PETZOLD BOOK BLOG
Charles Petzold on writing books, reading books, and exercising the internal UTM
“Hearts and Minds” Redux
March 31, 2009
New York, N.Y.
I see in Newsweek (4/6/09, pg. 8) that Peter Davis's 1975 Academy Award winning documentary Hearts and Minds is being re-released. Deirdre and I watched the film on DVD a couple years ago and found that it still holds up quite well.
I reviewed Hearts and Minds for the April 11, 1975 issue of The Stute, the student newspaper of the Stevens Institute of Technology, where I was then a senior, and here is that review. I have not attempted to correct any faulty grammar or improve the writing.
HEARTS AND MINDS
Film Documentary of Vietnam
by Charles R. Petzold, '75
Hearts and Minds — an Academy Award winning feature length documentary about Vietnam now playing at Cinema II — has more than the simple purpose of satisfying an historical curiosity about America's involvement in the war. It is an important film to see, I think, lest we inadvertently fall victim to the Santayana dictum about learning the lessons of the past or being condemned to repeat it. In this film a Viet Vet is asked if America has learned anything from the Vietnam War. “We're trying not to,” he replies.
Peter Davis, who directed Hearts and Minds, also made the television documentary Selling of the Pentagon several years ago. Everything in this earlier film had been said before (much of the information parallels William Fulbright's book The Pentagon Propaganda Machine), but the way in which Davis chose to illustrate his points made the documentary immediately more effective and finally more controversial than any text could ever be. Much of the same technique shows up in Hearts and Minds — events and people are contrasted and exposed by unrelentingly crafty editing; a subject who may have said a few comments in a certain context will find his remarks placed in the film so as to completely lay bar the idiocy (or the brilliance) of his arguments. Hearts and Minds will leave more than a few people unhappy. In fact, Columbia refused to distribute the film (it was eventually sold to Warner Bros.) and Walt Rostow, the former Johnson advisor, tried to stop the film in court. He objected to the sequence in Hearts and Minds where he was asked by Davis why we were in Vietnam. Rostow becomes visibly irritated and calls the question “silly” and “sophomoric.”
Hearts and Minds is a film montage of images and people. The editing takes us from old newsreels and anti-communist movies to the streets of Saigon; to Reagan and Hoover and J. McCarthy telling us of the fight against communism; to Dan Ellsberg and J. William Fulbright; to the devastation of a Vietnam farm; to the public lies of five Presidents; to a P.O.W. parade in Linden, N.J.; to generals and soldiers and deserters; to football games where “to win” is the only criteria of judgment; to peace rallies; to napalm burned children; to Americans destroying homes with flame-throwers; to Bob Hope entertaining former prisoners of war. This juxtaposition of images and dialogue creates an unbelievable tension in the clash of viewpoints and the conflict of rhetoric. The question that Rostow calls “silly” is explored by Fulbright in a lengthy discussion of how Ho Chi Minh had believed that the U.S. would aid his fight against imperialist France because his struggle for national independence so closely paralleled America's own war against the British. Daniel Ellsberg takes a slightly different view: “We weren't on the wrong side. We are the wrong side.” For those who prefer a more Leninist interpretation of the war, there is that old film of Eisenhower explaining that we can't lose Vietnam because of its importance as a source of tin and tungsten.
There are also the more sadistic viewpoints. George S. Patton III licks his chops with a big grin and praises American soldiers as a “bloody good bunch of killers.” A Lt. Coker — the P.O.W. from Linden — shows up a lot in this film. He enthusiastically describes boming missions as “thrilling ... deeply satisfying.” The film then cuts to a Vietnam village. A farmer is standing is a pile of rubble. He doesn't know whose planes destroyed his home, whether they were Vietnamese or American. A film taken aboard a bomber shows the bombs fall, leaving brown holes in an otherwise green countryside.
Always there are the people and death. An American father beams while telling of his dead son. A Vietnamese coffin-maker hammers together wooden coffins which are but thirty inches long; he has lost seven children himself from poison gas from American planes. American bodies are pulled out of the mud and zipped into bags. Artificial limbs are manufactured and tried on. The ruins of Bach Mai Hospital are shown. A Vietnamese farmer points to the ground where his eight-year-old daughter died in a bomb blast. “What have I done to Nixon that he come here and destroy my country?” he screams in anger.
