'The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick' Episode Review: 'Resolve (January 1966-June 1967)'

Episode Four: Resolve (January 1966-June 1967)

Written by: Geoffrey C. Ward

Directed by: Ken Burns and Lynn Novick

Defying American airpower, North Vietnamese troops and materiel stream down the Ho Chi Minh Trail into the South while Saigon struggles to "pacify" the countryside. As an antiwar movement builds back home, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and Marines discover that the war they are being asked to fight in Vietnam is nothing like their fathers' war. - from The Vietnam War's Episode List

On September 20, 2017, viewers who tuned in to their local Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) stations watched "Resolve (January 1966-June 1967)," Episode Four of The Vietnam War, a 10-part documentary series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick (Prohibition, The War). A decade in the making, this 18-hour look at one of the darkest chapters of American and Vietnamese history was produced by Burns (The Civil War), Novick, and Sarah Botstein. Its tagline is "There is no single truth in war," which is apt because the filmmakers interviewed nearly participants from all sides of the conflict, including civilians and military veterans from the U.S. and both North and South Vietnam. 

Blu-ray set's cover art. (C) 2017 Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and Florentine Films

"Resolve (January 1966-June 1967) begins with Stateside footage of cars driving on an icy road during a snowy day in winter. With a melancholic piano piece as underscore, the scene dissolves to a present day interview with Jean-Marie Crocker, the mother of Denton W. Crocker, Jr., known to friends and family as "Mogie."

As she looks at the camera, Jean-Marie talks about how she would tense up every time she heard the sound of a car driving past her Saratoga Springs house, thinking that it might be someone with bad news about her son, who was a GI serving in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne Division. "It was an underlying anxiety that I really think was there all the time," Jean-Marie remembers.

Directors Ken Burns and Lynn Novick remind the viewer, through a series of still photographs and archival footage of American soldiers in 1966 Vietnam, that Denton "Mogie" Crocker, Jr. had always wanted to serve his country as a soldier and had volunteered to go to Southeast Asia because he believed in the cause. He was willing, he often said, "to lay down his life in defense of what he called 'individual freedom.'" Initially assigned to "boring" administrative and maintenance duties at the Screaming Eagles' rear echelon, Mogie deliberately screws up enough paperwork and is reassigned to where he wants to be - frontline combat.

As 1966 begins, Mogie goes wherever the 101st does, which causes his family back in upstate New York no small amount of concern. "I had a map on the back of the living room door," Jean-Marie remembers. "And I put pins in it every time Denton Junior moved. And he moved a lot. I knew those names at one time as well as any other history in the area of our own world." 

Under the command of Lt. Col. Henry Emerson, Mogie's battalion sets out to engage the enemy, a combination of local Communist guerrillas - the Viet Cong - and increasing numbers of North Vietnamese Army regulars. Both sides are escalating the war to new levels of intensity; both sides are determined to show resolve in their pursuit of victory. But only one side is utterly certain that its efforts will have positive results.

"Resolve (January 1966-June 1967)" shows the tragedy of the Vietnam War in nearly Shakespearean terms. In Washington, D.C., President Lyndon B. Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara are caught in a trap of their own making. LBJ realizes that the war in Southeast Asia threatens to derail his ambitious domestic agenda - known as the Great Society - and that the solution lies not in the battlefield. Yet his stubborn pride and his desire to not be the first American President to lose a war force Johnson to stay the course in Vietnam - even when many voices in and out of government are telling him to end the war and bring the GIs home. 

Series writer Geoffrey C. Ward (The Civil War, The War, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History) shows in "Resolve (January 1966-June 1967)" the labyrinth of delusions, lies, and miscalculations - on both sides - that made the Vietnam War such a traumatic experience for both America and the divided nation of Vietnam. The viewer sees - perhaps for the first time - American civilian and military decision makers as being well-meaning, ill-informed, determined to solve an unsolvable problem, and becoming hopelessly trapped by their own arrogance and inability to think outside the Cold War box.

It is maddening, to say the least, to watch and listen to LBJ and other senior officials in the State and Defense Department admit in private that the U.S. can't win, yet insist that the U.S. can't bring American troops home and cease support to the autocratic and corrupt South Vietnamese leadership.

It's also evident by 1966 that Washington has underestimated the strong resolve of North Vietnam's leaders and people to fight the Americans and their South Vietnamese "puppets" and reunify their nation under a Communist regime.  Led by the hard-line Party Secretary Le Duan, the North Vietnamese show an increasing willingness to fight for their country's independence even as LBJ sends General William C. Westmoreland, his commander in Vietnam, nearly 500,000 men and women "in-country."  

"Resolve (January 1966-June 1967)" also explores the following topics:

• The growth of the anti-war movement in the U.S. and the resulting rift in American society
• The motivations of soldiers and Marines who volunteered to fight in Vietnam during the early stages of the war
• The origins of the Ho Chi Minh Trail and the various efforts by the U.S. to interdict the movement of North Vietnamese troops and war materiel through air power
• The efforts of the American intelligence and defense communities to employ "metrics" to  determine "progress" in an increasingly frustrating war
• A look at the Viet Cong cadres and why it was nearly impossible for the Americans and their ARVN allies to defeat them

As in the previous three episodes, "Resolve (January 1966-June 1967)" is an intimate history of one of history's darkest tragedies. Producers Sarah Botstein, Ken Burns, and Lynn Novick and the creative team at Florentine Films leave no stone unturned in their search for the ever-elusive truths about a war that divided America more than anything had since the Civil War of the 1860s. 

I have watched many documentaries directed and/or produced by Ken Burns since 1990's The Civil War. They all tell a vivid, human story that seek to explain who we are as Americans, with both our virtues and our flaws. "Resolve (January 1966-June 1967)" is one more example of how Burns and his team hold up a mirror to our collective visage and forces us to look at our dark side - while reminding us of our nation's best virtues - courage, honor, and love of country. 

In The Vietnam War, Ward, Burns and Novack devoted a decade's worth of creative and investigative effort to tell a multifaceted story with multiple points of view (American, North and South Vietnamese, civilian and military) in a compelling and informative way
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Their endeavor is made possible by the skills of principal cinematographer Buddy Squires; editors Tricia Reidy, Paul Barnes, Erik Ewers, and Craig Mellish; composers Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and David Cieri (The Roosevelts: An Intimate History). Together with narrator Peter Coyote, the Florentine Films team make "Resolve (January 1966-June 1967)" a fascinating - and heart-breaking - window into one of America's most tragic periods.