It "avoids moralization from either viewpoint"? Really? If this piece had toned its propaganda message up any higher, my TV screen would have been dripping.
The whole movie just went on and on about what an awful tragedy it was that the communists won the war and the fascist puppet state fell, without any mention as to why. It kept talking about what a sad fate awaited those people who wanted to be evacuated, without saying why. The movie harped on about the "atrocities" of the communists, but said nothing about the US carpet-bombing the country and dumping napalm and Agent Orange on its people. It said nothing about the countless, countless atrocities committed by US soldiers on the ground in Vietnam on Vietnamese civilians, or about the torture and murder that the US and its South Vietnamese puppet troops visited upon POWs and suspects. There was no mention about how, after the war, the US subjected Vietnam to an economic blockade and pressured countries all over the world to refuse trade with Vietnam when it desperately needed to rebuild its devastated economy and feed its people, which it couldn't do with its infrastructure and farmland in ruins. How about some interviewees from that side? How about some interviewees explaining why millions of Vietnamese people felt the need to take up the gun against an empire occupying their land and bombing their people, and against the comprador-fascist Vichy puppet state it invented in the southern half of their country?
The movie said nothing about what the war was really about and what the two sides were fighting for, what really motivated the two sides and WHY there was so much anger and violence. It was a war of national liberation, with one side fighting to free Vietnam from imperialist domination and the other side fighting to keep it under hegemony.
The whole thing was a "good guy America" black-and-white propaganda piece from start to finish. The Americans were just these kind-hearted good guys who were there for no other reason than to help people (by propping up a fascist military dictatorship beholden to foreign capital?), and the communists were these dark faceless villains who were fighting for no other reason than to kill everybody and take away freedom and democracy and apple pie, and gosh-darnit we gotta save those poor Vietnamese collaborators before the big bad commies kill them for no reason at all! The closest the movie came to "criticizing" the US was by whining about how "wrong" it was for the US to "betray" its servants, its collaborators, who helped it enforce its reign of terror over the people of Vietnam.
If those people didn't want to be "left behind" to face the people's justice, they should have thought of that before they became collaborators for an empire that burned their country to the ground and subjected it to unspeakable horrors for years and years. What fate awaited Nazi collaborators in France, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and Poland? What fate awaited Japanese collaborators in Korea (well, North Korea; in South Korea they kept their power), China, the Philippines, Southeast Asia? Let's say a foreign empire occupied the US, carpet-bombed its people for years, tortured them, raped them, burned their towns, to keep them in a state of neo-colonial dependency. How would Americans feel about those among them who collaborated with that empire?
The collaborators betrayed their people, and they paid the price. It's only unfortunate that so many of them managed to get away and escape justice.
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z99
8 years ago
See? You don't even get what I am saying. Not that I don't agree on quite a bit of the above. But right here, you are moralizing. Film isn't, it just tells a story from one side without explaining the war. Not all movies are about the big picture. Besides, "black and white propaganda" as you put it, is exactly your own post. There are definitely more sides to this, and if you ever been to Vietnam's south, you must have found plenty locals who has a different point of view from yours. Get contained mate, you're "dripping" from the hatred. Emotions never help to grasp the truth of what's going on in the world (of politics).
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jsmythjr
8 years ago
You are asking for a different subject matter for this film. The subject matter is limited to a treatment of the events promised in the title.
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Canuck21
8 years ago
To you, an unbiased doc would show the Viet-Congs as heroes who defeated the evil white men. As a Vietnamese, the Commies victory was indeed a tragedy.
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phtran
8 years ago
Sorry, but, what the f have you been smoking!? The North was a totalitarian regime that executed or "re-educated" (through hard labour) intellectuals and political dissidents. The regime gained support by promising wealth redistribution for the masses, but instead kept the wealth appropriated from the commerce of the South for party leaders and their cronies. Poverty, corruption and arbitrary rule are rampant in unified Vietnam to this day.
The Vietnam War was a civil war between indigenous populations that disagreed on ideology, and each side was supported by foreign sponsors, so the colonial angle is hogwash.
North and South Korea was a similar situation, except that North Korea never managed to over-run South Korea. If South Vietnam had remained independent, it would be where South Korea is today in terms of development, rather than being decades behind. Nobody is talking about South Korea being "colonized".
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