"The Ten Thousand Day War" (1980) TV mini-series

User Rating:

7.5/10   

Writer:

Peter Arnett (writer)

Release Date:

1980 (Canada)

Genre:

History | War

Plot:

A comprehensive history of the American stage of the Vietnam War.

Plot Keywords:

Vietnam War | Vietnam | TV Mini-Series | Non Fiction | Number In Title

Cast

Richard Basehart	...	Narrator (voice)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Ellsworth Bunker	...	Himself (US Ambassador to South Vietnam)
Clark Clifford	...	Himself (Secretary of Defense)
William Colby	...	Himself (CIA Director)
David Dellinger	...	Himself (pacifist leader)
John Ehrlichman	...	Himself (Nixon's senior domestic aide)
Daniel Ellsberg	...	Himself
J. William Fulbright	...	Himself (also archive footage) (as Sen. William Fulbright)
Doris Kearns Goodwin	...	Herself (biographer of LBJ) (as Doris Kearns)
Alexander Haig	...	Himself (Nixon's Chief of Staff) (as Gen. Alexander Haig)
David Harris	...	Himself (husband of Joan Baez)
Brian Jenkins	...	Himself (military analyst)
Robert Komer	...	Himself
Melvin Laird	...	Himself (Nixon's Secretary of Defense)
Henry Cabot Lodge	...	Himself (US Ambassador to South Vietnam)
Eugene McCarthy	...	Himself (presidential candidate) (also archive footage) (as Sen. Eugene McCarthy)
Jack McCloskey	...	Himself (veteran, USMC)
Tom McClure	...	Himself (veteran, US Army)
Van Thieu Nguyen	...	Himself (President of South Vietnam) (also archive footage)
Tim O'Brien	...	Himself (veteran, US Army)
Jerry Rubin	...	Himself (peace activist)
Dean Rusk	...	Himself (LBJ's Secretary of State) (also archive footage)
Arthur Schlesinger Jr.	...	Himself (Kennedy advisor)
Maxwell Taylor	...	Himself (US Ambassador to South Vietnam) (as Gen. Maxwell Taylor)
William C. Westmoreland	...	Himself (also archive footage) (as Gen. William Westmoreland)

Country:

Canada

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White | Color

Company:

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)

Long but superficial

Perhaps you have to be foreign to judge another country's version of history. Americans naturally have problems with rather infamous parts of their past, as do Germans or Turks. On the other hand, they should also have greater insight, but that requires more courage and honesty than is common. Peter Davis' "Hearts and Minds" sets a pretty high standard.

The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have generated new interest in the Vietnam era, "one of America's most mysterious wars". I agree. But this 1980's series does little to solve the mystery, despite its closeness to the events it describes. What it does rather well, especially from today's point of view, is turn not-so-distant reality into "documentary" fiction. You'll look in vain for the wide spectrum of peace and protest movements the Vietnam war created, fueled by a "youth revolution" that stretched across the globe, and it doesn't demystify the strategic planning behind the "domino theory", the perceived communist threat to such post-WWII allies as the Philippines, Thailand or Japan. It doesn't expose the Gulf of Tonkin incident as the staged event it was (to be fair, maybe unknown at the time). It lacks perspective because it doesn't discuss the aftermath of the war, namely the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, to which the American bombing heavily contributed, or the long-term effects of Agent Orange we see even today. It all but disguises the fact that war with Vietnam continued in economic guise after the reunification, seriously hampering the rebuilding of a country ravaged and depopulated by decades of war - instead, we are left with parting images of happy, healthy Vietnamese children, followed by an entire episode to grieve for and with the poor, maltreated American veterans - now where have I seen that before?

Curiously, the interviews with the soldiers in last episode offer some of the best glimpses of the true face of any war, attitudes and confessions that are usually turned into Hollywood myths or abstracts, especially by a warlike "superpower" that hasn't experienced war at home for almost 150 years. After all, it's over, why offend anyone. But they're the life blood of history and the main reason why war has such a bad reputation. The series avoids mutilated bodies and common war crimes by both sides, other than the My Lai massacre, but excluding most of the iconic pictures that sparked the Vietnam protests.

That's not to say it's all bad. Although it leaves out far too much and looks surprisingly modern in its superficiality, it offers a general war time line as well as nowadays rare interview footage of the political players. To fill in some of the gaps, I recommend "Secrets of War: Vietnam" (1998, narrated by Charlton Heston) and "Sir! No, Sir!" (2005) on the Vietnam GI Anti-War movement. The measuring gage, of course, is "Hearts and Minds" (1974), and not for its grisly images, but for the variety of snapshots from the era it has to offer. Documentaries are not only made to explore, but also to shape the perception of the past.