The documentary Letters from a Battlefield covers a variety of really important themes that can still be applied today. Grief, war, and complicated parental relationships are all of the things we see Jacqueline Lundquist go through as she rediscovers her relationship with her late father, who fought during the Vietnam War, through letters and videos he made for her and her mother. She then goes on to make 2 books, one including the perspective of a Vietnamese family who also had letters written to them by their father. She turns this entire journey into a documentary with help from a Vietnamese film crew. I was able to watch the documentary in person and would like to talk about the quality of the documentary and what I thought about it.

One of my favorite aspects of the documentary was the strong use of sound and music to elevate the emotions in the scenes. There were many simple moments in the scenes that were elevated by the sound and music played during it. One of my favorite examples was when they played cheeky music when Jacqueline’s mother briefly talked about her and her husband’s romantic life. 

This moment also got a really good response from the audience which I felt added a lot to the experience. Another example of music and sound being used was when the death of Jacqueline’s father. 

I really loved how they had a beautifully, subtle score played in the background as Jacqueline talks about the movement he passed as the music slowly swells when she stops talking. The music highlighted how devastating that moment must’ve been for a young Jacqueline.

Another strength of the documentary was the pacing. The pacing was perfect; it was able to balance saying everything that it wanted to say while also leaving the audience wanting more out of the story. There were many moments while watching the doc where I thought “Where else can the story go? There’s nothing left to cover” and that constantly kept coming up for me multiple times while viewing it which kept me extremely interested in the documentary. I didn’t only like the more technical aspects of the documentary I also liked the choices made for the story. 

I feel like including multiple perspectives for the story pushed the documentary to the next level. 

Hearing the family she met in Vietnam talk about their relationship with their father and how they felt closer to him through his almost made me tear up. I was almost pushed to the edge when one of his sons said “I’d like to meet that young man” after learning more about his father. The documentary did a good job of humanizing the two sides of the war without coming across as biased or romanticizing the war, seeing how similar the experiences of the two soldiers had emphasized the overall message of the documentary. 

I honestly didn’t expect to hear from anyone else but Jacqueline and her family. I was expecting a run-of-the-mill story of someone romanticizing war and soldiers but the story ended up being way more than that. I’m really glad I was proven wrong. The documentary not only humanizes Jacqueline’s father and makes him seem like a full human being outside of his service and emphasizes how great he was as a person, but it also acknowledges the other side of the war through the Vietnamese soldier’s letter to his family. 

This angle not only makes for a better story but it brings humanity to both sides of the war. This emphasized one of the main themes in the documentary: the importance of family.  

Honestly, This documentary was a 10 across the board. The documentary offers a very important but often forgotten point when discussing war, the people fighting in it are human. This point is sometimes overlooked and often erased because reducing the other side into a 2-dimensional enemy makes it a lot easier to convince people to kill each other. The story told in the documentary reminds us that any two sides of a war are made up of human beings who have more things in common than they might realize. Even though this documentary was made for an older audience I feel that anyone with an open mind can take something away from the documentary. I feel like many people could find themselves in the story.