Agent Orange: A Personal Requiem (review)

During the Vietnam War, the United States military sprayed approximately 80 million liters of chemical agents as part of a program called Operation Ranch Hand. The aim was to destroy enemy food crops and force villagers into government-controlled hamlets, where they could, in theory, be won over through reforms. In practice, the sprayings drove people into the arms of the revolutionary National Liberation Front, while ravaging Vietnam's environmental landscape. They left an additional long-term effect, in causing diseases such as cancer and long-term growth deficiencies. Masako Sakata's moving documentary Agent Orange: A Personal Requiem delves into the harrowing human ramifications of the U.S. chemical warfare in Vietnam through the story of her husband Greg Davis, who died of liver cancer at the age of 54, almost certainly from the effects of Agent Orange.

Davis served for three years in the U.S. military and saw heavy combat duty. He came back highly critical of U.S. policy and tried to demonstrate the gruesome character of modern warfare while serving as a photojournalist for Time magazine and other publications worldwide, in venues like Afghanistan. Described as an anarchist and free spirit, Davis returned several times to Vietnam in the 1980s and 1990s in order to become better acquainted with the country's history and culture. It was during those visits that he encountered an unusual number of genetically-mutated children bearing the effects of chemical defoliation. He subsequently began work with a group of veterans to broadcast attention to the children's plight, until his untimely death from the very same source.

Sakata lucidly chronicles these efforts and makes skillful use of archival footage to juxtapose U.S. military propaganda from the early 1960s on defoliation with the memories of Vietnamese villagers who experienced the attacks. While U.S. Army films declare the defoliants to be "harmless to man," a Vietnamese woman is quoted as stating: "The planes came in the morning, everything was covered in powder...and then the trees died." Sakata goes on to graphically document the long-term effects of Agent Orange in Cam Nghia in Quang Tri Province in the Central Highlands, which locals refer to as a "village of the damned." It was subject to extraordinary levels of dioxin spraying, resulting in high numbers of children being born with cognitive disabilities and physical deformities. The situation is similar in Bien Hoa, where doctors confirm that over 1,000 disabled children in a city of 30,000 suffer from the effects of defoliants. These children represent the continued "collateral damage" of a conflict, to use the words of journalist Philip Jones Griffith, and have remained marginalized in American popular discourse and memory. More than three decades after its use has been discontinued, Agent Orange still continues to contaminate the environment and inhabitants of Vietnam, according to a lawsuit against Dow Chemical, Monsanto, and others, which has been brought before a federal court on behalf of the chemical's Vietnamese victims.

On the whole, Sakata has provided a powerful and disturbing window into the horrors of the Vietnam War, which have been sanitized in most mainstream media and even scholarly depictions. The film also serves as a tribute to her husband and other veterans who have compassionately attempted to redress what they felt were wrongs they committed as young men. One of the film's most significant contributions is Sakata's sensitivity to the Vietnamese perspective, showing not only the victimization of its people but also their dignity and the remarkable care that has been shown for the disabled. Sakata's message is particularly resonant, given current realities of what historian Andrew Bacevich termed the "national seduction with war," which shows only partial signs of ebbing.