Monday, June 21, 2010

DEAR AMERICA: LETTERS HOME FROM VIETNAM (1987)

The premise of this film is simple: letters written by Vietnam War soldiers to their families and loved ones back home read over real life footage taken during the Vietnam War. The narrative is told from the beginning of the war until the end and helped along with various news footage and on camera interviews with soldiers in the field. It's very emotional and sickening to think about all the people killed for I'm not even sure what.

It starts out really powerful (and features some great music), but it started losing me a little over halfway through. I don't know why, but it seemed like it was losing steam. Still it's a good film and definitely worth watching, but it could have used a little more structure and a narrator.

The most powerful and saddest letter was the one left at the Vietnam Memorial written by a mother to her son who died 15 years earlier. It's hard to listen to without tearing up.