Documentary Review: The Vietnam War
Ken Burns and Lynn Novick deliver an epic 18-hour documentary series that compels, sobers, and reconciles, in their best outing to date.
A new type of war
From acclaimed documentarian Ken Burns and co-director Lynn Novick, The Vietnam War examines America’s most divisive conflict since the Civil War, giving a comprehensive response to its most volatile question — what really happened? This 10-part series is a steady burn, punctuated by harrowing wartime footage, and interviews with the men and women who experienced it both at home and on the battlefield for almost three decades.
It’s firstly a series that soundly underscores historical context before the familiar scenes of GIs ‘humping’ M16s, fleets of whirring Hueys, and the embattled American public. The French colonial struggle for Indochina of the 1950s introduces viewers to the escalating brutality, civilian casualties, and foreign discontent that would characterise the region. When interspersed with abrupt flashes forward to American combat footage with the North Vietnamese, it makes for incredibly powerful foreshadowing.
Controversy however is almost inevitable for a Vietnam film and the directors do not disappoint, with the introductory monologue describing the conflict as “begun in good faith”. Criticism centres around this assertion, and it seems fair considering the deception later demonstrated. This is no pro-war documentary though. In a September/October’s Mother Jones interview Burns admitted the film-making process was “a daily humiliation” for Novick and himself in abandoning their slanted conceptions of Vietnam. Preconceived notions of Washington’s decision-making, of the ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ in war— these are what The Vietnam War ultimately seeks, and succeeds, in dispelling.
“There is no single truth in war”
Visually, the restored footage from innumerable jungle ‘contacts’, to the bloody street fighting in Hue and Saigon, combine sharp visual and sound editing to recreate Vietnam combat as far as viewers would dare to experience. The real strength of most modern war documentaries often lies in the voices used to define the human story behind cold facts and statistics however. This is where The Vietnam War, and practically all Burns’ previous films excel, in the intimacy offered to viewers.
The more than 80 interviews with US, South Vietnamese, and North Vietnamese and Viet Cong veterans are the highlights of this series, and are often as intense as its graphic footage. Marines and US soldiers relate the perpetual terror of ambush and booby traps during patrols through unfamiliar terrain, while North Vietnamese troops recount the horror and psychological breakdowns caused by American airstrikes. While ideological differences are clearly apparent, the shared ‘human’ experience of these combatants is most striking. The raw emotion of a North Vietnamese officer remembering his fallen comrades, an American prisoner of war on the moment he reunited with his family — these moments capture the collective joy and misery on both sides.
Of additional note is dialogue with wartime journalists, including Neil Sheehan, author of the Pulitzer-winning Vietnam work A Bright Shining Lie, and Joe Galloway, who followed the war from the front-line, and even manned it at the battle of Ia Drang. Burns and Novick’s sustained examination into the sordid political intrigue of the time nimbly dovetails these journalistic testimonies. White House audio recordings from the conflict’s three administrations and their Cabinets candidly demonstrate the extent of duplicity, vanity, and even criminality in pursuit of an increasingly murky political agenda.
North and South
Burns and Novick show a clear emphasis on delivering balance from the outset, illuminating the particular cost of war on the people of Vietnam, both North and South. Interviews with civilians exhibit the plight of families torn apart by civil strife, and the devastation resulting from the American presence during and in the years after the war.
First-hand accounts are not limited to fighting men alone. Female Viet Cong fighters describe their deadly encounters with American troops during the brutal close-quarters firefights in Hue, while a supply truck driver details her perilous night-time journeys along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. These interviews are a refreshing break from documentary films dominated purely by the American battlefield experience, and display the sweeping impact on all Vietnamese people.
Turn! Turn! Turn!
Vietnam would almost become as much a war fought on American streets as in the jungles and paddies of Southeast Asia, with music its driving force. “The music of the time is a character in the film,” co-director Novick told US TODAY, which features 120 iconic wartime anthems including tracks from The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, and The Beatles. Attention to the Vietnamese experience is also met by virtuoso cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, who deliver new arrangements of period Vietnamese folk music. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross lend their considerable musical talents to the original score— an eerie, dissonant mix that adds an affecting weight to the on-screen imagery.
“The light at the end of the tunnel”
In the series’ opening minutes, Marine veteran Karl Marlantes describes the hushed legacy of Vietnam as “like living in a family with an alcoholic father.” The Vietnam War shifts the spotlight of history back to this ‘rather forgotten’ conflict, and ultimately considers the immeasurable suffering alongside the courage and compassion it accompanied. Burns and Novick make plain the unmistakable egoism and deception in government that prolonged the suffering, and forever shattered the illusion of transparent leadership for the American public. Through a generation of division that increasingly resembles the America of today, this is Ken Burns at his very best.
The Vietnam War first aired on September 17, and is now available on DVD and Blu-ray.