There is an unnerving scene of a Vietnamese cemetary, where rows of dug plots await coffins. There is a burial — an hysterical woman tries to join her husband as he is being buried. Everywhere there is crying, weeping, wailing Vietnamese families. A young girl cries over a coffin holding her father. The film then cuts to William Westmoreland: “The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does the westerner,” he says. Some critics have called this a cheap shot, but it is probably as fair as one can in good conscience be toward Gen. Westmoreland. The point is well made — it is Westmoreland who doesn't put a high price on Oriental life.
Throughout the film are shown interviews with former American soldiers, talking of themselves and the war. Many are disgusted with their past actions and attitudes. Towards the end of the film the camera slowly pulls away to reveal them as wheel-chair bound or without an arm or leg. They don't seem bitter, only confused and still unsure of the answer to that very basic, simple (and surely not “silly”) question: “Why?”
Many of the images in Hearts and Minds are vivid and shocking and even sickening. No one can come out of this film without feeling deeply disturbed and jolted from complacency. The film has a powerful, brutal impact, causing an emotion of agony that is difficult to deal with, and intent to make us not forget what we did in Vietnam. It strips naked the inhumanness of people like Gen. Westmoreland and Lt. Coker, who persists until the end in referring to “gooks” and how proud he was to slaughter them. Hearts and Minds is probably one of the most upsetting films ever made; but then, that is precisely why it should be seen.
Near the middle of Hearts and Minds, the ubiquitous Lt. Coker addresses a group of fifth graders in a Catholic School. He tells them that Vietnam is a great place, except for the people, that they are “backward and primitive.” Elsewhere in the film, a South Vietnamese Priest had spoken and had emphasized “It is not we who are the savages.” In seeing Hearts and Minds it is obvious that this latter statement is closer to the truth. Long after one sees the movie that statement will continue to haunt one's mind: “It is not we who are the savages.” It should haunt us all.
(c) Copyright Charles Petzold
www.charlespetzold.com
Comments:
I am a computer science graduade with 5 years of programming exp , I am trying to work on my math skills for over a decade and there is no substantial progress, no matter what I do math is like a greek to me. I now have over 200 books in my library , on mathematics/logic but nothing helps at all.In fact its getting worse , if I see a mathmetical equation , I feel like having a sezure. I tried reading
1.Art of Computer Programming ,Knuth (I bought the 3 volumes , in 1999 but I only manage to read 2 chapters of first volume , and get so horrified that not open the book since 2006)
2.Introduction to mathematical philosphy , bernard russel.(My TA in university told me this is a amazing book and a must read, when I bought it , I just dont get to that level to even read it, infact if I read it for more than 15 mins , I fall a sleep.)
3.Principa Mahematica (I bought this along with , the book mentioned above,and have same effect on me as the above mentioned one.Plus I dont feel asleep but rather my hair fell)
I just dont know, I think its some hard wiring in me that stop me from learning and absorbing math.
I dont know how you even write a book on Turing Machines without having a heart attack.I want to read and learn math/logic but I am almost giving up on it :(
— ofortuna, Mon, 13 Apr 2009 04:09:47 -0400 (EDT)
Dont give up yet...maybe you just need another perspective...I can recommend trying to solve programming problems which needs equation-work to function...that way you will not start by looking at the solution but at the road to the solution....just an idea
Never give up :-)
— Wayne, Fri, 17 Apr 2009 08:08:40 -0400 (EDT)
I assure you that leaders of Oriental countries have the same lack of value for human life as Westmoreland and other leaders of western countries have. Westmoreland didn't know that ordinary people put a higher value on life because Westmoreland didn't know any ordinary people, just like rulers of Oriental countries don't know any ordinary people.
However, it is true that ordinary people are backwards and primitive. Leaders keep them that way by stealing their land, stealing their minerals, stealing the food they grow, stealing their lives, denying them educations, imprisoning anyone who gets an education, etc. Same as America did to its native races. It is very true that the ordinary, backwards, primitive people are not the worst savages.
— A resident of the Orient, Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:40:51 -0400 (EDT)