Healing a Soldier's Heart

Stephen Olsson's documentary movingly captures the continuing effects of post-traumatic stress syndrome on veterans of the Vietnam War while also looking at the development of therapeutic methods to help them address psychological issues. The focus is on the work of psychotherapist Dr. Edward Tick, author of War and the Soul, who arranges a journey to Vietnam for a group of vets who have suffered for years from PTSD that has led to nightmares, drug abuse, and even suicide attempts. The goal is to alleviate their pain by having them directly confront the experiences that haunt their memories while also interacting with the Vietnamese who endured the conflict. The travelers are a varied group who express their feelings in interviews, supplemented by observations from wives and girlfriends. Most of the footage is devoted to the trip itself, which takes the men to sites where they saw buddies killed, villages that were the targets of their bombing, and temples where they pray alongside those who lost their families and friends as a result of American action. The technique, Tick admits, can't bring about a complete cure, but based on these individual cases, it certainly leads to significant improvement as the men come to terms with their past and learn to forgive themselves as some of the Vietnamese have forgiven them. DVD extras include two bonus featurettes. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)