Made while the Vietnam War was still ongoing and just after the US had withdrawn, Peter Davis's Hearts and Minds (1974) is a landmark in documentary and political filmmaking. To its detractors is an anti-American hatchet job on the Vietnam War; to its admirers, it's a brutal and honest depiction of America's failure in South East Asia. A new high-definition digital restoration is now available via The Criterion Collection.
Hearts and Minds, its name is taken from the program to win support for the war, opens over the village Hung Dinh before jumping to Clark Clifford. Clifford, former aid to Harry Truman and Secretary of Defense, explains how after World War 2, America was the true supper power in the world. Before the interview cuts to a marching/dancing scene from the 1943 wartime musical This Is the Army. Setting the tone and style for the whole film. Interviews with soldiers, veterans, peace activists, civilians and politicians are cut with news footage juxtaposed with pillars of American life and what the reality of the Vietnam war did to them.
Hearts and Minds is not a film about Vietnam. In many ways, it is not a film about the Vietnam War. It doesn't tackle the causes or provide a chronological history of the conflict. At most, it addresses the French-Indochina War by how much the US was funding it, 78% for the curious, and the time J.F Dulles offered France two nukes to sort it out. The cause of America's involvement in the war becomes dwarfed by it. No, Hearts and Minds is about something more than the war's timeline, the failure of four presidents, and the world's largest military.
What it is, at its core, is a film about America. American exceptionalism's ideals intersect with the reality of the Vietnamese people's human toil in the war. Holding up a mirror, it contrasts the Red Scare and the “dangers of what may happen under Communism” with the reality of civilian bombings in Vietnam. Davis lays the blame for the war not just at the feet of politicians or big business. He blames American jingoism and the zeitgeist of the country. The pro-military song “Over There” plays over footage of GIs burning villages and threatening civilians as US civilians talk about the need to go to war. It may seem to the viewer that Davis is being too heavy-handed in his anti-war crusade. But, it starts to resonate that Davis has to be this heavy-handed in his approach to show what has driven this war and what it has driven America to do—such as L.T George Cocker, a former POW, telling elementary school children that the Vietnamese are somehow primitive people. And how angry veterans lament the loss of innocents and limbs to war they were sold on before it even began. He lets the anger of veterans like Randy Floyd and Bobby Muller flow through the screen at the injustice they saw, experienced, and at times committed. The war culture's rhetoric slowly drifts away from the early administrations' call of “We need to help the South Vietnamese” to the latter “, We need to go back there and finish the job.” It blinds itself to what is happening at home and on the frontlines for the sake of a victory that's never coming.
As stated, Davis uses juxtaposition throughout the film to build his case. The bright prep rally and football game cuts to GIs in a brothel in Saigon. The anti-Communist propaganda from Joe McCarthy and Ronald Regan cuts to the wounded veterans on why they signed up to fight. The Vietnamese Catholic priest and the newspaper editor both described how the war became a fight against American aggression before jumping to a 4th July re-enactment of the Revolutionary War. The greater the action, be it heavy bombers dropping ordnance, the more quintessential the Americana that follows it. The goal is too blatantly to shock the view, though it's not as cynical as it appears. Davis doesn't ruin the party as much as he tries to warn the guests about how the hosts are setting the venue on fire. The desired response is for people to say, “No More. We won't be part of this.” The style and message have influenced other political filmmakers. Not so much as setting the bar as forging it.
The disk has an array of special features
- Audio commentary featuring Davis
- A collection of over two hours of original outtakes and interviews
- A booklet featuring essays by Davis, film critic Judith Crist and historians Robert K. Brigham, George C. Herring, and Ngo Vinh Long.
Hearts and Minds is a reminder of what Vietnam did to a rosetinted version of America. And how that led to the deaths of thousands. Wounded veteran Randy Floyd says it best at the end. “We've all tried very hard to escape what we have learned in Vietnam. I think Americans have worked extremely hard not to see the criminality that their officials and their policymakers exhibited.