By Aleksandra Aleksovska (Macedonia)
Hearts and Minds is one of the high-level budget documentary movies made about the war between the United States and Vietnam. The fact that it was filmed in 1974 doesn’t mean that it has an expiry date—quite the contrary: it will always be sensitive for the audience, because it opens up one big issue about how people valued the price of one human life and how human rights ought to be applicable to everyone.
There is a lot of violence, blood, victims, destroyed lives and homes, child deaths. But nothing is quite like the scene when a widow tries to throw herself into her husband’s coffin and the sequence after with General Westmoreland talking about how Orientals do not place a huge value upon life. Here we can also notice that the director has excluded himself and we can feel the need from him to ask how something like that is possible and what is the unit for measuring the value of a human life.
In some moments we can’t make a direct connection with this film because we feel the presence of manipulation and the need to take a side for some of the warring parties. The war that U.S. solders at first considered to be a game destroyed a lot of villages, killed a lot of children, made a lot of girls prostitutes, opened up a space and need for revenge for the people of Vietnam. Couple of years after that the U.S. veterans who did those things became aware of the damage they made to citizens when they started to use artificial limbs and had time to think why they were in Vietnam in the first place and why they never thought on the fact what their bombs are doing down there.
This film also shows the profile of Vietnamese women. Beside the fact they have lost their children, husbands and homes they still expect justice, while the U.S.A veterans had admitted that sometimes they are hiding their real emotions just not to destroy their masculine self-esteem. A lot of political names are mentioned in the film, but there is none of them speaking directly in front of the camera about the situation between Vietnam and the U.S.A. There is a need for that of course, because after the speech of the Generals, Majors and other military officials we kind of want to know: where are the people who are giving permission for someone to go and attack some country?
When you play a computer game you can collect extra hearts, but in real life it is completely different. By watching Hearts and Minds we can notice that we can’t compare games with wars, because in a game you can press exit whenever you want. In a war like this that is impossible.
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Originally published here.
