Review: Documentary 'Jimmy in Saigon' Traces a Brother's Healing Journey

Filmmaker Peter McDowell embarked on a decades-long journey to find out how and why his older brother Jim died in Vietnam in 1972. Executive producer Dan Savage empowers Peter to compile hundreds of Jim's typed letters and record interviews with family and friends around the U.S., as well as in France and Vietnam, in the 90-minute documentary "Jimmy in Saigon."

The youngest of much older siblings, Peter was only five when the family received a telegram at their home in Champaign, Illinois informing them that 24-year-old Jim was dead. He had been drafted to fight in the Vietnam War, and chose to return to the war-torn country when his service was over. His death "plunged the family into darkness," and many of his relatives – notably his mother, Ellen – are still reluctant to visit their painful memories. They also worry that too much investigation might reveal unsavory secrets about the first-born son. Jimmy had been somewhat annoyed at Peter's "accidental" birth, but the younger siblings all looked up to Jim, and his untimely death "threw everybody into a funk." The elder son shared his love of filmmaking with Peter, likely their gayness, and their protection of privacy.

Even though he was anti-establishment and anti-war, Jim seemed to enjoy the new sights and adventures in Southeast Asia, likely including experiences with harder drugs (he had been an occasional pot smoker in high school) and, possibly, more access to gay sex. He hated a lot of the United States experience – the "fat, stupid, crass, bourgeois, materialistic people" in a society that "doesn't support contemplatives or artists" – so was pleased to return to the "hedonistic pleasures" he had found in Vietnam. Jim lived with a local family, and might have hinted about love for their daughter, when, from what we learn, it seems that he was actually in love with their son.

Peter says that the musical "Hair" changed his life, since the story is quite similar to his own loss of a loved one in a war (not to mention the 1979 film's "fair amount of homoerotic content"). "Let the Sunshine In," one of the most popular songs from "Hair," also underscores what Peter found on his long, grueling quest, and the healing those answers delivered to his family and himself. The theme of "Let the Sunshine In" allowed both filmmaker and family to "air out a wound and let it heal."

"Jimmy in Saigon" opens in New York on April 25, Los Angeles in May 8, and then opens in limited theatrical release.