Leofwine_draca HEARTS AND MINDS is an interesting little documentary exploring the controversial side of the Vietnam War. Made in 1974 when everybody knew just what a bad idea the whole enterprise had been, this features some documentary footage of the war itself combined with plenty of interviews from both the Vietnamese and the American troops involved. Some of the views expressed are, shall we say, quite shocking in this day and age, while the violence meted out is equally so. It's all rather grim and depressing, if truth be told, but this documentary's timeliness makes it well worth a look for anyone with an interest in the ill-fated war.

Sergeant_Tibbs Hearts and Minds is known as one of the most devastating and controversial documentaries there are, but that still didn't prepare me for such a powerful experience. The most striking thing about the film is the pace. You can hardly keep up. It's a torrent of emotionally charged insights from wounded soldiers and images from the battleground, covering some of the most iconic images of the Vietnam war that sear onto your brain. That's what the film is about - image. While it projects an image of its supposed reality of war, it also discusses America's projection of war. America has this grand idea of what war should be - defensive, victorious, glorious. Even though the Vietnam war doesn't fit, they try and cram it into that ideal anyway. Hearts and Minds does an enlightening job of showing what it was like at the time, rather than the movies that later showed a hindsight perspective. Its end parade sums it up. Trying to paint a picture of what returning home should be like, but it's not that simple. It's chaotic and complex. Peter Davis presents a rare conviction and directorial prowess here, overshadowed only by his compassion. It's relentless, draining, but utterly astonishing cinema.9/10

brandoncathey2004 There are no Michael Moore narratives in this documentary. Players from all sides speak for themselves, and you have to see it to believe it.A Vietnamese carpenter, who makes caskets for children, recounts stories of children killed by American bombs. A Vietnamese woman is so grief-stricken that she climbs into the grave of a loved one as it is being covered with dirt. Viatnamese children run naked through the streets, skin dripping from their bodies, from recently dropped napalm.An American soldier executes a handcuffed Vietnamese man in the middle of the street. A former CIA official coldly recounts the story of a Viatnamese POW who was thrown from a helicopter because he would not answer questions.Back at home, a former American bomber pilot cries as he imagines his own children being exposed to the same incendiary devices he dropped on the children of Vietnam. An American mother and father describe the son they lost and eerily repeat the jingoistic phrases of the government they continue to fully support, while another American mother says, "All these people holding their heads up high because they lost a son in Vietnam or some place, well, I don't think that's much to be proud of. They've lost more than they'll ever gain for the rest of their life." But Gen. Westmoreland sums it up best: "The Oriental does not put the same high price on life as the Westerner. Life is plentiful, life is cheap in the orient."Hearts and Minds is a great documentary. It speaks for itself.

Robert J. Maxwell Davis does a neat job of laying out the absurdity in the US's involvement in Vietnam. He does it mainly through the use of two techniques.(1) Successive contrast, as it's called in the psychology of perception. If you stare at a black square for a while, then switch your gaze to a gray square, it looks white, not gray. In this movie Davis juxtaposes moments from interviews and newsreel footage to demonstrate how far removed high-level speeches can be from events as they take place on the ground. General Westmoreland, who, like General Douglas MacArthur, was another one of those giants in the field of Oriental psychology, explains to us that Asians don't place the same kind of value on human life as Westerners do. (He might have been thinking of kamikaze attacks from WWII.) Cut to a Vietnamese funeral full of wailing mourners. A coach gives a pep talk, screaming and weeping, to a high school football team in Niles, Ohio. "Don't let them BEAT US!" he cries. Cut to a scene of combat.(2) Selective interviewing and editing. The Vietnamese seem to speak nothing but common sense and they are seen doing nothing but defending themselves -- and very little of that. The Americans that we see and hear are mostly divided into two types: phony idiots and wised-up ex-patriot veterans. Fred Coker is an exception. He's a naval aviator who was evidently a POW. He's clean-cut, intelligent, and articulate, and he's given a lot of screen time. This is all for the good because he's about the only pro-war character we see. He's been there and he still believes. He serves as a useful bridge between the pro-war idiots and the embittered anti-war Americans.And of course the statements we hear on screen are selected for their dramatic value. One former pilot describes how he and his comrades approached their bombing missions -- for some of them it was just a job, part of the daily grind, but for some others it got to be kind of fun. And for him? "I enjoyed it." The amazing thing in propagandistic documentaries like this is not that the sound bites were selected. Of course they were, otherwise you'd have a dull movie of a thousand people from the middle of the road. "Dog bites man" is not news. "Man bites dog" IS news! No, the truly astonishing thing is that some of the interviewees actually SAID these things in the first place. Selective or not, here is the evidence on film. And how is it possible to "take out of context" General Westmoreland's disquisition on the Oriental attitude towards life? Or a vet smirking and saying he enjoyed killing Gooks? I'm reminded of a scene in Michael Moore's first documentary, "Roger and Me." Moore is talking to a handful of rich wives who are on some Flint, Michigan, golf course, chipping balls. His camera rolls on and on while the ladies chat about the closing of the plants and the movement of jobs to cheaper labor markets. They love the area around Flint -- great golf courses, good riding country. And the newly unemployed? Well, says one of the wives, before a swing, now they'll have to get up and find a job. Poor people are always lazy anyway. It's a shocking statement, and we hear similarly shocking statements throughout this movie. It all leaves a viewer with a sense of awe that anyone could be so unashamedly deluded.I don't see any reason to point out the similarities between what happened in Viet Nam and what's going on as I write this. I wish our current leaders, practically none of whom served in the military let alone Viet Nam, could have seen this because it might have served as a useful reminder that war isn't REALLY very much like a high school football game.G. K. Chesterton once wrote, "My country, right or wrong, is a thing no true patriot would think of saying. It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober'".