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| Fifth Column |
| Hanoi Jane Touts the Rebirth of Vietnam Era Antiwar Movie "Hearts and Minds" |
| 2005-11-18 |
| Plug your nose, RBers, Jane waxes down memory hole Three searing films about US atrocities in Vietnam are suddenly back in demand. Jane Fonda relives the role she played in the making of one When Michael Moore used his Oscar acceptance speech to attack George Bush just days before the outbreak of war in Iraq, it was not the first time the Academy Awards had witnessed a controversial anti-war protest from one of its winners. Close to three decades prior, producer Bert Schneider's outspoken response to receiving an Oscar for the searing Vietnam documentary Hearts and Minds (1974) so infuriated co-hosts Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra that they immediately cobbled together a disclaimer denying any responsibility for the evening's "political references". The Bush administration's failure to pull themselves out of their current military quagmire has apparently sparked renewed interest in the films that documented the conflict in Vietnam. Hearts and Minds - arguably one of the greatest documentaries ever made, composed largely of interviews with US soldiers and Vietnamese citizens - has been re-released in the UK after revisiting screens in the States. Likewise, Winter Soldier (1972) has hit US cinemas again after more than 30 years. Based on the three-day gathering of war veterans in 1971 that I helped fund, it was a film intended to document American war crimes in the conflict. A third film, Sir! No Sir!, details how GIs were converted to leading members of the peace movement and has recently won plaudits at several film festivals. Watching Hearts and Minds again after so many years, the parallels between the two conflicts seem quite remarkable. The dubious initial premise for war, the polarised society back home of hawks versus doves, and of course Lyndon B Johnson's promise that "the ultimate victory will depend on the hearts and minds of the people who actually live out there" - from which the film takes its name - all still stick in the throat. It may not have been the first feature film to attack American policy in the conflict (Emile de Antonio's In the Year of the Pig arrived in 1968), but it shook the country like no other. While the film received mixed reviews from critics of the time (ranging from "a cinematic lie" to "brave and brilliant"), Hearts and Minds succeeded in cementing in the US psyche the horrific image of a naked girl running from a US napalm attack, as well as the point-blank execution of a prisoner by a South Vietnamese official. Director Peter Davis's film gave a voice to Vietnamese citizens who up until that point had been painted by the national media only in primary colours. He turned the two-dimensional stereotypes into complex human beings - interviewing a coffin-maker about his child-size boxes, an entrepreneur hoping to make a fortune from building a prosthetic limb factory, and showing a grieving family at a funeral - swiftly juxtaposed with a clip of General Westmoreland's infamous comment that "the oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does the westerner". As well as traumatised veterans, he finds draft-card burners, hundreds on peace marches and a returned navy veteran who, when asked by a child what Vietnam looks like, replies: "If it wasn't for the people, it [would be] very pretty." However, it was the focus on the Vietnamese families and the suffering of ordinary individuals that had the biggest effect on Americans in 1974. This was the year after troops had been officially withdrawn from the country, but still a year before the south fell to the National Liberation Front. Inflation, unemployment and the Watergate scandal caused Americans to retreat inward in an attempt to forget about the conflict. Paul Zimmerman in Newsweek described the film at the time as "a thoroughly committed, brilliantly executed and profoundly moving document . . . Unlike our leaders who encourage us to put Vietnam behind us, Davis wants us to confront our feelings about it first and to understand the experience before we bury it. We turn away from this portrait of ourselves at our peril." |
| Posted by:Captain America |
| #9 "Director Peter Davis's film gave a voice to Vietnamese citizens who up until that point had been painted by the national media only in primary colours." Huh? What the hell is this? Maybe one reason we "didn't get to know them" was the fact that they lived in a totalitarian system that strongly discouraged free expression. Jane Fonda? Shouldn't she be dead from natural causes by now? She's what, eighty? |
