'The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick' Episode Review: 'The Veneer of Civilization (June 1968-May 1969)'
Episode Seven: "The Veneer of Civilization (June 1968-May 1969)
Written by: Geoffrey C. Ward
Directed by: Ken Burns and Lynn Novick
Public support for the war declines, and American men of draft age face difficult decisions and wrenching moral choices. After police battle with demonstrators in the streets of Chicago, Richard Nixon wins the presidency, promising law and order at home and peace overseas. In Vietnam the war goes on, and soldiers on all sides witness terrible savagery and unflinching courage. - from The Vietnam War's Episode List.
On September 25, 2017, 300 Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) stations aired "The Veneer of Civilization (June 1968-May 1969)," Episode Seven of directors Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's The Vietnam War. This epic 10-part documentary series is an in-depth exploration of one of the most divisive and controversial conflicts in American history. It is a "from the bottom-up" narrative told from the perspectives of Americans and Vietnamese - from North and South - who were involved in some way in it, either on the battlefields of Southeast Asia or in an America bitterly cleaved in two between those who supported the war and those who opposed it. As the series' tagline so aptly puts it: "There's no single truth in war."
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| (C) 2017 Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and Florentine Films |
The seventh part of Burns and Novick's 18-hour-long series takes up the story where "Things Fall Apart (January 1968-July 1968)" left off: North Vietnam's "General Offensive, General Uprising' - the infamous Tet Offensive - has ended in a military failure for Communist Party secretary Le Duan, the de facto leader of Hanoi's government. But the North's ability to mount such an ambitious attack against South Vietnam's autocratic regime and its U.S. allies shock an American public that has been constantly told by President Lyndon B. Johnson and General William Westmoreland that the war is going well and that "there is light at the end of the tunnel." The Tet Offensive and the images beamed to American homes from the battlefields via network television broadcasts dispel these rosy statements and widen the "credibility gap" between the government and the American people.
Now, in the summer of 1968, the world is convulsed as a wave of youthful revolution spreads from America to Europe and beyond. Protests against the war and for civil rights, equality for women, other social and economic issues erupt not only in an America sharply divided against itself, but also in France, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, West Germany, and even some of the countries trapped behind the Iron Curtain.
Having withdrawn from the 1968 Presidential race as a result of the growing dissent against the war, LBJ watches helplessly as his Democratic Party splits in two. His chosen successor, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, is seen by many in the anti-war movement as a Johnson loyalist and must fend off stiff competition from Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy. After a fractious party convention in Chicago marred by violent clashes between baton-wielding police and college-age anti-war demonstrators, Humphrey wins the Democrats' Presidential nomination to run against Republican candidate Richard Nixon. He also alienates the lame duck President Johnson by saying he will stop the bombing of North Vietnam to ease the way for a negotiated solution to the war.
Through the services of conservative hardliner Anna Chennault, the wealthy Republican widow of Gen. Claire Chennault, the famous commander of World War II's "Flying Tigers," Nixon insinuates to Thieu that Humphrey would be a weak President and would stop all U.S. aid to South Vietnam. Nixon, the consummate anti-Communist, would drive a harder bargain with Hanoi and prop up Thieu's vulnerable government and ensure its continued survival. Thieu, motivated both by ambition and fear of a Communist victory, agrees.
On Saturday, November 2, 1968, the day after LBJ announces a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam, Thieu suddenly makes a speech in Saigon to inform the world that the South Vietnamese government will withdraw from the Paris peace talks.
Unbeknownst to Nixon, the FBI and CIA have tapped the phones of some of the participants in this conspiracy - and LBJ is aware of the Republican nominee's unethical and illegal maneuvers. But Johnson is reluctant to reveal how he received the information, and the American people is never told. Nixon wins the Presidency - but his fears that his secret will someday be discovered plant the seed for his eventual downfall.
Meanwhile, the war - which to the Americans is irretrievably lost - grinds on. Young men of military age, including Tim O'Brien, Karl Marlantes, and Robert Harrison, face painful moral and personal choices as they decide whether or not they will fight in a war that they believe is unjust and unnecessary. And as American aircraft bomb the Ho Chi Minh trail in a furious effort to stop the flow of men and materiel from the North to the South, North Vietnamese truck drivers and engineers, including Nguyen Nguyet Anh and Tran Cong Thang defy the odds - and U.S. bombs - to keep the Communist supply lines to the battle fronts open.
I was very young (between the ages of five and six) during the 11-month period covered in "The Veneer of Civilization." I also lived in Colombia with my mother and older half-sister. As a result, the war in Vietnam was a murky blot in the distance for me. The anti-Americanism it sometimes inspired in some social circles caused my mom to worry; I was born in Miami and was a U.S. citizen, but I was told to not tell anyone at school so I wouldn't be teased or bullied. And even though I was precocious enough to read newspapers and watch the news on TV, I was too young to understand why the land of my birth - which even then I idolized because of its role in helping win World War II - was fighting a war in far-off Vietnam.
This lack of understanding lasted even after we moved back to the States shortly after North Vietnam's Spring Offensive of 1972. I was nine then, and even though I didn't know much English yet, I understood graphics. I dimly remember seeing casualty tallies on the evening news, and I remember high school age boys sporting long hair and mustaches and carrying homemade anti-war signs that said "NIXON END THE WAR NOW."
As a result, I've had an almost lifelong need to know about this war that was in the background of my childhood. At first, my goal was to find out why we lost a war even though we had one of the most powerful military forces in the world at the time. Later, as I matured, I sought to understand why our government decided that Vietnam was the place to make "a stand against Godlesss Communism" - and lied to the American public about its policies, its goals, and its low chances for success.
Over the past four decades, I've watched my fair share of movies (Platoon, Apocalypse Now) and documentaries (Vietnam: A Television History, Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War) about this conflict, and they are all worth seeing. But Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and co-producer Sarah Botstein have brought the Vietnam conflict back into America's living rooms with an intimacy and sense of tragic loss unlike no other film project about the nation's "lost crusade" in Southeast Asia.
In The Vietnam War, Ward, Burns and Novack labored for 10 years to tell a multifaceted story with multiple points of view (American, North and South Vietnamese, civilian and military) in a moving 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 "The Veneer of Civilization (June 1968-May 1969" a fascinating - and heart-breaking - window into one of America's most tragic periods.
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