"Pig" is not quite as narratively focused in terms of a brew of Archival political talking heads and docu-newsreels with (for then) newly shot interviews as one gets with Marcel Ophuls work, and it can't help but have some competition now in more recent years with Ken Burns and his Vietnam War epic documentary (frankly except for Hearts and Minds I'm not sure how many others would fare by comparison at such a tall order). It's one of those times with a documentary where I was never exactly lost with the information that is given, but a conventional Narrator at points would've been a boost.
Yet this is nevertheless fascinating for the scope of how this filmmaker digs into how while some of the escalations were on the Americans, but there was also rampant corruption in the governments of South Vietnam over the years as well (at least according to some of these politicians who one should take with a grain or rock of salt). All of those moments of rampant viomece and horrors in the streets of those cities are captivating, and even just that one shot of the planes dropping the multitudes of bombs has this awful elegance to it. I should also note that to have that politician say outright how clearly it was to anyone with two brain cells that going past aid to Vietnam would lead to disaster is really something else.
But most of all (of course) is the section with the Buddhist priests who march in protest and then who burned themselves alive; it's odd to think the first time I saw this was in Bergman's Persona (the only time that film references something so topical and immediate), though as I age I get it: your soul is always going to ache watching that scene, and it only becomes more harrowing and heartbreaking for all of humanity the more horrors happen throughout humankind.
