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“There are at least two reasons to watch Hearts
and Minds. “Not only the definitive American documentary
about the war in Vietnam but a “Who’d have thought Peter Davis’s
seminal Vietnam War documentary, charting
(1974) “It’s a tribute to the
American people that their leaders perceived they had to be lied
to.” A
quiet, peaceful village, the only sound the rattlings of a cart — then
a soldier wanders into the shot; presidents from Truman to Nixon commenting
on Vietnam, only Eisenhower laying it on the line, with LBJ popularizing
the now-common title phrase (“The ultimate victory will depend
on the hearts and minds of the people”); a POW welcomed home to
Linden, New Jersey with a flag-waving parade, then addressing wide-eyed
schoolchildren on patriotism while a nun lurks in the background; two
gangly airmen visit a Saigon brothel, seemingly oblivious to the eavesdropping
cameras; the ex-French Foreign Minister reveals how the U.S. offered
his country two A-Bombs to solve the Indochina problem; a descendant
of Ralph Waldo Emerson stoically talks about his lost son; war amputees
try on prosthetic limbs; a self-proclaimed Vietnamese war profiteer gloats
over his potential post-war prospects; a Saigon coffin maker explains
how the small ones are for children; the ex-South Vietnamese president,
now a Paris restaurateur,
tells how the U.S. made him quit; former U.S. commander General William
Westmoreland opines, “The Oriental doesn’t put the same high
price on life as the Westerner;” a distraught villager, who lost
his 9-year-old daughter in an air raid, cries “Nixon murderer!” (a
scene echoed in both Control Room and Fahrenheit 9/11).
For Hearts and Minds, documentary filmmaker Peter Davis (The Selling
of the Pentagon, Hunger in America) combined stock footage, news
reports (among them a mock Communist coup in a 50s Midwestern small
town), and above all striking color footage shot by his crew here and
in a still war-torn Vietnam, decades before the Pentagon thought of “embedding” war
correspondents. Deemed by its original backing studio as too much of
a hot potato, Hearts and Minds was bought back by Henry Jaglom and co-producer
Bert Schneider (Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces) and released by
another company to box office and critical acclaim, winning the Academy
Award for Best Documentary Feature. After 30 years, all prints had
faded, but after a two-year effort by the Academy Film Archive, its
often lush color photography (by Richard Pearce, later director of Heartland and Country)
has been painstakingly restored, a reminder of how documentaries could
look before the omnipresence of digital shooting. “Rich in powerful
images . . . not easily shaken off.” – New York Times. “If
I were to pick the one film that inspired me to pick up a camera, it
is Hearts and Minds, a film that remains every bit as relevant today.” – Michael
Moore. Approx 112 minutes. For sale at Amazon: Film Info:
Links:
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