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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
GOING UPRIVER: THE LONG WAR OF JOHN KERRY
To understand Senator John Kerry is to understand the Vietnam War. That is the
underlying premise of Going Upriver, whose title refers to Kerry's tour of
duty on a swift boat. This straightforward documentary is most effective in
depicting the quagmire of the war, and in chronicling the emotional 1971 Vietnam
Veterans Against the War (VVAW) demonstration. The narrative thread is
provided by interviews of friends, family, and fellow veterans, many of whom will
be familiar to those who have followed Kerry's career and recent documentaries. Kerry appears only in archival footage and voice-over. He's
sympathetically described here as an optimist inspired by President Kennedy to
serve his country, first by volunteering to serve in the war and then later by
protesting against it. The film provides more information than the recent Band
of Brothers, which deals mostly with Kerry’s military career: his encounter
with a Vietcong guerrilla armed with a rocket launcher, recounted by two of his
crew; his saving the life of another under enemy fire; and his evolution into a key
anti-war activist.
The film's main argument is that the war was one of attrition. According to Kerry
friend and fellow vet Dan Barbiero, "Anyone you saw was an enemy." It is
generally estimated that of the three million Vietnamese killed, more than half
were civilians. Historian Neil Sheehan recounts
General William Westmoreland admitting that the U.S.'s goal was to "deprive
the enemy of a population."
Going Upriver details the most controversial move by the VVAW:
the wrenching decision of veterans to ceremonially discard their war medals.
Kerry was perhaps the last vet to cast his off, a symbolic decision he made "to
help my country wake up." In hindsight, his action may be seen as naive for
anyone with political ambitions, but as the film chronicles the five-day protest in
Washington (in which the protesters were threatened with arrest and at one point
denied access to Arlington Cemetery) the film efficiently paints the tenor of the
times. The pro-war voices, on the other hand, are not nearly as eloquent. In an
appearance on The Dick Cavett Show, Kerry debates a stunned and
stymied John O'Neill, a representative of Veterans for Peace. Here, Kerry admits
he did not see atrocities himself, but did take part in search and destroy missions
of noncombatants' homes.
What is remarkable is the sense of déjà vu that permeates the film. A
soldier confesses he posed for a photo holding a dead Vietnamese as a trophy,
and other veterans decry the lack of enforcement of the Geneva Convention in
dealing with Vietnamese prisoners. Or, senator and fellow veteran Max Cleland's
take: "In reality, a war of national independence...it became more and more
nonsensical." According to Kerry biographer Douglas Brinkley, a goal of the
White House, even in the early '70s, was to destroy Kerry before he could
become, ironically, another Ralph Nader. Kent Turner
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