The parable of the unresponsive witnesses:

...Shortly after his release he became one of the founders of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam...

...He didn't die of old age...

...The original signatures were kept at the local pagoda...

...He was 56...

...I Texas Bill and Abby lead the farmer to believe that they ar brother and sister rather than lovers, which is just the sort c ambiguity that would beset the imagination of a girl Linda' age...

...As they had with his arrest in 1968, Amnesty International and the International Fellowship of Reconciliation sought to stimulate efforts in support of his release...

...Cooperation and tolerance were Vietnam's only hope and the basis of the Peace Accords, with the pledge of all the signers to ensure freedom of speech, press, meeting, organization, political activity, belief, movement, residence and work...

...Both were prisoners of the earlier Saigon govern- merits...

...Part of her daily ritual was a walk which took her past a park near her home...

...The space around the bi1 Victorian house where the farmer lives is like the enchante, void in which a child often seems to see events take place...

...He was a frail man...

...Not one lifted the telephone and called the police...

...He was a Buddhist monk...

...Thich Huyen Quang is now reported !n weak condition, close to death, and Thich Quang Do in seriously weakened condition...

...The Texa landscape we find in the film is, like the landscape in fair tales, vast and featureless...

...It must, however, have been a significant factor in the abrupt collapse of the military front of the Saigon government...

...It's a rich farmer (Sam Shepard) with whor Linda and Bill and Bill's girl Abby (Brooke Adams) live i Texas...

...It was a slow and noisy death...

...Instead, the Hanoi government began a methodical cam- paign of closing all Buddhist social service projects and schools, though often there were no goverment cadres to continue the tasks...

...nor is the news that some of them have died...

...One would think individu- als of the character alleged would prefer aspirin to fire as a means of dying...

...On October 17, 1978 he died: There had not been any public outcry, not one demonstration, not one vigil at any embassy of the Vietnamese government...

...What made news of Kitty's death was the neighborhood...

...Kitty Genovese wouldn't be surprised...

...Congress...

...Now Buddhists had to make clearer than ever, he said, that their concern has nothing to do with partisan politics but only the intention to "dissipate hatred, (and) to work for conditions of mutual acceptance and cooperation on the part of those who hold different political and ideological positions...

...Here all th possibilities Maleck experimented with so brilliantly in Bad lands find their true embodiment in the person of Linda...

...But their efforts had erased world respect for the Saigon regimes which had so bitterly repressed the Buddh- ists...

...Just as all portraits drawn by a novice artist will tend to look like the artist himself, so all the characters in Days of Heaven as they are revealed by Linda, seem to be different aspects of single personality...

...Moral: you ought to be part of the peace movement, which believes in keeping the windows open, unshaded and making noises in favor of letting people die of old age...

...and she goes on to explain, amon other things, how he used to entertain her by juggling...

...acceptance of truth and of justice determination not to speak, not to listen to, and not to do anything which can create division, hatred and conflict...

...A long-time peace activist and formerly one of the editors of The Catholic Worker...

...The first Vietnam-related dem- onstration I took part in was in response to the self-immolation of another Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, in June 1963...

...They shouted not a word of protest...

...A little like death in Kew Gardens...

...Thich Quang Do lost a lung as a result of torture...

...Both Kitty Genovese and Thich Thien Mirth died before silent audiences...

...Hoping that it wasn't the consequences of torture (which...

...Lik America at the time of the First War, when the film take place, Linda is at the age where she is about to cross over fror innocence into experience...

...It is for this reason," he went on, "that the Unified Buddhist Church earnestly calls on all Buddhists to become more open, more understanding, and to establish real human relationships with all their compatriots, no matter what politi- cal and ideological position they may hold...

...It was the first time that the different sects of Buddhism--as walled apart by history as Catholic and Protestant Christians-- overcame their divisions...

...One of the strategists of the "Do Not Shoot Your Own Brother" campaign was Thich Thien Minh...

...published by the Catholic Truth Society, London and one of the contributors to Thomas Merton: Prophet in the Belly of a Whale (Paulist Press...

...They heard the cries, closed their windows, pulled the shades...

...A cease-fire had been the dominant goal of the Buddhists for nearly a decade--many had died or suffered torture to bring it about...

...He survived, but was crippled ever since...

...Much of the material in Days of Heaven--the romantic us of natural light, the grand Victorian house that belongs to th farmer, the imagery of fire, a savagely protective father figur and the narrative--come from writer-director Terenc Maleck's first film,Badlands...

...Thich Thien Minh went to prison again in 1968...

...He had helped to set up an effective under- ground for draft resisters and military deserters...

...Its precise impact cannot yet be determined...

...Like the other Buddhist monks, Amnesty had adopted him as a Prisoner of Conscience...

...But, for New York, this wasn't headline news...

...I fear not many 'peace' organizations," he went on, "'will notice this event or respond to it with the energy they might give had it happened in South Africa...

...Twelve years ago, then a leader of the Buddhist opposition to the Saigon government, a grenade was hidden under the seat of his car...

...The letter launched a Buddhist campaign to make the cease- fire that had been agreed on in Paris work on the ground in Vietnam...

...They had speeded the war's end and saved countless lives...

...The campaign was carried on during the last months of the war...

...Beneath the sheer prettiness of Nestor Almen dros's photography in th!s film there is always a cutting edge realism, an edge perfectly implied by the Chicago guttersnip accent with which Linda tells this fairy-tale story, What gives Days of Heaven its character, however, is th way that it remains Linda's innocence--the way that it recap tures a child's view of the world...

