Winter Soldier

Winter Soldier

United States - 1971

Director - Winterfilm Collective

Milestone Films, 2006, DVD

Winter Soldier is a documentary of sorts that came back to light in recent history because of the ill-fated presidential candidacy of John Kerry, a Vietnam veteran, and at the time this film was made, a member of Vietnam Veterans Against The War who was involved with the Winter Soldier Investigation.

At the time of the 2004 Election, I had been a student of the Vietnam war for about 6 years, and had read a great deal of eyewitness, journalistic and political accounts of the war, its causes, it’s execution, and it’s aftermath, so this resurgent piece of history caught my eye.

Winter Soldier is a little bit different than all of that literature and academic discourse on Vietnam. Why did it take a presidential race to resurrect the spectre of this film, and why is it so important?

Winter soldier is first of all, a documentary. But it’s not an objective take, it’s very much a subjective one, having been made as a part of the VVAW movement. At first this seems to color the proceedings with the pall of victimization, but the unending, deadpan sincerity finally becomes more than a little unsettling. Never overwhelmingly so, it’s too factual to be really disturbing, and it all seems too frighteningly possible within a personal context.

Billed as a war crimes investigation, for about an hour and a half, Winter Soldier proceeds with the simple continuous testimony of Vietnam veterans of all races and from diverse units and branches, speaking about the brutality and inhumanity that they witnessed and committed in Vietnam.
For a contemporary student of the war itself, many of these stories are surprisingly, not unfamiliar, if unique in the details. What I had to remind myself is that these confessions were not made 30 years later on the printed page with the promise of a royalty check on the far end. These men are still seeing these things in full color in their heads and can still feel the pull of the flesh. Vietnam itself, and their own personal version of it were still very much happening at the time this was filmed.

Two thirds of the way through this film is a segment that starts out feeling like a diversion. A black veteran rants at a white veteran about racism, and about the complete and total white/black disconnect, and lack of understanding. At first the black guy seems a little cartoony and out there, but soon, it’s seriously heavy, and the white guy stands there at the end with nothing to say, floored and nodding his head.

You’ll never get it man, you-will-never-get-it. No matter how much you think you’re staring right at it, you will never see the whole picture. For that reason, this film will never be “gotten”, it can’t be, not by anyone who is not on screen, it’s too real. It’s like a movie in a foreign language, without subtitles. I can’t say I know much about the Vietnam War anymore, and I never will.

Hearts & Minds

Hearts & Minds

United States - 1974

Director – Peter Davis

Criterion, 2002, DVD

Run time - 1 hour, 52 min.

I don't have an aversion to good movies, but it’s not like me to write a review for something that won an academy award (1975 Best Documentary Film). Particularly not something that has been distributed as part of the Criterion Collection, an esteem which certainly prevents it from becoming a “lost video” per-se. However, as with my review of Winter Soldier and my interest in American culture, in particular the Vietnam era, I think the message that Hearts & Minds conveys may be lost, particularly considering an increasing public ignorance of history in this country.


Hearts & Minds has a deceptively simple premise centered on the concept of “winning hearts and minds”, the essence of which was that we could secure "freedom and democracy" in Vietnam if we could show the Vietnamese how good (kind etc.) we were, and they would reject Communism. The film doesn't question whether hearts and minds were "won", but asks whose they were in the context of the war. Davis urges us to see the degree to which American citizens had detatched themselves from the democratic process and allowed themselves to be led by their government rather than being the engine of policy themselves.

This takes on a rather sinister note considering that the decisions being made will ultimately result in widespread destruction and suffering do matter how you slice it. Decisions that have to be accounted for and justified and for which all Americans will ultimately be held responsible. In interviews with specific individuals who suffered the consequences of their decisions, the issue is raised that we should consider our own values rather than letting someone tell us what we should think and believe (and ultimately do).


The American people are “too busy to get involved deeply,” one interviewee claims, a sentiment that leaves little doubt as to who was doing the leading in Vietnam. But it begs the larger question of why, if the American people were too busy to bother, did we go into Vietnam, and who made that decision? At this point that's a purely academic question, but it further illustrates the implications of this film. How could the American people be convinced, or at the very least led, into Vietnam unless it was marketed and sold to them, and wouldn’t the fact that it had to be sold tell us there is something fundamentally wrong with our much heralded representative democracy?


The simple fact is that the Vietnam War created vast amounts of misery, not the least on the Vietnamese people, but on American GI’s and their families as well. This documentary effectively draws attention to the principle of democratic responsibility and its utter failure in American domestic and foreign policy in the context of Vietnam.
For that reason Hearts & Minds might not be called truly documentarian but it does raise some disturbing questions about American mythmaking and propaganda. Ultimately the film points to the underlying hypocrisy of the phrase uttered by several of its subjects; “My country right or wrong”.

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.” – Thomas Paine - Common Sense, Feb. 14, 1776.

Vietnam: The 10,000 Day War vol. 3

Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War

Book Three: The Weapons of War

Canada - 1980

Embassy Home Entertainment, 1987, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 38 minutes

While interesting, this long and well made documentary from the Canadian Broadcasting Company lacks the perspective that would allow for a less biased understanding of the war. It is worth watching as an artifact of both the war itself, and the coming to terms that the U.S. underwent in the 80's.

See also at LVA:

Hearts and Minds

Winter Soldier

and the umbrella labels 'Namsploitation and Vietnam Vets