Hearts and Minds

Before I began watching this documentary I didn’t quite know what to expect. I couldn’t remember anything that was said about this film in class but after watching a portion of it, it became quite clear what this film’s focus was: uplift Vietnamese while degrading the Americans. Now don’t get me wrong I totally agree for the Vietnamese to finally get a voice in what this war has done to them. I feel that it is very important that Americans get to see how that war affected the Vietnamese. Edward Sowders’ speech hit the nail on the head when he began talking about how the Americans ruined the lives of the Vietnamese. That kind of made me feel good to see that an American was standing up and saying “We were wrong.” What I don’t agree with is the bashing of the Americans. I know that those soldiers weren’t perfect but this film depicts them as monsters. For example the scene about the soldiers throwing the Vietnamese man out of the helicopter because he couldn’t tell them what they wanted to know. Now whether this was a true account or not is unknown according to the film but I still think it was a little extreme to add in this documentary. This just made the soldiers look cruel and heartless. Another example would be how the director kept making it seem like the soldiers were addicted to Vietnamese hookers. I think it is okay to show it once, but repeatedly showing it just made the soldiers look like dogs in heat. That one scene where the two American soldiers were with two Vietnamese ladies doing their business was too long and totally unnecessary.

Now the film did give a raw aspect of the war. It had a lot of good footage of what the Vietnamese saw on a daily basis during that time. I just feel that it was edited to point out good guys and bad guys and for once America was explicitly depicted as being the bad guys.