David Thomson: Eighteen Hours in Vietnam
If the film seems like an epic of fiction, it’s because it is less engaged in a quest for historical truth than it is in getting closer to some verities about life and death. If there had been a Truth, America would not have been in Vietnam. It went there to obviate the doubt empires cannot endure. The implication is that there may be no purpose we can rely on – yet purpose is the justification for most of our wars. Are the witnesses telling us the truth on the oath of a verité camera? Or are they dreaming of a truth that might explain them – to themselves as much as to us?