GOING UPRIVER: THE LONG WAR OF JOHN KERRY
Directed by: George Butler.
Produced by: Butler & Mark Hopkins.
Written by: Joseph Dorman.
Director of Photography: Sandi Sissel & Jules Labarthe.
Edited by: Timothy Squyres.
Music by: Philip Glass.
Released by: THINKFilm.
Country of Origin: USA. 89 min. Rated: PG-13.
With: Max Cleland, Richard Holbrooke, Bob Kerrey, Thomas Oliphant & Neil Sheehan.

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
September 30, 2004