Hoa Binh: Vietnamese For Peace

In reviewing the video Kontum Diary (VL-3/96), I commented that exorcising the demons and ghosts of the Vietnamese War on film and video has become a regular cottage industry. Hoa Binh fits squarely into that industry. Filmmaker Ann Crawford follows five vets involved in the Vietnam Veterans Restoration Project (VVRP) as they journey back to ‘Nam in an effort to both heal their own psychic wounds and give something back to the land and the people of Vietnam through various humanitarian projects. Unlike Kontum Diary, which had a disconcerting emotional dullness and disingenuousness about it, Hoa Binh is very effective in revealing the nightmares, pain, and remorse of the vets, as well as in demonstrating the importance of their participating in a formalized reconciliation with the past. In fact, the making of this video seems as much a part of this therapy as the involvement of VVRP participants in building clinics in Vietnam. It's highly emotional and affecting stuff, with a number of segments which stand out vividly in the mind, such as Buster Kahakua's horrifying description of witnessed war atrocities, and a sequence on the vets' return to My Lai. The generally rough production quality of the video and the somewhat unfocused structure of the narrative work against Hoa Binh in many places, and prevent it from being the stand-out video it perhaps could have been. Despite these shortcomings, Hoa Binh manages to offer some unique perspectives on the war and into the hearts and minds of the men who fought in it. It would be appropriate for larger public library collections and academic libraries interested in the Vietnam war and its aftermath. Aud: H, C, P. (G. Handman)