Hearts and Minds...truly.

This movie was truly a moving one. I have yet to sit through a documentary about war and be so fascinated. When watching the movie, I put on my RTF hat and sat down to think about and analyze this film. One of the opening scenes pictured a village of people living their lives and doing what seems to be normal work, but then we see this image of a soldier walking across the field in the middle of the village's work and what shocks me is how unaware the people of the village seem. They seem to carry on with their lives as if this intruder’s presence was habitual. An interruption in their daily lives seemed to not be so interrupting to the people.
A few of these scenes from this movie brought me back to the war movies we watched in class. One scene in particular was the scene when the soldiers were gathering up the bodies much like in Platoon at the end of the movie. The soldiers are moving the lifeless beings with no care, no consideration, and no compassion. Simply slinging bodies in efforts to carry out the missions issued to them. They were robotic machines. I personally would be terrified to touch a dead body and if I were reluctant to do so I would do so with upmost care and respect. However, this just alludes to the point that many of the injured veterans were making when telling their accounts of war. They became desensitized during their time in the heat of battle and did whatever it took to stay alive, even if it meant for one soldier, using another to shield himself from death.

One of the things that shocked me the most about this film was the realness that it possessed. I was shocked when a man was shown in the street getting executed by another soldier. I was surprised as we are used to seeing such things edited and only in movies with fake guns and executions, but to see a man actually lose his life in front of my eyes was appalling to say the least. Then another account in the movie was when there was an older woman and she was telling of her account in a camp where she was abused and tortured by soldiers and it reminded me of Platoon when the soldier invaded the village and killed innocent people, and the scary thing about the whole situation is that you would think people would have lenience towards women, but actually spared none and as we saw in the clip with the napalm, not even children.

Speaking of this scene it was something about seeing this as opposed to just seeing pictures that I have seen over and over again picturing the young naked girl running down the street with a burned body and the child with his flesh literally hanging off of him. I thought this lended even more evidence to the dehumanization of the soldiers during the war. Another shocking scene was the scene of the soldiers inside the brothel (I guess you can call it that). I found it crazy that these men could sleep with the women of the country and could turn around and kill them in the next instant. No feelings, no morals, and no consideration. The same woman that a soldier was about to be sexually engaged with could have and I strongly believe, would have been the same woman if she was seen on the street or under different circumstances that would have been killed.

Overall I found the film to be shocking and real in every sense of the word.