didn't know a huge amount about the Vietnam war. I wasn't disappointed. There is no real narrative and no commentary, but this documentary conveys the horrors of the Vietnam war expertly.

This film uses war footage, interviews with soldiers, politicians, parents, victims, and is expertly edited in a way that the horror of the Vietnam war, is felt with a tangible force.

It's interesting, and heartbreaking to watch in the context of current events. American presidents lied to their citizens, waged war on false pretexts, started wars they didn't know how to finish and served untold horrors onto innocent people 30 years ago, and yet current administrations don't seem to have learnt a hell of a lot. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if they recycled some of the speeches from back then - some of them sound depressingly familiar!

It's a painful film to watch but its a worthwhile exercise. I can't say I 'enjoyed' it, but I was never bored. It's too easy to forget the human tragedy that accompanies the decisions to go to war, and it's the kind of film that people should watch lest they forget just how raw and destructive war is.

A brilliant and disturbing film !.......2006-03-10

This is the best documentary I have ever seen, made before the final humiliating pull-out in 1975. Great detail has been given in an earlier review so I won't attempt the same, but if you want to see the full horror of Vietnam, not in a commentary but in words of people involved,and the images of war and brutality, then buy this DVD. The lunacy of American policy becomes plain in the words of the policy makers themselves, as is their almost total ignorance of the Vietnamese people and their insensitivity to human suffering. Sadly, you also realise that they seem to have learned nothing from the war because in Iraq and in foreign policy generally they show the same attitudes and ignorance. Buy it - you won't be disappointed.

Oscar winning documentary from 1974.......2006-03-07

Peter Biskind's best-selling exploration of the New Hollywood era 'Easy Riders, Raging Bulls' (later made into a so-so documentary of the same name) offered up examples of the revolutionary attitude injected into Hollywood from the year zero in the late 1960s - Arthur Penn's 'Bonnie & Clyde.' As Biskind's book demonstrates, for several years Hollywood product become much more auteurist and radical with film-makers such as Hal Ashby, Peter Bogdanovich, Francis Coppola, William Friedkin & Martin Scorcese. Amid Biskind's exploration of American 70s cinema came sections on the production of 'Hearts & Minds' and later, its controversial victory at the 1975 Oscars.

People who think Michael Moore was the first to scandalise with 'Bowling for Columbine' or are pointing towards the recent crop of films at 2006 Oscars ('Syriana','Brokeback Mountain' etc) as some sort of radical indicator have clearly forgotten this film. & to be fair - this is easily done as it's a documentary that must be too painful for an American to watch - I doubt if George Bush Sr's claim that the spectre of Vietnam was buried in the Arabian penisula circa the second Gulf War of 1991 (after the first of 1980-1988). Director Peter Davis and producer Bert Schneider created one of those moments when they outraged the old guard of Hollywood (Sinatra, Fonda, Hope et al) when accepting the award for Best Documentary they read out a telegram from the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Vietnam. Take it that America had ostensibly lost the Vietnam war, whether in the role of backers of the French there (as 'Hearts & Minds' reveals 78% of funding for the French there after WWII came from America- those cheese-eating surrender monkeys!), in the main war from the early 1960s to the general US pullout in the early 70s, or to the South Vietnamese force backed by the Americans - famously usurped in 1975. This was painful stuff - and 'Hearts & Minds' was really the first Hollywood product to get to grip with what had just happened. 'Hearts & Minds' started the process that lead towards such films as 'Coming Home', 'The Deer Hunter', 'Tracks', 'Apocalypse Now', the novel 'First Blood', 'Dog Soldiers' (Robert Stone), 'A Bright Shining Lie', 'Jack Knife', 'Platoon', 'Full Metal Jacket', 'Casualties of War' etc.

Davis' film is shocking, as unlike the media managed wars since the Pentagon did not embed/edit journalists and did not have compliant Fox-TV style propaganda. Watching 'Hearts & Minds' you think more of aspects of British documentaries on the present war in Iraq or Al Jazeera - the scene that both shocked me and typified the American adventure in Vietnam was that of the two US soldiers in a room with two Vietnamese girls who'd become prostitutes due to their occupation - this was cut with the vile image (borrowed for 'Platoon') of a G.I. setting fire to a Vietnamese village. That says everything about the foreign policy behind America in Vietnam - and unlike the majority of American works on Vietnam, 'Hearts & Minds' gives us an idea that the Vietnamese themselves are the greater victims (JG Ballard was correct that the greater tragedy of the Vietnamese loss is hardly touched upon by these self-gazing American films - 58,000 Americans were killed and thousands wounded. Set that against something between 3 to 4 million Vietnamese, tens of thousands in Cambodia and Laos & the fact that Nixon's secret bombing of Cambodia (referred to here) decimated that country- assisting the rise of Pol Pot and the genocidal Khmer Rouge).

'Hearts & Minds' is a raw history lesson, no wonder this has been sat on for years and rarely seen since the 1970s. Sadly it's a film that everyone should see to get the history of Vietnam - it takes a long cold look at that war and through a mass of archive/news footage (we see explosions and victims - which the Pentagon try to sit on these days) and inteviews with a myriad of perspectives we get an insight into this war. JFK, Johnson & Nixon all come out of this looking awful - a speech given by Robert Kennedy shortly before his assassination was shocking. Here was a politician who said he'd got it wrong a few years before under JFK on Vietnam - someone who had the guts to puncture the sainted JFK and say we must think again. Sadly as Kennedy was assassinated shortly after, we'll never know if he would have become President and reversed the process his brother started. Lyndon Johnson comes out of this terribly - his lies regarding the Gulf of Tonkin are countered by interviewees here - this fictional rationale which escalated that war is as dire as the fictional reasons Blair and Bush used to get their war with Iraq in 2003. Nixon meanwhile comes across terribly, whether shown telling outright lies as he makes speech or sweating as the Tricky Dick ostrich head is in the ground. Scary that Nixon's cohorts are now the neo-con cabal at the heart of the Bush Whitehouse...

'Hearts & Minds' is not a fun film - especially when you're shown what the Americans did to that country - it even touches on those that deserted the Army, went to Canada to avoid the draft & the vast anti-war movement. A divided America at war in a country based on dubious foreign policy - it's kind of obvious 'Hearts & Minds' is extremely relevant - I'd say Bush & co should have watched this & 'The Battle of Algiers' prior to the latest Iraq adventure. In fact, the interviews with normal Americans safely at home could have come from today - 'Hearts & Minds' is a key documentary that details the history and humanity of the Vietnam War. This film wipes away the propaganda of 'The Green Berets', Fox TV and all that jazz. The spectre of Vietnam was rebirthed in the Arabian peninsula too...

Totally relevant... (unfortunately).......2005-11-19

I've just watched this documentary and it has impressed, appalled and educated me. It's expertly filmed and edited, the print and transfer are impeccable and it looks like it was made yesterday.
The film is a clear and powerful perspective on the true nature of warfare and the true idiocy of US foreign policy during the Vietnam war. It allows the participants to tell their own stories and often gives them just enough rope to hang themselves in the process. Some of the military and political comment has to be heard to be believed! The people of Vietnam also tell their stories and appear far more humane and informed than their aggressors (except when fighting for the latter). It's difficult to view this outstanding film without drawing parallels between Vietnam and Iraq. Please see for yourself.
NOTE: the documentary contains some harrowing scenes of death and mutilation but they are in context and VERY necessary illustrations.

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