The Vietnam War

Ken Burns is renowned for being one of the most acclaimed documentarians of our time. He has made countless award-winning films on a diverse range of themes such as national parks, jazz, baseball and the Civil War. His latest project was his most ambitious yet and premiered last year on PBS as a 10-part special simply titled, The Vietnam War (trailer) and came out on DVD shortly thereafter. Each part is not your average 30-60 minute telecast, but instead a 1 ½ to 2 hour long feature. Tallying it up including the extras and the set is nearly 20 hours all together. That would seem like a chore to get through, but Burns is such a master of his craft I was invested 100% before the end of the first part and even with my crazy schedule I was able to get through the whole series in just over two weeks.

Going into this series I knew the broad strokes from history classes and what I gleamed off other media over the years and how it was the only primary war America lost. This was my first time taking in the minutia of all the major and minor details that happened before, during and after the war. As expected, I came out of it with a much deeper perspective of the war and learned countless new things from all the endless amounts of reference photos, journals, audio tapes and interviews presented here.

The Vietnam War states from the beginning it is not taking a side, but primarily presenting both sides as an observer. Each of the 10 parts is on its own DVD. The first DVD covers the 100 years leading up to the war, and the final DVD is the aftermath of the war in the past 40+ years. Each of the 8 DVDs in-between has a thorough breakdown of each year of the war. The first part was mostly an eye opener of material I either never knew of or long forgotten where it chronicles Vietnam being occupied by France for nearly 100 years before finally finishing off part one by successfully driving France out.

I recalled hearing how Kennedy first started America’s involvement in Vietnam, but never knew much about the scope of it, and was really fascinated how he first sent thousands of American ‘advisors’ to assist with South Vietnam’s military before Lyndon Johnson escalated it with air strikes and eventually sending in hundreds of thousands of combat troops. Parts three through six feature how Johnson handles the war while dealing with increasing protests on the American homefront. Parts seven through nine feature Richard Nixon taking over during the height of American involvement in the war and how a majority of America was against the war and returning veterans during his time in office. Eventually the film’s ninth part features Nixon getting his gradual removal of troops approved in Vietnam, and the 10th part is how the North obliterated South Vietnam in the next couple of years and how Vietnam and American veterans have existed ever since.

Again, this is not just the American point-of-view, as there are a plethora of Americans as well as North & South Vietnamese interviewed throughout. While a lot of time is focused on the reaction to the war in America, ample time is also given to the North Vietnam perspective with how Ho Chi Minh and eventually his successor, Le Duan’s military tactics and their off and on assistance from communist allies China and Soviet Union. I am surprised Burns’ team tracked down so many Vietnam veterans. In the behind-the-scenes extras, the crew said Vietnam veterans were initially trepid going into the interviews, but then eased and opened up once they realized how the interview unfolded.

There are too many poignant moments from the interviews to recount in their entirety, but many of them paint a vivid picture, and combined with brilliant use of reference photos and a mesmerizing score from Atticus Ross & Trent Reznor that only helped accentuate their tales. There are quite a few descriptive stories of being in the midst of ‘the shit’ and how PoWs were treated on both sides of the battlefield. John Musgraves’ interviews really popped out to me from his harrowing battlefield experiences to coming home and eventually joining the protestors and throwing out his medals he earned overseas.

Three scenes that especially stood out for me was on one episode, members of a veteran’s family are interviewed off-and-on throughout and they eventually come to the moment they learn of their family member’s death and they made sure I felt it along with them. On the flipside of that is PoW survivor Hal Kushner, who was one of the longest Prisoners of War throughout Vietnam. He is featured in nearly every episode with updates from his PoW tenure, and you really feel for him after several years of captivity when he explains the sensation of finally coming back home to America. Finally, the scene dedicated to how the Vietnam War Memorial came to be and footage of veterans and family members coming to visit and talking about their experiences there shook me up in such a profound way I cannot even begin to describe it. It made me deeply regret not making it out to that memorial when I was in DC several years ago.

Apart from being moved from a lot of these candid interviews, the history nut in me was soaking in all the tidbits about the war that were new to me after viewing The Vietnam War. A few of the many new-to-me events of the war featured here that resonated with me were the ‘Pinkville Massacre’ where American troops went rogue and killed innocent Vietnamese civilians, the concept of ‘fragging’ military superiors who were not in favor among the lower ranks, the deadly protests at Kent State and South Vietnamese civilians being sentenced to re-education camps for up to 18 years after the unification of Vietnam.

With all ten parts of the main feature approximately tallying up to 18 hours, it felt like the Ken Burns’ team could have went double that. For such a long war, there were at least a couple times on each part where I felt a certain scene or moment could have been expounded upon or went into another angle. This is not a bad thing because eventually the crew had to pick which topics deserved more time than other and I can only imagine the hours of material that got left on the cutting room floor. The first and final discs of the set contain the extra features. The first disc has about an hour of extras, and the main one to check out there is the making of special that is nearly 40 minutes long where the crew breaks down how they tracked down all their reference material and interview subjects and why they went with the Vietnam War as their next documentary.

The final disc has 45 minutes of extras and there are two features I highly recommend. Fellow Warriors is 20 minutes of footage from a military veterans’ support group suffering from PTSD and the whole thing took me to another level listening to the veterans explain what they are going through and how they are coping with PTSD. Captured Spy & American Interrogator is an 11 minute piece with the highest ranking North Vietnam PoW and a CIA interrogator detail their multi-year relationship and a few moments from their interrogations that made me feel they could make a unforgettable movie from their perspective coming out of it.

I give the highest of recommendations to The Vietnam War regardless of if you are a history nut, war buff, documentary fan or just seeking out top shelf television. It is quite an investment of time to get through, but if a person with a busy everyday life like myself got so invested into it that I made time and sacrificed sleep to power through it in a couple of weeks, then I am positive you can too!

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