DEAR AMERICA, LETTERS HOME FROM VIETNAM

US, 1987, 87 minutes, Colour.
Voices: Robert de Niro, Meryl Streep, Ellen Burstyn, Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Brian Dennehy, Kevin Dillon, Matt Dillon, Robert Downey Jr, Michael J. Fox, Mark Harmon, John Heard.
Directed by Bill Couturie.

Dear America, Letters Home From Vietnam is a documentary about the Vietnam war seen from the perspective of the mid-80s. Based on a collection of letters from Vietnam veterans, it is a selection dramatised by a range of actors and actresses including Robert de Miro and John Savage from The Deer Hunter, Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe and Kevin Dillon from Platoon, Robin Williams from Good Morning Vietnam as well as Kathleen Turner, Ellen Burstyn and Elizabeth Mc Govern. The letters are highly dramatic - with perhaps more power and emotion than was there in the original writers.

The film also uses a lot of documentary and newsreel footage, personal movies to re-create the atmosphere of the Vietnam experience. It also takes us through the experience of the war frond 1963 to 1973, year by year, with statistics of casualties at the end of each year.

The film explores many themes - leaving it to the audience and the audience's perspectives to he persuaded, changed. The film ends with the return home of the prisoners of war in 1973.

The film is a partial look - but is a telling attempt to have an overview of the American experience of 1953 to 1973.

1. The perception of the Vietnam war in the world? American perspectives? Non-American? perspectives? The film as retrospective, a subjective history? The experience, the personnel, the effect of war on them?

2. The title, the device of choosing the letters, the impact of the letters the stars dramatising them in comparison with the authors of the letters? 42 letters included.

3. The differences in style in the letters, the inflections given to words and phrases? Criteria for selection of the letters, The range of viewpoints?

4. The use of archival footage: television news, home movies, video? combination? The criteria for selection?

5. The viewpoint on war: American involvement, statistics each year, the dead and wounded not? The question of American morale? The passing of time? A war worth fighting? Or

6. The impact of the visuals: the footage, the film and TV sensibilities of the films inde in the '70s and '29s - can an audience watch documentation about Vietnam without being influenced by the movies? The impact of the voices, the drama? The range of music, themes, Ending with 'Born in the U.S.A'? the period, the lyrics, patriotic and protest?

7. The prologue, the soldiers surfing, going to war and becoming involved?

8. The decade of 1963 to 1973? The soldiers in training, the effect of the training, the tone of the letters? Comparisons with World War II, American attitudes and patriotism? Lyndon Johnson, the Gulf of Tonkin, the initial escalating of the war?

9. The passing of the years, the Viet Cong as the unseen enemy, action, explosions, wounds and death, the defeat of the jungle?

10. The visualising of death, blood and wounds, amputations?

11. General Westmoreland, the man of the year, his strategies, contact with the troops, with politicians? P.R?

12. The politicians, the stances of Lyndon Johnson, of Richard Nixon, the scaling down of the war, the bombings in Cambodia?

13. The highlighting of military, the siege of Khe San, the Tet Offensive? The long siege of the American troops? The defeat of the Vietnamese - yet the changing of the tide of the war?

14. American public opinion in the late 60s, the growing protest, the deaths of soldiers in Vietnam?

15. Protest at Kent State campus - and the reaction of the students where nobody sympathised with their injuries and deaths?

16. The war and the growing loss of morale, sense of bewilderment in the United States, amongst the troops and their fighting? The contrast with the early patriotic self-giving - even when issues were not understood?

17. The prisoners of war, their humiliation, the march through Hanoi? Negotiations for their return? The emotions and drama of the return? The American loyal speech of the first prisoner of war (and the irony that his son had not gone to fight and was back from Vietnam, even though his father had not seen him since he was twelve?

18. A film of the War? The necessity of this kind of film to remind audiences of the past? And to experience the human side of men and women involved in war?