While the film may be past its prime, it is still worth seeing for historical reference. The director, a communist, presents a warm, glowing image of Ho Chi Mihn as an honest who loves his country, culture, and people. The U.S. and Europe are corrupt, oppressive and brutal.
Comprised primarily of interviews and news footage, we see a variety of people talking about war-related items, and unless people have studied the war, it seems improbable they'll keep track of who says what (check out imdb's list of cast & crew). Politicians and military men from the U.S., and France and the 'puppet' leaders of Vietnam are shown making questionable statements. Historians (such as a professor of Buddhism) and journalists are shown explaining how the politicians and military are wrong. Dozens of people comment as we see harsh images of various things.
The film has a couple interesting technical aspects. To get to the first point, one should understand that the director was involved in the NYC art scene, and friendly with Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, and John Cage (among others). In 'Pig', the soundtrack reveals this influence with compositions either by John Cage himself, or a student. Of more influential note, this is one of the (if not THE) first 'war' documentary that uses no narration. The typical newsreel films had images of events, with a voice over explaining what occurred. This does not. The camera either introduces a speaker with a text overlay of their name and title, or the viewer is expected to know their identity. We see each speaker, and as the current speaker talks, images either express his idea, or contrast against to imply the speaker is lying. This is complete propaganda yet it comes off as informational -- but one cannot deny the huge and deeply entrenched bias at work. It is understandable that this film got press attention, buzz, and that it was banned in several U.S. cities. It not only gives a message counter the that of the Government, it does so in an underhanded and way that will be emotionally moving to its sympathizers and the uninformed, but which will been seen as the one-sided pleading case that it is by others.
The speaker at this showing, Craig Eisendrath, felt the anti-war protests were largely because the U.S. had no moral backing for the war, and the citizenry eventually saw that. His background: Eisendrath started at the State Department in 1958. He said that in 1961, he got to read the CIA's white paper on Vietnam, and it convinced him, "that this would not be a war we'd want to get into." He was also involved in drafting the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, is currently a Senior Fellow of The Center for International Policy and is author of (among others) "National Insecurity: U.S. Intelligence After the Cold War" and other books (see CIP's books before heading to amazon or wherever). He's unabashedly anti-war.