Product Description

On January 1, 1968, Barbara Sonneborn's husband, Jeff Gurvitz, left to fight in Vietnam. Eight weeks later, on February 29, 1968, he crawled out of a foxhole during a mortar attack to rescue his radio operator and was killed. Sonneborn learned of her hu

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #33983 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-05-02
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 75 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
This beautiful, shattering documentary by photographer Barbara Sonneborn began production in 1992 but was spiritually born in 1968 with the death of her husband and high school sweetheart, Jeff Gurvitz. Eight weeks into his tour of duty in Vietnam, Gurvitz was killed during a mortar attack at Khe Sanh while attempting to rescue a comrade. A tape-recorded letter he had just sent to his wife appeared in Sonneborn's mailbox some time after his awful sacrifice. Sonnenborn put it away and did not listen to it until her decision to make this film, which concerns the losses and agonies endured by women on both sides of America's disastrous military campaign in Southeast Asia. Mixing archival combat footage and striking new cinematography highlighting Vietnam's green splendor, Sonneborn bridges the past and present. She visits the scene of her husband's death and interviews a number of Vietnamese women nearly broken by grief over horrendous family loss and personal suffering: forced prostitution, torture, the abandonment of wounded loved ones. Back in the U.S., Sonneborn turns to other widows of American soldiers lost in the war and hears their stories, as well as those of other women who reveal the prolonged, terminal misery of men exposed to Agent Orange. The film's anguish is palpable yet effectively subdued, the better to let its delicate workings evoke a deep reaction from its viewers. --Tom Keogh

From The New Yorker
Barbara Sonnenborn's personal, haunting documentary concerning her journey to Vietnam on the twentieth anniversary of her husband's death is a deeply affecting look at the widows that the war left behind on both sides. Sonnenborn intercuts her frank interviews with horrific war footage and her own husband's voice (he sent her a tape that she received only after his death). Beautifully photographed, with an elegiac Vietnamese soundtrack, at times the film approaches a poetry that few documentaries of this kind have managed to achieve. -Bruce Diones
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

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Customer Reviews

Biased? Perhps, but not without merit.
"Regret to Inform" as some have stated in their reviews here, does, perhaps, have an anti-war bias behind it, but it isn't like it is disguised or anything. The film merely poses these questions:

What are the costs of war?

How have women and families been effected by war?

What are the similarities and differences of the experiences that women in America and Vietnam have in regard to the war?

While some may say that pointing out the fact that Vietnam was no direct threat to America, and that the people of Vietnam suffered much more, and their trauma is much more lasting and deeper than those who had the luxury of not having bombs dropped on their neighborhoods, or soldiers accidentally shooting their family members, the fact is that these are truisms that one cannot escape.

There is an emphasis on those women who were caught on the "wrong" side of the conflict, and yes, we do meet some women who fought alongside the Communists, but this is the point. The filmmaker wanted to show what it was like for the people whom we considered the enemy, as well as those who were our own family.

The fact that there is no treatment of those who were victimized by their own countrymen is a valid criticism, and it would be nice to see that side of the picture as well.

However, the reviewer who dismisses the fact that a couple women that we meet were fighters with the Communists is a moot point. War effects everyone, no matter which side you take. The fact that the tour guide that the woman met in the village where her husband was killed had fought alongside the Communists in that same area was an ironic, and I thought very important part of the film. To leave it out just because she was on the side of the enemy would have been shallow, and not in the spirit of the film.

Over 30 years after the war ended for us, we need to go back and see with new eyes the legacy of what we were involved with. Just as with Clint Eastwood's "Letters From Iwo Jima" there comes a time when you need to stop seeing a former enemy, and start seeing fellow human beings who suffered just as you did, regardless of what side they happened to be on.

One of the Best Vietnam War Documentaries I've Seen
I'm a university lecturer and have taught classes focusing on the Vietnam War. I'm also the sister of a Vietnam Vet who died of Agent Orange poisoning. REGRET TO INFORM is one of the best documentaries to be done about that historic period. I've used this documentary in my college classes, and it has brought many students to tears. It has also affected the soldiers in my classes profoundly. This semester, a young man who just finished his training in the Airforce, said he has been forever changed by the images in this movie and that he understands for the first time what effect war has on civilians. I believe that in looking at Sonneborn's film, we ALL have to take into account what her purpose was. I don't find this documentary to be one-sided because Sonneborn achieves what she sets out to do: to connect with other wives and allow them to talk about their pain, hoping to assuage her own pain in the process. She does look at the losses from both sides.

Indeed, in her film, war itself is the atrocity. Of course more attention is going to be paid to the consequences of "The American War" for the Vietnamese: the war was in their country. Many of them experienced total devastation and wrecked lives, whole families slaughtered. In one heart-wrenching moment, for instance, a Vietnamese woman shares that nearly her entire family was killed before they had a chance to eat breakfast. She weeps for them, even to this day.

The gift of this movie is that it shows the extent to which these women have reconciled their lives with the pain of war, and it shows the power of forgiveness. At one point, Sonneborn encounters the people who may very well have been responsible for the death of her husband, yet she treats them with dignity and respect, participates in a solemn ceremony with them for all that has been lost. Moreover, Sonneborn HAS to focus on the brutality of American troops because her own husband acknowledged it and tried to make humanistic choices in the face of all the confusion that was Vietnam. The other American women in this film have to face up to the fact that their husbands might have committed brutal acts.

One of the reasons this acknowledgment of American brutality is so important is that young people today don't understand that Americans are capable of it: they think we're more moral than others. To illustrate: one of my students thought the Vietnamese had invented and sprayed Agent Orange!

Until Americans face the fact that we are no better nor any worse than any other human being, we will be victims of our own hypocrisy and fail to grow as individuals and as a nation.

subtle one-sidedness
Definitely worth seeing for the interviews and the scenery, but you should be aware that the tone is slanted toward one side. Even though both sides are interviewed, the communists are portrayed as heroic, while the Americans are portrayed as confused and/or barbaric. Even though I don't agree with our involvement in Vietnam, I feel this film glosses over the fact that there were atrocities on both sides and that our reasons for being there were complex and difficult. Because of this, the film comes across less like a horror-of-war film and more like a pro-communist Vietnam film.

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