Dear America - Letters home from Vietnam

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[edit] General Information

History, War Documentary published by Others in 1987 - English narration

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Image:Dear_America_-_Letters_home_from_Vietnam_Cover.jpg

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Three Reviews

This beautifully crafted documentary brings home the tragedy of the Vietnam war in ways well out of the reach of feature films. Nothing is re-enacted, and the interweaving of newsreel and amateur footage puts you right there next to the bloody stumps and the booby-traps in the elephant grass. The letters home - read by Robert De Niro, Martin Sheen, Sean Penn, Tom Berenger, Robin Williams among others - range from family ordinary to the staring horror of Joseph Conrad's Kurtz. Tears and fear are a constant refrain. An intensely moving and disturbing experience.


"Apocalypse Now" is a great film and "Platoon" has been certified as authentic by countless Vietnam veterans, but if I had to pick one film to show students to give them a sense of the Vietnam War it would be this 1988 HBO documentary. While detailing the chronological history of American involvement in Vietnam, an incredible list of actors from Oscar winners Robert De Niro, Ellen Burstyn and Robin Williams to Michael J. Fox, Kathleen Turner, Martin Sheen, Tom Berenger and many, many more, read excerpts from letters the GI's wrote to friends and family back home. These letters are read against not only archival television coverage of the war, but film taken by soldiers in the field as well. This simple juxtaposition of words and images conveys the Vietnam experience more powerfully than anything else you could share with students in a history class. Throw songs like Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." into the mix and the result is even more potent. For those who lived through such times, it is a grim reminder of painful events and of generation of young men we put through living hell for reasons that just were never good enough.


Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam is a documentary based on the book which printed letters from the soldiers and nurses who served in Vietnam. This emotional and powerful film takes the viewer through the war from optimistic beginning to seeds of doubt to the bitter end and a postscript with the dedication of the Vietnam Memorial. While read by famous actors..some of whom you will recognize..it does not in any way detract from the raw power and emotion of the words of the soldier or nurse who having seen enough of the war, now wonders why and when they will make it back home. A true masterpiece that should be seen by all those in power before sending troops. This is the Very best film - fiction or non fiction - that i have seen. On a scale of one to ten..way up there...10

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[edit] Technical Specs

  • Video Codec: XviD
  • Video Bitrate: 1053 kb/s
  • Video Resolution: 560x352
  • Video Aspect Ratio: 1.591
  • Audio Codec: MP3
  • Audio BitRate: 122 kbps
  • Audio Streams: 1
  • Audio Languages: English
  • RunTime per Part: 82 minutes
  • Number of Parts:1
  • Part Size: 696mb
  • Subtitles:None
  • Ripped by: NiX


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