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Tom's Guide
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Tom's Guide
I just watched Netflix's 'Turning Point' documentary on the Vietnam War 50 years later — and it chilled me to the bone
War movies aren't my thing. Most feel like different flavors of the same played-out, pro-military propaganda, where the human toll takes a backseat to the fighting (re-created with the full Hollywood treatment, naturally) and what uplifting narratives can be spun out of the bones of an awful chapter of human history. That's why I was surprised when Netflix's "Turning Point" series quickly became one of my favorites on the streamer. Directed by Brian Knappenberger, it retraces pivotal historical events through an unflinching, methodical and most of all deeply human lens. Turning Point: The Vietnam War | Official Trailer | Netflix - YouTube Watch On Each multi-episode series breaks down some of the thornier topics we learned in history class with the care they deserve, shaving off the veneer of American exceptionalism we were taught. You may like Previous entries tackled the Cold War and America's "war on terror," two conflicts that trace a direct line to the country's state of bipartisan animosity, public distrust and corruption today. By no coincidence, both conflicts are similarly inextricable from America's war in Vietnam, which is the subject of Knappenberger's latest entry. "Turning Point: The Vietnam War" premiered on Netflix on April 30, timed to the 50th anniversary of when the communist North Vietnamese captured Saigon in the U.S.-supported South Vietnam, widely considered to be the end of the conflict. This five-part series features footage from the frontlines, recordings of U.S. presidents, testimony from historians, and interviews with people on all sides of the conflict to paint a clear picture of incompetence and hubris at the highest levels of power. Now that "Turning Point: The Vietnam War" is streaming on Netflix, I'd encourage as many people as possible to check it out. Especially if, after doomscrolling through recent headlines, you've ever asked yourself, "How the hell did we get here?" It's less a history lecture and more a haunting reminder that history is ours to shape, for better or worse. What is 'Turning Point: The Vietnam War' about? From the jump, "Turning Point: The Vietnam War" makes it painfully clear that nothing about this conflict is simple. The soundbite you were taught in history class doesn't do it justice. While April 30, 1975 marked the fall of Saigon and the end of the fighting, the fallout is still simmering to this day, as demonstrated through a montage of recent headlines about mounting public cynicism for American leaders and clips of the January 6th U.S. Capitol attack in the first episode. A quote from author and historian Thomas Bass in that episode's opening moments really stuck with me: "We all live under the shadow of Vietnam." (Image credit: Netflix) Rather than beating you over the head with facts and figures from the historical record, the docuseries kicks things off on a more personal level with testimony from those involved in the fighting. The opening shot introduces us to Scott Camil, a Vietnam vet from Florida, as he talks about the grueling basic training he went through after joining the Marines, his voice breaking when he remembers the marching songs he and his fellow Marines used to sing. Just as he was given one story about the war and why he was risking his life halfway across the world, so was the American public. One of the recurring themes among the experts Knappenberger talks to is how ardently American leaders worked to keep the public ignorant of the full scope of the country's involvement, especially in the early days. As the war escalated, tales of costly battles were deliberately rewritten into stories of triumph by the time they made the morning paper. (Image credit: Netflix) Bogus intelligence, costly mismanagement, and political deception unfortunately surface as cornerstones of the U.S.'s involvement in Vietnam throughout the documentary. Knappenberger and the experts he interviews spare no blame for American leaders. Tape recordings of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon talking to advisors at the time offer an intimate glimpse into history, drawing you in in a way that makes you feel like a fly on the wall of history. Particularly striking is their candid discussion of LBJ's uncertainty and hesitation over Vietnam in the early months of his presidency after Kennedy's assassination, building a picture of an insecure man out of his depths suddenly surrounded by what he's been led to believe are the nation's brightest minds. Each episode goes through painstaking lengths to outline the key players and events, lining them up like dominoes in a game you know will end in disaster — it's just a matter of how much worse it was than you realized. Why 'Turning Point: The Vietnam War' is a must-watch (Image credit: Netflix) If all that sounds like I'm asking you to sit through the equivalent of a history lecture, I'm seriously selling it short. What sets these "Turning Point" docuseries apart is how each takes the utmost care to present the historical record in a way that you never forget that wars are fought between people, not ideologies. People who bear scars that are still festering to this day. And it's that throughline of humanity that makes these docuseries so riveting to watch and easy to lose yourself in — whether you're a history nerd or not. Like the first two "Turning Point" series, this cuts to the heart of why history is worth learning about. It takes these kinds of major events that, over time, balloon into nebulous concepts we struggle to wrap our heads around now, so many decades removed, and shaves them down to a series of interlocking blocks behind which we can see the flawed individuals pulling the strings all along. Each series shows how a million different outcomes could have unfolded had this or that leader acted differently, had the public known x, y, z, or if different decisions were made. But this is what happened, and this is what we got, and trying to pretend the world we see today isn't directly a result of that is not only an insult to what was lost, but a disservice to ourselves and the responsibility we have to shape the future. As cliche as it is to say, that lesson is more important now than ever. If it sounds like I'm proselytizing, it's because Knappenberger's shows never fail to get me fired up when it feels like the news cycle has beaten the hope about humanity out of me. There's a quote from one of my favorite games "Disco Elysium" that goes "that we continue to persist at all is a testament to our faith in one another." It feels strange to say, given the grim subject matter and all, but the "Turning Point" series restores my faith in people, in our collective capacity to forge history. Something that's far too easy to lose sight of these days. "Turning Point: The Vietnam War" is streaming now on Netflix. More from Tom's Guide Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips.
