Hearts and Minds Review- By Michael Carlisle

 Title: Hearts and Minds
Year: 1974
Director: Peter Davis
Country: US
Language: English

As America begins another war, a full-out air assault on Syria to take out the newest Boogey-men known as ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) I thought it would be appropriate to review a film about an American military campaign that didn't turn out so well. No, this isn't about the gulf war, Iraq, Afghanistan or Korea, it's about the Vietnam war. This particular war was officially divided into two halves: the military war and the war to win the hearts and minds of the people. 

This film recounts the history and attitudes of the opposing sides of the Vietnam War using archival news footage as well as its own film and interviews. The film also endeavors to give voice to the Vietnamese people as to how the war has affected them and their reasons for why they fight the United States.

The images of Hearts and Minds are shocking, yet powerful.  There are shots of a Viet Cong suspect being summarily executed and of a little girl running and screaming down a road, her skin burned by napalm.We see American soldiers with Vietnamese prostitutes, and hear the words of ignorant soldiers who prove that their country had no business putting themselves in the middle of a war-zone. How can men run a war for years in a country they can't begin to understand?

The film, like most American media at the time,  is propaganda, However, it's propaganda that dares to show the brutality and senselessness of war. It gives voice to the Vietnamese, who weren't previously given camera time to explain the war and its impact on their own terms.  The camera gives them humanity and it takes the pain and suffering of all Vietnamese seriously. Hearts and Minds shows its audience that the United States couldn't have won over the people of Vietnam despite all its efforts, in many ways it made the region worse.

In conclusion, the war turned a generation of Vietnamese women into potential prostitutes, and resulted in more civilian casualties than soldier deaths. It's strange that the leaders of the 21st Century still have a "white savior" mentality. They think that they can bring democracy to a broken region by systematically killing all the bad guys. Has the United States learned nothing?  Hearts and Minds is an essential experience, not only because it contributed to the reconciliation between the Vietnamese and America people, but because it makes the viewer re-consider the "effectiveness" of war.