![]() The concluding interview features US Vietnam veteran Randy Floyd, stating "We've all tried very hard to escape what we have learned in Vietnam. Former Captain Randy Floyd as he appears in Hearts and Minds. ĭaniel Ellsberg, who had released the Pentagon Papers in 1971, discusses his initial gung-ho attitude toward the war in Vietnam. The film also features Vietnam war veteran and anti-war activist Bobby Muller, who later founded the Vietnam Veterans of America. The camera, which amply records the agonies of South Vietnamese political prisoners, seems uninterested in the American lieutenant's experience of humiliation and torture." The people there are very backwards and primitive and they make mess out of everything." In a 2004 article on the film, Desson Thomson of The Washington Post comments on the inclusion of Coker in the film, noting that "When he does use people from the pro-war side, Davis chooses carefully." Time magazine's Stefan Kanfer noted the lack of balance in Coker's portrayal, "An ex-P.O.W.'s return to New Jersey is played against a background of red-white-and-blue-blooded patriots and wide-eyed schoolchildren. Answering a student's question about Vietnam at a school assembly, Coker responds that "If it wasn't for the people, it was very pretty. One of the film's earliest scenes details a homecoming parade in Coker's honor in his hometown of Linden, New Jersey, where he tells the assembled crowd on the steps of city hall that, if the need arose, they must be ready to send him back to war. The film also includes clips of George Thomas Coker, a United States Navy aviator held by the North Vietnamese as a prisoner of war for 6 1 / 2 years, including more than two years spent in solitary confinement. ![]() I wanted the subjects to be the focus, not me as filmmaker." Davis later reflected on this interview stating, "As horrified as I was when General Westmoreland said, 'The Oriental doesn’t put the same value on life,' instead of arguing with him, I just wanted to draw him out. After a second take ran out of film, the section was reshot for a third time, and it was the third take that was included in the film. Life is cheap in the Orient." After an initial take, Westmoreland indicated that he had expressed himself inaccurately. The funeral scene is juxtaposed with an interview with General William Westmoreland-commander of American military operations in the Vietnam War at its peak from 1964 to 1968 and United States Army Chief of Staff from 1968 to 1972-telling a stunned Davis that "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. In 2018, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." Featured individuals General William Westmoreland, United States Army Chief of StaffĪ scene described as one of the film's "most shocking and controversial sequences" shows the funeral of a South Vietnamese soldier and his grieving family, as a sobbing woman is restrained from climbing into the grave after the coffin. The film was shown in Los Angeles for the one week it needed to be eligible for consideration in the 1974 Academy Awards. Columbia Pictures refused to distribute the picture, which forced the producers to purchase back the rights and release it by other means. Commercial distribution was delayed in the United States due to legal issues, including a temporary restraining order obtained by one of the interviewees, former National Security Advisor Walt Rostow, who had claimed through his attorney that the film was "somewhat misleading" and "not representative" and that he had not been given the opportunity to approve the results of his interview. The film premiered at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival. The movie was chosen as the winner of the Oscar for Best Documentary at the 47th Academy Awards presented in 1975. Johnson: "the ultimate victory will depend on the hearts and minds of the people who actually live out there". The film's title is based on a quote from President Lyndon B. Hearts and Minds is a 1974 American documentary film about the Vietnam War directed by Peter Davis.
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