[PBS] The Vietnam War: A film by Ken Burns

Ken Burns' Vietnam points out that the Chinese had lost 1 million solders in the Korean War and as such, were not a threat to send troops into another war.

 

There's also a book being sold at Costco about this movie.

 

That part struck me as well as it brought back memories (I turned 18 during the war so this was my reality). Those who could went off to college and when they were done with college many were able join the reserves (ala George Bush who was stationed at Ellington AFB). Episode 5 points out that 1.5 million (the overwhelming majority were white) where able to safely stash themselves in the National Guard and reserves as LBJ did not want to call up the National Guard and reserves for fear of further alienating the civilian popualtion. This war was fought by volunteers and draftees - with the majority of those being poor whites, blacks and hispanics unable to afford to go to college.

 

The old saying goes that the military fights the war it just fought. I think we learned the wrong lessons from Korea- about Communist revolutionaries, China/Soviet involvement etc.

 

We sure did. The sour experience in Korea misled Eisenhower and the those who followed him to look at Vietnam with the same lens - which we now know was a gigantic blunder. The two situations could not have been more different as the conflict in Vietnam was from the start about removing foreign invaders from Vietnam and the unification of that nation. Ho Chi Minh admired the principles of Communism but was no full blown adherent to the advancement of global Communism. But that was all the conservatives here could see and it both tainted their understanding of the situation and blinded them to reality. And when you add in our arrogance toward the Vietnamese people, you had a perfect formula for the disaster that occurred.

 

I would add this book: Tin O'Brien is featured in this documentary.

 

Here's one that I recommend. It really goes into great detail about the people, politics and culture of Vietnam. It illustrates our lack of knowledge and understanding and how that lead to our miscalculations in policy.

 

Pretty impressive series. I really appreciated the last two episodes more than anything. We really screwed South Vietnam, but it seems they were very inept and never had their heart in the war in the first place. I found it touching how many of those in the war moved on past the hatred and accepted the north decades later.

 

Good observation. It seems we as Americans wanted to win it more than the South Vietnamese did. Their heart never seemed to be in it from the start.

The entire series is a triumph, but I would add that the further along it goes the better (and more emotional) it gets.

I know many here probably have no interest in documentaries, but if you have any curiosity how we became so mistrustful of our govt, and how we got to where we are today as a country you owe it to yourself to watch at least some of this series. It is SUPER long at almost 20 hours total, but well worth it. It's probably the best documentary I've ever seen.

 

I love documentaries, I could watch them all day long, especially Ken Burns. I'm only though episode three though and it's kind of boring so far. I've read it gets much better. Hoping it does. I mean I've learned a hell of a lot more about the war so far than i ever knew, but finding 2 hours to sit and watch is hard to do so im really hoping it gets much more interesting.

 

A lot of the early episodes is just information and introduction to those who you will see interviewed throughout the documentary.

The further along you go, the more the early introductions make sense AND also set up the more dramatic/emotional portions.

I do understand the 2 hour thing though. I had to break it up over the course of 2 weeks to finish.

 

I agree about the length of episodes. 2 hours is hard to stay focused for me on a documentary. I feel they should have been broken up into 1 hour segments.

 

An amazing book, as is Going After Cacciato.

 

Agreed. Interesting article about the music...

THE MUSIC IN KEN BURNS' THE VIETNAM WAR IS REMARKABLE. HERE'S HOW IT WAS CHOSEN.
“Once we had Bob Dylan and The Beatles on board, doors opened."


BY JEFF SLATE SEP 29, 2017 29.2K

When the first notes of The Beatles’ “Let It Be” ring out in the closing minutes of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s 10-part, 18-hour documentary The Vietnam War, you’d be forgiven for letting out a disappointed sigh. You’ve heard the song, which Paul McCartney plucked from a dream about his dead mother, countless times. The feelings it evokes in you are well-trod territory.

And yet, within just a few seconds, despite however many times you’ve heard "Let It Be," it is redefined—made new again—as the words take on new meaning in the aftermath of the moving passage read by writer Tim O’Brien, a military veteran whose story is one of those featured in Burns and Novick’s exhaustive film.

It’s a remarkable moment.


“It was the one thing I insisted on, from the beginning,” Burns tells me during several long conversations about the moving and powerful use of music in the film. “As soon as I knew there might be a remote possibility that we could get The Beatles’ music, I chose that as the final piece. I knew it was the only way for our audience to exit this film.”

“It felt as though it wouldn’t work, that it couldn’t work,” co-director Novick confesses. “But as soon as it was put in place, it was as though the film couldn’t end any other way. It was as powerful as the moment at the beginning of the film, when Bob Dylan’s ‘A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall’ plays, which sets the whole story in motion, really.”

Bookended by the two musical giants of the decade, The Vietnam War uses the songs of the period to tremendous effect, redefining that music—much of which has already appeared in films about the era from Apocalypse Now to Good Morning, Vietnam and Forrest Gump—and making it feel fresh again.

“On one hand, we wanted some of the most iconic music, and we felt we almost had to have it to tell the story, but at the same we wanted to avoid any possible clichés, because so much of the music has been used in almost every Hollywood movie about Vietnam,” Novick says about the challenge the team faced. “But if you're doing the story of the Vietnam War, there are just some songs you can’t leave out. We were constantly walking that tightrope.”

