Searing ‘Last Days in Vietnam’ Documents Vital History

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CHICAGO – It has been nearly 40 years since the Vietnam War truly ended, with the desperate events during the Fall of Saigon. “Last Days in Vietnam” is a brilliant new documentary that puts it all in perspective, the final surreal folly of America’s nightmarish involvement in the Vietnam War. Director Rory Kennedy – the youngest daughter of Robert F. Kennedy – generates a precise and gripping document that lingers long after it has been experienced.

Veteran filmmaker Rory Kennedy knows her way around a story, and takes the talking heads – including the ancient ex-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger – and combines their insights with the copious amount of archival footage regarding the event (the TV network news divisions at the time were at their peak in actually covering stories on the ground). Over a period of two months, in March and April of 1975, the whole of the Vietnam War participation for the United States came crashing down, with the capture by the Northern Viet Cong armies of the South Vietnam capital of Saigon. Kennedy goes step-by-step through those frantic hours, as lives hung in the balance, and promises were both kept and broken.

After the Paris Peace Accord in January of 1973, U.S. troops were withdrawn from the battlefields of Vietnam and a territorial truce took place between the Communist North Vietnam and the Republic of South Vietnam. The impact of that troop withdrawal for the South was immediate, as Northern aggressors were free to escalate an offensive, with Americans sick of the war and President Richard M. Nixon caught up in the domestic scandal of Watergate.

Last Days of Vietnam
Saigon Rooftop and Helicopter Evacuation in ‘The Last Days of Vietnam’
Photo credit: American Experience Films

Nixon resigned his office in August of 1974, and the North Vietnamese army began to swallow up more and more territory, until – to the utter surprise of the war’s lingering observers – they were about to conquer the South capital of Saigon. In a tense and bloody three weeks in April of 1975, the Vietnam War came to a bitter ending, with the evacuation of the last Americans in Saigon, and the takeover of that city from an enemy that couldn’t be stopped.

Because the Paris Peace Accord in 1973 supposedly “ended” the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, it’s hard to remember how the “Fall of Saigon” was connected to the main war years. Kennedy does a deft job of explaining how paper thin the 1973 treaty was, and how Watergate and Nixon’s subsequent resignation impacted the resolve of the North Vietnamese. Gerald Ford then became the last U.S. President to oversee the Vietnam War.

One of the most stunning revelations in the film involved Ford. In making a last ditch effort to save Saigon, he proposed a $722 million dollar aid package for Congress to approve. Contrary to anything we know today, that proposal for additional resources for the war was soundly rejected. Americans were tired of the conflict, and Congress had the backbone then to care. The South Vietnamese were on their own, after over ten years of American alliance.

The stories of heroism and tragedy in association with the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon is the centerpiece of the documentary. There were many allies and personal relationships of Americans with the South Vietnam people in Saigon, and who to take and who to leave behind became a moral quandary. Not helping matters was the U.S. Ambassador to Saigon, Graham Martin, who refused to believe that Saigon would fall. This distortion led to corruption, panic and a worst situation in the end.

Last Days of Vietnam
Archival Photo of Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford in ‘The Last Days of Vietnam’
Photo credit: American Experience Films

Kennedy’s documentary technique was a perfect blend of interviews, archival footage and graphic design – which uniquely shows key U.S. Embassy building topography, with the relationship to the rest of Saigon and the escape routes. The soldiers, politicians and diplomats interviewed in the documentary still have a lingering frustration of that time, which is reflective of the whole morass that was the Vietnam War.

We are now in constant war, with no end in sight, and there is no one in Congress or the administration that wants to challenge that notion. What the “Last Days in Vietnam” makes perfectly clear, is the relevant quote from cartoonist Walt Kelly -“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

“Last Days in Vietnam” continues its limited release in Chicago on October 3rd, with an appearance and Q&A with director Rory Kennedy at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago, 3733 N. Southport Avenue, at 7:10pm. Click here for details. Written by Mark Bailey and Kevin McAlester. Directed by Rory Kennedy. Not Rated.

HollywoodChicago.com senior staff writer Patrick McDonald

By PATRICK McDONALD
Senior Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com
pat@hollywoodchicago.com

© 2014 Patrick McDonald, HollywoodChicago.com

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