| Posted by: The Happy Fliegerabwehrkanonen 2005-11-18 18:43 |
| #8 I'm not sure how the left showing how they (a) got us into Vietnam (b) wanted to cut and run, is going to help their cause any. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2005-11-18 17:57 |
| #7 |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-11-18 10:49 |
| #6 Wonder if the cinimas are up to an old style double feature. First Jane's then the The Killing Fields. Nice bookends. |
| Posted by: Ulineng Snumble9989 2005-11-18 09:34 |
| #5 Unbelievable that they would drag out Winter Soldier and display the 'testimony' as factual, when it had been proven to be false. The evidence against Winter Soldier has never been able to penetrate the leftist fantasy world. They believe Winter Soldier -- they must believe it, or their self-righteousness collapses -- so any contrary evidence cannot exist. Look at John F'n Kerry. Is there any verifiable evidence of his war record? Hell no -- he's never let anyone but lapdogs see his military record. But every claim he makes is believed by the left. Contrast that with Bush -- he has released every record he can get his hands on, and let reporters get looks even at his medical records, and yet nothing about his service is believed. We have a large portion of our population living in a fantasy land. Their self-images are so wrapped up in their fantasies that they'll fight to defend them. It's gonna get ugly. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2005-11-18 07:55 |
| #4 Hey...at least she was hot (for a 60 year old) 10 years ago. Now she looks like an ugly Joan Rivers. |
| Posted by: anymouse 2005-11-18 07:42 |
| #3 Jane, Jane, Jane. Guess that 'apology' you issued to Viet Nam veterans came with stings, huh? Jane Fonda is so over the top with this propoganda, it is unreal. Unbelievable that they would drag out Winter Soldier and display the 'testimony' as factual, when it had been proven to be false. Excreble. |
| Posted by: badanov 2005-11-18 02:47 |
| #2 Plug your nose, RBers, Jane waxes down memory hole thanks for the warning they got jane.. BUT WE GOT JOE 2008 /and they can keep the biotch forever |
| Posted by: Red Dog 2005-11-18 02:29 |
| #1 WW1 was "Wilson's War", WW2 was "FDR/Roosevelt's War", Korea was "MacArthur's War" or "Truman's War", and Vietnam was "Kennedy's War" and "Johnson's War", and ultimately for some weird and mysterious reason Nixon's and only "Nixon's War" after his elex as POTUS in 1968. The film is just more Lefty dribble, full of sound and fury, i.e. feelings. WHOSE BURDEN IS UNILATERALLY, UNCONDITIONALLY, WHOLLY AND SOLELY ON THE AMERICANS AND ITS ALLIES IN THE NAME OF PEACE BUT NEVER ON THE WAR-MAKING, WAR-SUPP NORTH VIETNAMESE, CHINA, OR THE USSR FOR THE SAME. YOU DON'T FIGHT A WAR, ANY WAR(S), BASED ON FEELINGS ANDOR CURRENT POLLING NUMBERS - NO NATION, GOVT. OR SOCIETY IN HISTORY, GOOD OR EVIL, HAS DONE SO. "WAR" for the USA has become so PC, politicized and absurd that iff the WOT was WW2 America would be held responsible for PEARL HARBOR being both attacked and for attacking its own base. America's covert despicable agents attacked and sank our own BattleLine, and killed our own men. The USA is responsible for the 1100+/1 dead on board the USS ARIZONA because the Japanese torpedo and bomber pilots were in reality OSS-CIA-FBI agents while similar covert US agents simul planted bombs aboard the ARIZONA in order to cause it to explode in order for FDR to blame innocent Japan and Germany. The USS WARD caused WW2 by unilat firing on a Japanese midget sub in Japanese-alleged international waters - the fact that the sub was on its way to attack US warships inside Pearl was no excuse for the WARD to fire upon a foreign warship owned by a sovereign nation. LAWYERS/LEGALISTS SAY AMERICA AND ONLY AMERICA IS THUS PER SE AND UNILAT RESPONSIBLE FOR MAKING COMPENSATION TO THE JAPANESE FOR BOTH ITS LOST MIDGET SUB(S), ATTACK AIRCRAFT, AND WARSHIP THRU THE WHOLE OF THE "FAKE PEARL HARBOR ATTACK" AND BY EXTENS THE WQHOLE OF "ROOSEVELT'S [ILLEGAL]WAR" AGS JAPAN AND GERMANY. NO MATTER WHAT, AMERICA AND ONLY AMERICA MUST MAKE PAY OUT ANDOR MAKE CONCESSIONS FOR ITS "CRIMES" AGAINST EVERYONE AND ANYONE, ANY EACH ALL EVERY AND ANY SIDE(S), JOINTLY AND SEVERALLY. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2005-11-18 00:51 |