"IF YOU'RE DOING THE STORY OF THE VIETNAM WAR, THERE ARE JUST SOME SONGS YOU CAN’T LEAVE OUT."

Importantly, the directors didn’t simply pick the songs themselves, but enlisted the subjects of the film to provide their own personal soundtracks. “At the beginning of the project we had everyone that we interviewed send us a list of the songs they remembered from the time,” Novick explains. “The amazing thing was, whether they were over in Vietnam fighting, or at home protesting, or even if they were from North or South Vietnam, a lot of them had the same songs. That told us that we were on the right track, but that we were going to have to work extra hard to avoid those clichés.”

The answer was to use less “found” music, as Novick calls it. In other words, rather than using 20 or even 30 songs in a two-hour episode, as they normally would, Burns and his team kept most episodes to only 10 or 12 period songs. But in order to help tell the story of the war—and, crucially, the people on which they were focusing—they strictly incorporated music that was contemporary to the timeline. “It was really important that we didn’t have a song from 1967 during a segment about 1965, no matter how well it might have worked,” Burns explains.

With less music in each episode, they also let the songs they did use play longer, cutting the images on the screen to the pace of the music, thus creating an underlying narrative for the viewer to make of it what they, individually, would.


“Music is an emotional thing,” says producer Sarah Botstein. “The music we were dealing with has so much resonance with people. It was important to let each of the artists we were working with know how seriously we took that, but it also creates a great sympathy between the sounds you’re hearing and the images on the screen.”

It meant that Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” was in, but Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son,” a seemingly obvious choice, didn’t make the final cut.

That care paid dividends: Botstein was able to secure songs from artists who are notoriously wary about the use of their works. The Beatles, for instance, almost never license the original versions of their music for commercial use. “Once we had Bob Dylan and The Beatles on board, doors opened,” she says. One impressive get in particular was Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s “Ohio”—segueing from the haunting use of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” to illustrate the scenes about the slaughter at Kent State in 1970, for which "Ohio" was written—which had never before been licensed for such use.


But as compelling, or easy, as it might have been to rely on the “greatest songs of the ’60s and some soundalike soundtrack music,“ Novick says that it was important to constantly remind the viewer that it’s 2017. She found the answer to that dilemma after watching the film The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.


“The music was just what we were looking for,” Novick says. “I didn’t know who’d done it, but I did a little digging and found a New Yorker article, and it turned out to be Trent Reznor and his collaborator Atticus Ross. We knew whatever they did would be perfect, and we never really looked anywhere else.”

“I sure didn’t see that one coming,” Reznor recalls of getting the call from his manager with the news that Burns and Novick wanted him to score their next major work. “But then I realized the enormity and significance of the task."

"They told me, ‘We're looking for you to emotionally set the tone for how we want to tell the story,'" he says. "They didn’t want music popping up that was historically or culturally relevant, like some of the other documentaries I'd seen of that time or era. They wanted something that felt distinctly different, to help keep the storytelling in the here and now. That was exciting, and it was very flattering.”

Reznor and Ross’s score serves to root The Vietnam War in the present rather than the past—to reiterate that the documentary is a reflection and assessment of the events it examines. Jacob Ribicoff, a sound effects editor who worked on the film, explains why the score works so well in tandem with the period pop songs on the soundtrack. “At first [the score] might seem out of place, but it's there to remind you that it’s 2017, and we’re looking back at this time and place,” Ribicoff says. “For me, the dissonance of the pieces are a constant reminder of how little we’ve learned.”


Out of context, and after decades of play on classic rock stations, the period songs, which were reactions to the historic events depicted in the film, have become, in many ways, stripped of their cultural relevance. “One of the editors on the film told me he’d never realized what ‘Ohio’ was about, and I was stunned,” producer Botstein says. “The music obviously has a different role in all of our lives, even though we know all of the songs. But to me that's the interesting legacy of the war, and this music. It was important to get it right if people were going to be thinking about what these songs said and what they stood for, probably for the first time in a long time.”

When I recount Botstein’s comment to Burns in a follow-up interview, he praises the team he’s assembled for the project. “That depth of knowledge and, even more importantly, sincerity?” he asks. “That’s what I hope people will take away from this film: that the music was more to us than just something in the background to get us from one point to another.” The achievement is obvious over the course of The Vietnam War’s 18 hours, from the first chords of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” to the closing crescendo of “Let It Be,” and it speaks to the power of the music of that time, so indelibly linked to our collective memories of the Vietnam era.

 

I feel like the most disturbing part of the series was when they covered the My Lai massacre. Those pictures... are devastating.

And then when that soldier was put on trial for murdering those women, children, and actually convicted... but 79% of Americans wanted to set him free, i was shocked.

But then I think if that same soldier was held on trial today for those same actions, the same percentage of Americans would probably still feel he did the right thing.

This country will always be ultra conservative.

 

The dynamics were vastly difference back then. The series hit pretty hard on that this was the next generation after those who served in WWII. Many of them felt it was their obligation to serve since their families had served in WWII. Much of the generation that grew up during WWII sympathized with the soldiers plight and the hells of war.

That is not so much the case with Generation X and the Millennials. We have not had a draft since Vietnam. If ones chooses to go to war, its on their own accord and they should be held responsible for their actions.