Hearts & Minds DVD Review:

Painstakingly constructed from over two hundred hours of footage, this Academy Award-winning documentary about the war in Vietnam not only appeared while the war was still raging but arguably before America came to realise quite how big a mistake its leaders made. While the political issues the film was made to address have lost their topicality, this film has in no way lost its ability to shock or surprise. In fact, with time its imagery and message has taken on a whole new meaning.

These days a campaigning documentary maker taking on the government on matters of national security seems almost run of the mill. There's clearly a market for anti-war films so it seems reasonable to fill the market. Michael Moore even won himself an Oscar for bringing these kinds of arguments to a mainstream audience. However, in 1974 this was far from being the case. Peter Davis' documentary dates from a time when most Americans felt it was their duty to bring freedom to backward people around the world and to protect them from the tyranny of communism, even if this meant using force. Remember that when Davis' film was released, Platoon, Hamburger Hill and Full Metal Jacket were decades away from being made. This film appeared only six years after John Wayne's The Green Berets; a film allegedly subsidised by the Pentagon and now held up as a lesson in how to make a bad war film. The Green Berets was a huge success when it was released because it sought to explain the Vietnam War in the simple moral framework that had served us so well during World War II. Before Vietnam vets were able to write screenplays and direct, Peter Davis gave them a platform and was therefore the first filmmaker to present the Vietnam War as anything less than a Just War. In fact, it's possible to argue that without Hearts & Minds, the likes of Platoon might never have been made.

Davis' style is interesting, eschewing the narration of the likes of Michael Moore, he prefers to let his images do the talking. Davis switches from interviews of veterans to interviews of politicians and from footage of real soldiers in Vietnam to footage of real people back home in America. While he allows his subjects and his images to do the talking, his hand is no less visible than in the films of Michael Moore. Davis' style is to give you memorable images and then contrast them with speeches by politicians or military men or even normal Americans. For example, at one point Davis interviews a general who talks about how the "Orientals" do not place the same value on life as westerners do. This is immediately followed by footage of a Vietnamese funeral where a mother throws herself on her son's coffin as it is buried, weeping in despair. This results in the film feeling less focused than the likes of Fahrenheit 9/11 but
it is also due to the subject matter. Davis' critique of the Vietnam War is so broad and all encompassing that no linear narrative would be able to do it justice. Davis instead opts to show you the hideous
reality of Vietnam and the myth put about by politicians and swallowed by average Americans. The myths are so obviously fraudulent and the images of beatings, executions and villages burned
down are so ugly that the film is nevertheless convincing because you walk away from it with your head filled with both myth and reality and how the two differ. However, as brutal as Davis is in his
depiction of the Americans at war, his most ferocious criticism is aimed squarely at America itself.

The hearts and minds of the title refers to a speech given by President Johnson where he spoke of not just winning the war but also the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people. Davis suggests not
only that America did nothing of the sort but also if any hearts and minds are in need of being won over to the right way of thinking then it is that of Americans. As one veteran puts it; the Americans were not ON the wrong side during the Vietnam War, they WERE the wrong side. Davis explores the roots of this as he looks at the casual
racism present in American society and the way that children are brought up to fight and hate and to see their country as special and every citizen as having a duty to serve that nation in its desire to
civilise the world. To a modern audience, this is perhaps the most astonishing part of the film. Having grown up in a world where America bore the scars of Vietnam so publicly, it is shocking to see
how America was before Vietnam. The Americans are portrayed as ignorant racist bullies pursuing a crusade against communism in Vietnam while utterly uninterested in how many people they killed and maimed in the process. While it is easy to look back on this now and see Davis as simply stating the facts, at the time most Americans were in favour of the war and Davis' documentary was so controversial that the Academy Awards felt it necessary to issue a statement distancing themselves from Davis' views. Nowadays, while many Europeans feel that Americans are all right-wing nutcases, it's interesting to see how much more frightening Americans were before the Vietnam War. At the same time it is also depressing, in the ight of Iraq, to see quite how quickly they managed to forget what
they learned in Vietnam and return to seeing themselves as duty-bound to commit any number of atrocities under pretext of bringing "freedom" to an unwilling nation.

Hearts & Minds is as insightful and scathing a critique of the Vietnam War as you are likely to find anywhere, even thirty years on. It does not purport to be a history lesson or even to have a precise
political agenda, it is simply a finger levelled in accusation at America as a whole, from the political class to the soldiers who do their bidding to the average Americans on the street. All are guilty
and none escape. It is this willingness to turn away from Vietnam and back to America that makes Hearts & Minds as topical and necessary a film then as it was now. For those old enough to
remember the Vietnam War it will be interesting to compare attitudes then and attitudes now regarding the war in Iraq. To those who are too young to remember the war, it provides a frightening insight into how America saw itself during the Cold War.

Star rating = 5.

PICTURE & SOUND

The film is presented in 16:9 aspect Widescreen. The film is mostly comprised of footage that looks shot on 16mm film, providing some visuals of amazing quality, particularly the shots of soldiers in
Vietnam. However, this is a documentary and it was made over thirty years ago so don't expect Van Helsing or anything.

BONUS FEATURES

Apart from the usual scene selection and sub-titles for the deaf, the film comes with two interesting extras. Firstly, there is a recent interview with Davis. Davis is an articulate and engaging speaker
but unfortunately Nick Bradshaw, the man interviewing him, proves unwilling to really keep him on track so as a result he tends to wander and go off on tangents from production stories to criticising
computer effects. The film also comes with a rather nice commentary track that serves to explain some of the footage and bring special attention to particular passages.

It would have been nice to have a little bit more, maybe a featurette about how the film was received, but unfortunately that is it.

OVERALL

A truly excellent documentary with a couple of rather nice extras. On the whole the disc could have been better but the film is of such a high standard that it feels uncharitable to quibble. One thing
worth quibbling about though is the ugly packaging design. Whereas the US version is stark and features just the face of a Vietnamese child, the UK version is all khaki and features a cut out of an M-16 and Platoon-style lettering. I think this cheapens it slightly and manages to make the film look like some "Secrets of the Luftwaffe"-style documentary about notable battles of the Vietnam War. Unfortunate but the only downside to an otherwise excellent DVD.



Jonathan McCalmont