Axios
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
Netflix series on the Vietnam War looks at pain across racial lines
A new Netflix-limited series takes a fresh look at the Vietnam War that examines the conflict from the eyes of Black soldiers, Vietnamese fighters and journalists on the 50th anniversary of its end. Why it matters: The Vietnam War has split Americans across ideological and racial lines for much of the last few decades, with those divisions around the U.S. role in the world still evident today. Zoom in: " Turning Point: The Vietnam War," which was released on Wednesday and is now streaming on Netflix, confronts those divisions head-on while trying to make sense of why the United States got involved in Vietnam in the first place. Following in the footsteps of other Netflix series, "Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War" and "Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror," this five-episode docuseries goes beyond military failures and diplomatic moves. Instead, the series examines the political and cultural reckoning that followed the war, which reshaped American society and created generations of distrust. Series director Brian Knappenberger tells Axios the war birthed a "radically different country" in the U.S. and fostered division about government, protests and duty. "I think the reason to look back on it is because the Vietnam War just had this lasting impact on us." Knappenberger says his goal was not to glorify the past and political figures but to take an honest assessment, even when it hurt. The intrigue: Unlike many previous documentaries on the Vietnam War, " Turning Point: The Vietnam War" actively uses the voices of Black soldiers to show how the conflict affected them as the Civil Rights Movement hit an apex. Black veterans talking of grappling with their conflicted feelings, fighting for "democracy" in Vietnam while being treated like second-class citizens back home. In addition, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning Vietnamese American author of "The Sympathizer," talks in the documentary about the effects of the war on his family. Flashback: President John Kennedy got the U.S. involved in a civil war in Vietnam amid the Cold War and fears of spreading Communism. After his assassination, President Lyndon Johnson escalated U.S. involvement, sparking anti-Vietnam War protests on college campuses across the nation. President Nixon continued the war, even expanded it to nearby Cambodia, until agreeing to a peace accord. Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese fighters on April 30, 1975. Juan José Valdez of San Antonio, Texas, was the last of the 11 U.S. Marines out of Vietnam before the fall of Saigon. Zoom out: The new documentary comes as a new pol l shows a majority of American adults, including most Vietnam War veterans, think the United States should have stayed out of Vietnam. The survey by Nexstar Media and Emerson College Polling, released this week, showed that a majority of adults (62%) think the U.S. should have stayed out of Vietnam. A plurality of U.S. adults (44%) think the war in Vietnam was not justified, while 29% believe the war was justified. Yes, but: Knappenberger says it's also important to take into account the voices of North Vietnamese who were involved in the war and how it transformed their lives. The documentary talks to several Vietnamese figures who recount their experiences and the lingering results decades later. Between the lines: Thousands of returning Vietnam War veterans suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and were shunned by anti-war protesters and war supporters for the defeat.
The Guardian
30-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘Still an open wound': damning docuseries revisits Vietnam war 50 years on
This Wednesday, 30 April, marks a full half century since the fall of Saigon. The takeover of the South Vietnamese capital, renamed Ho Chi Minh City, by North Vietnamese forces reunited a country riven by a decades-long civil war that killed more than 3 million civilians – a triumph of one vision of Vietnam's future at the violent expense of another, with many caught perilously in between. For the US, the fall of Saigon was an indisputable humiliation and the end to what was then its longest war, one that killed over 58,000 servicemen, divided a nation and has only grown more ignominious with time. Fifty years on, the picture is clear: the Americanization of the Vietnam War was an unfathomably costly, poorly run, incomprehensibly horrific folly based on political lies and dubious intelligence. It is taught as a brief but upsetting chapter in American schools – if it's taught at all. But as outlined in Turning Point: The Vietnam War, a sweeping new Netflix series on the conflict and its long, dark shadow, the war left an indelible mark on the American psyche that's still festering today. 'The America that existed before the United States engaged militarily in Vietnam was a radically different country than the America that emerged after our troops came home,' said director Brian Knappenberger. 'That new America that emerged from this conflict contained the roots of a lot of what plagues our society today – widespread alienation, deep cynicism, profound distrust in government, a breakdown of our civic institutions.' That cynicism emerged largely from the yawning disconnect between what the government under John F Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford said was happening, and what Americans learned was happening through the news, the experience of their loved ones, or the absence of loves ones who never returned home. In the US, belief in the armed forces went from sacrosanct to curdled; one's view of the conflict depended on who you listened to. 