TV Review: The Vietnam War

TV+Review%3A+The+Vietnam+War

Tiffany Stavrakas, Staff Writer

The Vietnam War is an 18 hour documentary played in a series of 10 episodes on PBS. This series gives you the raw idea of what the war was really like.

It displays archival footage and pictures from all around the world. This lets everyone see what it was really like for both sides of the war and see how brutal and real it actually was.

This series took 10 years to make. They went around held 80 interviews with people from all sides involved. That gives you an inside look on how war can actually affect people, and how people felt about the war. Many people that get interviewed were, and still are, against the war. They talk about how they feel people lost their lives for no reason.

This war was one of the worst ones. They displayed guerrilla tactics which made it extremely graphic and traumatizing. Most of the people in this war were drafted into it. Just like any other war the people who came out of this, came out with PTSD or scars they’ll have for a life time.

The brilliant minds that pieced this moving documentary together include: Ken Burns and Lynn Novice who directed it and Geoffrey C. Ward who it was written by. It is clear that they put a lot of work into trying to make this documentary very realistic; they searched for footage and pictures for years that depict the guerrilla warfare.

This is one of the most raw documentaries around. From playing actual footage from the war such as, people being killed, to interviews on how these peoples lives were affected due to this event.

This series first aired Sunday, September 17th 2017. Americans around the world were waiting for years for this documentary to be released. People feel like this reminds them of things that they usually forget when they refer to the Vietnam War. There were also a few Vietnamese people that were also waiting to see these series of videos. This series isn’t based on which side is right or which side is wrong. It gives honest feelings from both sides.

It’s definitely worth the watch if you love history, and even if you don’t love history it’s still informative. If you aren’t good at learning through textbooks, this series will by far cover everything that you need to know about the Vietnam War.