Download PDF of this full issue: v30n1.pdf (11.5 MB)

It Starts When It Ends

By Horace Coleman (Reviewer)

Regret to Inform, Barbara Sonneborn (Artistic License Films)

"It starts when it ends," filmmaker Barbara Sonneborn has said about war.

We think war is macho - and male. And it is. But men aren't the only ones it touches. We think of American suffering and ignore that of Vietnamese - ally or foe, those in the middle - and other Asians. Or that of women. It's as if the Wall and 58,000 American KIA blot out memory or consideration of all pain, suffering and loss not American, not male.

As we all learned, in war it's best not to be a civilian. We forget to remember that more civilians than GIs - and women in particular - are KIAs and MIAs of a different and lingering sort.

For instance, we've heard stories about vets being spit on, though no one we know actually had that happen to them. But poet/nurse/vet Dusty was slapped for being a 'Nam vet. Regret to Inform examines war's effects on women wounded in another way.

PBS (who else?) aired Regret, a beautifully shot, deeply felt, haunting odyssey through 'Nam. Sonneborn travels to the place where her young husband died, widowing her at 24. Her Vietnamese refugee friend and guide, silent for years, finally tells what she saw and what she did to survive. Regret is a bittersweet travelogue, a journey through soul and time to meet one particular ghost and do an odd reconciliation and acceptance. As Sonneborn travels, other women - American and from the former North Vietnam - tell slivers of their stories. They, and she, revisit twisted pasts while looking at tangled presents.

Sonneborn probes her own trampled love and stifled youth, eloquently airing her suppressed and repressed feelings. Other women do the same. Something as bright and illuminating as a parachute flare on a stark, dark, deadly night slowly falls over us.

In some locales, Arkansas for instance, a little righteous acting up had to be done to have this film shown. The moving and quiet pain of woman after woman, finally breaking the surface of indifference, was evidently too much for some to consider. Sonneborn doesn't deal with Big Causes or Important Ideas. "Little" things (atoms of regret, paths of revelation, roads of remembrance leading to rivers of tears, certain looks, sighs and heaves) show us: war is not good and stays in the heart and mind.

One American woman speaks of her husband who survived 'Nam but died of cancer, probably caused by Agent Orange.

Regret isn't flashy, splashy or preachy. It's well made, sincere, searching and searing. Sonneborn has created a work that took years to finance and to finish. She did a masterful job at both tasks. Catch a PBS rerun. Rent it for a group showing from Artistic License Films (250 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10107 (212) 265-9124). Spread the word. Regret to Inform is well worth seeing. It shows the Vietnam experience from a previously unseen perspective.