Word: binh
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Raoul Coutard's Hoa Binh begins on the outside. Its first shot is a map of East Asia, and there is the Vietnam of our mind's eye, a twisted banana fastened to the Asian underside. The map gives way to images of American soldiers, transporting weapons, rescuing the wounded, and patrolling the jungle. Still, it is Vietnam from without, seen through Western eyes, in terms of bombing targets, helicopter landing zones, bars and whorehouses...
...ruling politicians have imbibed only sparingly of the spirit of democracy, while adopting every trick in the freewheeling history of American ward politics and adding some new wrinkles of their own. On election day, TIME Correspondent Rudolph Rauch made a tour of the Mekong Delta province of Vinh Binh, where the government seemed particularly intent on making certain that popular Opposition Deputy Ngo Cong Duc lost (TIME, Sept. 6). Rauch's report...
...most striking thing about the polling in Vinh Binh was the thoroughness with which the ground had been prepared. There was no atmosphere of terror, but rather a palpable feeling of unease and fear that made it easy to persuade people not to see what they were looking at, not to hear what was said -in short, not to interfere. That atmosphere hung heavy at Dinh Binh, a tiny hamlet two miles down a mud footpath from the nearest village big enough to have a helicopter pad. At high noon, clusters of Vietnamese stood idly between the Catholic church...
...Binh is the first feature film to be directed by the superb French cinematographer Raoul Coutard, 47, who has photographed much of the work of Godard and Truffaut. Made entirely in Viet Nam during 1969, the movie is full of scenes of severe beauty: gas-masked soldiers outlined against a metallic sky, actors in elaborate Oriental costume running from a bombed theater, whole rows of huts bursting suddenly into flame...
...American defending his country's participation, and later, when he is taken to a political meeting, listens to a member of the N.L.F. explain its ideology. Both speakers are persuasive, and both promise victory. For Coutard, obviously, politics pale beside a single human imperative. In Vietnamese, hoa-binh means "peace." · Jay Cocks