'There's history in the sense of facts. But there's also history as stories, as narratives,' says historian and writer Viet Thanh Nguyen in the first episode of the series. Nguyen's acclaimed 2015 novel The Sympathizer, which traces a North Vietnamese mole's mutable loyalties over many years, opens during the cataclysmic – or, depending on who you talk to, triumphant – fall of Saigon; as a South Vietnamese refugee in America, Nguyen says, he was aware how 'in both of these countries, there are deeply conflicting histories. That's part of what led to the war in Vietnam'. In five roughly 80-minute chapters, Knappenberger's series delves into those histories, layering subjective narrative – among them, the steadfast binary of communism v democracy that undergirded US involvement and the lionization of Ho Chi Minh in the North – over a clear timeline of events. Knappenberger also directed Turning Point entries on the Cold War and the War on Terror, two conflicts inextricable from America's war in Vietnam; as in those shows, the Vietnam War proceeds chronologically, covering four US presidential administrations starting with John F Kennedy, who initially escalated US military involvement in South Vietnam under the guise of 'advising' their military against real and perceived Communist encroachment from the North. The conflict in Vietnam marked not just a sea change in America's role on the world stage, but in how war was documented. The series relies extensively on archival footage from CBS, one of the preeminent US journalism outlets on the ground in Vietnam, whose reporters were responsible for some of the largest breaks with the US military's party line. For viewers now and then, the footage 'brings us much closer to the reality of what's happening in a way that people found very, very shocking', said Knappenberger. From interviews with US grunts openly questioning why they're fighting, to graphic images of women and children massacred by US soldiers at My Lai, to mass graves in Hue following the brutal North Vietnamese Tet Offensive, the American public was inundated with the horrific reality of war with a revolutionary, chilling closeness. The series also provides stunning proximity to the thinking of American presidents, owing to their seemingly naive recording of all Oval Office meetings and phone calls. Knappenberger and his team sorted through hundreds of hours of these tapes, from Kennedy through Nixon, which reveal how the war 'was often fought for political reasons, and that a lot of the decisions around what to do in Vietnam – particularly the peace process – were really being driven by electoral politics in the United States', said Knappenberger. As later revealed in the Pentagon Papers, American officials knew by 1967 that the US would never decisively 'win' against the North Vietnamese and the People's Liberation Movement, colloquially known as the Viet Cong, and misled the public to continue anyway. 'Nobody wanted to be the president who lost Vietnam,' said Knappenberger, 'and often that took priority over Vietnamese and Americans dying in a conflict that was never going to resolve the way the United States wanted it to resolve.' The toll of that conflict, for civilians and soldiers, fighters and protesters alike, is made clear through an impressive assemblage of interviews, including numerous Vietnamese participants from various factions of the civil conflict. 'So often the events of this war are told from the American perspective only,' said Knappenberger. 'But in Vietnam, it's important to remember that this was very much a civil war as much as anything else. The understanding of these events can't be separated from the fact that there are two different parts of this country who had very, very different visions of what their future might be.' Those visions splintered along overlapping, confounding lines – Viet Cong volunteers, over 70% of whom were women, who experienced brutality from the South Vietnamese government and/or US soldiers; South Vietnamese loyalists who believed in democracy in some form; soldiers from both the North and South haunted by violence; everyday citizens from both sides pulled into the war; millions of refugees to the US, Canada and other countries. Knappenberger, whose father served in Vietnam, also takes time for the various experiences of US veterans, many of whom were drafted into the conflict unwillingly or experienced profound disillusionment when faced with evidence of the war's folly. It is true, as the series recounts in nauseating detail, that the US committed many atrocities in Vietnam – 'you just hunt for people and you kill them. And you kill them any way you want', Scott Camil, a US soldier who later led Vietnam Veterans Against the War, recalls of the mindset encouraged by US military leaders in Vietnam. Camil's testimony before Congress inspired Graham Nash's song Oh! Camil (The Winter Soldier). It is also true that the war was hell, and public sentiment against it or outright contempt for veterans alienated many men traumatized by their experience. 'It's just clear that this war is still an open wound of pain and trauma for so many people,' said Knappenberger. The Vietnam War offers clear lessons of American fallibility and hubris, the intractability of political conflict, the risks of an unscrupulous, coercive and unforthcoming executive branch as exemplified by Nixon, the profound waste that is war. And yet, as the series explicitly points out, the US has repeated many of the same mistakes. Footage of campus protests in the 1960s mirror those today calling for an end to US military support of Israel's war in Gaza, which has again destroyed the lives of too many innocent civilians. Footage of the fall of Saigon eerily foreshadows the same scene in Kabul 46 years later, when the US withdrew from 20 years of counter-insurgency in Afghanistan in a hellish drama of chaos, devastation and broken promises. Then and now, 'you just have this growing sense of who are we as a country?' said Knappenberger. 'What is our role in terms of using our military around the world? And why didn't we learn? Are we the United States of amnesia?' The series exists, in part, to re-contextualize memories of Vietnam for those who lived through it. And, in part, to inform those who know little about it yet grew up in a country shaped by the conflict. 'I hope that plenty of people who were born way after these events see something of our times and of relevance here,' said Knappenberger. 'That they can understand, and can inform their lives and decisions, as younger and younger people end up continuing this human drama, as the story goes on.' Turning Point: The Vietnam War is now available on Netflix
