“Sir! No Sir!” – Jun 18th

“One of the most memorable chapters of the Vietnam War has also long been one of the least revisited: the antiwar movement inside the military. Called the G.I. Movement, this resistance manifested itself in countless ways: in organized protests, in desertions and in the coffeehouses that sprang up across the country near military bases. In the early 1970’s the documentary filmmaker David Zeiger worked in one such coffeehouse, the Oleo Strut in Killeen, TX, not far from Fort Hood…

In his smart, timely documentary about the G.I. Movement, SIR! NO SIR!, Mr. Zeiger takes a look at how the movement changed and occasionally even rocked the military from the ground troops on up… During the 1960’s and 70’s American newspapers routinely reported a significantly different story than the one later cooked up by Hollywood and other revisionists. This film shows that as antiwar sentiment gathered strength in American streets, a parallel movement seized the armed forces. By September 1971 dissent among the ranks had become a front-page subject in this newspaper, with a headline that read “Army Is Shaken by Crisis in Morale and Discipline.” … John Kerry’s bid for president proved that long after fighting in Vietnam came to an end, a war of words continues to rage. It’s a war of words that finds Jane Fonda – who performed for tens of thousands of troops in an antiwar revue, ‘Free the Army,’ and makes a passionate appearance in the film – still labeled Hanoi Jane. ‘Remembered as a war that was lost because of betrayal at home,’ Mr. Lembcke has written, ‘Vietnam becomes a modern-day Alamo that must be avenged, a pretext for more war and generations of more veterans.’ In SIR! NO SIR!, Mr. Zeiger remembers that war and the veterans whose struggles against it are too often forgotten.” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times