Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam

1987 "Addressed to the heart of America."
7.9| 1h24m| PG| en| More Info
Released: 01 October 1987 Released
Producted By: Dear America
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

Real-life letters written by American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines during the Vietnam War to their families and friends back home. Archive footage of the war and news coverage thereof augment the first-person "narrative" by men and women who were in the war, some of whom did not survive it.

Genre

Documentary, War

Watch Online

Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam (1987) is currently not available on any services.

Director

Bill Couturié

Production Companies

Dear America

Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam Videos and Images

Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam Audience Reviews

Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped
Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.
Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.
Michael Neumann After a long cycle of dramatic fictions the true voice of the Vietnam experience is restored to those who knew it best: the veterans themselves, both living and dead. There may be a built-in flaw behind the idea of quoting letters out loud on camera (because on paper the written word has a silent voice that speaks to the reader directly), but director Bill Couturié does what he can to minimize this drawback by hiring an ensemble of professional actors to help articulate the emotions locked on each page: confusion, bitterness, terror, rage, sorrow, and irony. Viewers can play the guessing game of celebrity voice identification, but after a while the words seem to fade away beneath the horror of the imagery itself, a compilation of TV news stock, home movies, and other footage, including rare scenes from inside a North Vietnamese prison camp. The letters are arranged chronologically, and as American military presence increases so too does the viewer's emotional involvement. Some of the correspondence is more effective than others, but every letter is an eloquent reminder of the loneliness of the common soldier, and of the importance of that vital link through the mail between home and hell.
ccthemovieman-1 Letters and film footage from actual soldiers and nurses who fought in Vietnam are read aloud and shown in this "documentary." The letters are read by famous actors and actresses.It turns out to be a sometimes-powerful moving saga of Vietnam through the eyes of those who were there but, remember, it's the filmmakers deciding what letters are read. That means you get an anti-Vietnam War bias, but it's not as blatant as one might think.There is some good footage of bombings and nothing really gross, injury-wise, to view, most likely because this was made-for-TV.The most moving part of the show was the last letter, from a mom to her son who had died 15 years earlier in Vietnam. That letter is a real tear-jerker. Overall, an excellent documentary, one of the better ones of its era.
arensgirl My Dad I and watched this film when it first came out on HBO, I have always been interested in watching documentary's about Vietnam war because my father was there. This movie touched my heart in so many ways because it gave me an insight to what my father went through but, halfway through the movie their was a picture of my father with his other buddies, he was so jazzed to see himself in this movie and I was excited that he was in the movie. To this day Letters home from Vietnam is the best documentary ever made. thank you for letting us see a portion of what the men and women went through and the men and women who gave their lives so I could be free today.
Stephanie French I saw this movie during my English class about a week ago and I can say that it was the best documentary movie I have ever seen. Everyone's eyes were glued on the movie and that is very rare to see in my class. If was an emotional movie. Famous actors read the letters that men and nurses wrote during the war. You saw what it was like for the soldiers and what was going through their heads at the time. The music in the movie was connected to the time period of the war and it fit the movie really well. It helps you feel connected to the soldiers through their own words. The people who read these letters read them with such passion that you just listened and it felt as if the soldier themselves were reading them. You didn't pay attention at all to the people reading the letters but to the words they were actually reading. I would recommend this movie to everybody and anybody. It is so powerful and it has a really strong impact on the viewers.