...One night a man came out of the bushes and repeatedly attacked her with a knife-- venturing out, striking, retreating, returning-- until she was finally dead...

...W ITH THE WAR'S end, one would have thought a certain respect andeven honor might be accorded the Buddhsts by the victors...

...Amnesty International and the Interfiational Fellowship of Reconciliation were successful in stimulating interest in Thich Thien Minh's imprisonment at that time...

...A year later, Thich Thien Minh was arrested...

...On April 7, 1977, following official protests by the Unified 22 December 1978:815 Buddhist Church of a Draft law making no provision for conscientious objection and shortly after a vigorous protest of the attempted confiscation of an orphanage, there was a night raid on the headquarters of the Church in which six leaders were arrested, including Thich Huyen Quang, the UBC's previous General Secretary, and Thich Quang Do, his succes- sor...

...Such elemental imagery is suited to Days of Heaven because the film is itself an elemental vision, the vision of a twelve- or thirteen-year-old girl, Linda (Linda Manz), who is its narrator...

...Like children who don' understand the import of all that is said, we often catch onl~ bits and snatches of the conversation, and critical moments il the action tend to be done, like children's theater, in pan tomime...

...Younger monks and nuns were required to leave their monasteries...

...They hadn't been part of the war, of course, and had in fact stood in opposition to all killing, no matter what the political motive...

...Had not the Marxist government in East Germany, rigid as it was in many regards, honored the Confessing Church through which a minority of German Christians had resisted Hitler...

...Kitty lived in the Kew Gardens section of New York...

...he served a one-year prison term for draft record destruction in ~ilwaukee in 1968...

...Chile, Argentina, or South Korea...

...Among those who took the vows were large numbers of soldiers, to whom the campaign was particularly directed...

...When he sat on it,the explosion destroyed permanently all the muscles of his lower back...

...Visually Maleck's film ha the same, child-like equanimity to it that Linda's narration has The film sees the world with that startling freshness which ca: shine through a youngster's first insights into life...

...If such a one were imprisoned in the United States, what a furor there would be--from the very people who will pay no attention to this tragedy in Vietnam and others like it...

...The vows were printed in small cards in tens of thousands of copies in order to be small enough to be kept with one's identity papers...

...Altars and statues were destroyed in a number of instances...

...These few lines (of the Accords)," Thich Thien Minh commented, "contain more than enough wisdom for the development of mutual understanding, cooperation and the preservation of peace.'" But implementation of the Accords could only occur if those not identified with either side-- previously held suspect by both sides--could bring about an attitudinal change among the war's partisans...

...IIIIII I IIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIII Screen I IIH II II IIII I I II IIIII CHILDREN OF PARADISE INNOCENCE AND BEYOND D AYS OF HEAVEN is a film of elemental images--images of earth, air, fire and water...

...The campaign for his release made a difference, as is so often the case...

...We may be able to restore brotherhood...

...He and other Buddhist leaders remained in jail until the fall of the Diem regime that November...

...It was the Parable of the Unresponsive Witnesses...

...Without ideological and political doc- trines, we can still live in peace, but without respect for life, the world will be destroyed...

...A VIETNAMESE MARTYR The parable of the unresponsive witnesses JAMES H. FOREST URING the latter '60s, when giving talks on the ways and reasons for resisting the Vietnam war, I very" often told the story of a woman named Kitty Genovese...

...Keeping the vows down to the last point, they stopped killing and lhen began to abandon their weapons and uniforms...

...This is not to say that the world as seen by Linda is devoid o; Commonweal: 816...

...But all this material gains a ne~ kind of tightness, a justness, in Days of Heaven...

...At last, he wrote, there is a chance "to end much" of the suffering that has been inflicted on our people so long...

...It" as if this pristine landscape, these endless, rolling fields o wheat, had been created simply by not noticing or bothering t, mention any trees...

...After all when you're a girl Linda's age, identities do get mixed up...

...This is why her narration and th film's vision of the world, which Maleck fits to that narration are capacious enough to contain all the possibilities, all th contrarieties...

...A number of monks and nuns, as in earlier years, burned them- selves to death in protest--to which the government re-sponded with charges that these monks and nuns were actually sex criminals committing suicide...

...A number of New York pacifists picketed the residence-office of the South Vietnamese observer to the United Nations...

...Charged with '+defamation of the military," he was sentenced to fifteen years at hard labor...

...Even the Lutherans and Catholics were allowed to set up and maintain schools, hospitals and a wide range of social service projects...

...This is the key to the film's extraordinary beauty: it sees the world from this woman-child's point of view...

...Kitty Genovese died ten years ago...

...In the apartments across the street from the park, upwards of three dozen witnesses heard Kitty's cries for help...

...The American Fel- lowship of Reconciliation was able to get a delegation in to visit Thich Thien Minh in prison in the summer of 1968...

...Em-phasizing Thich Thien Minh's frailty, he said, "I fear he cannot long survive the harsh life of a prisoner...

...After ninc months, Thieu signed a Presidential Pardon...

...He returned to his work in the Buddhist peace movement, which had become the largest undertaking of nonviolent resistance we have seen in this century apart from India in Gandhi's time...

...They raced to Saigon as fast as the tanks would move...

...He recalled precedents for cooperation and toleration in earlier Vietnamese history...

...Many pagodas were confiscated...

...Six days ago as I write a man named Thich Thien Minh died in Ho Chi Minh City...

...it has been charged, other monks suffered in a Vietnamese prison last year), one can guess his death was from disease or exhaustion I JAMES H. FOREST is coordinator of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation in Holland...

...or both...

...Then came the two most remarkable sentences of the letter, as brief a definition as one will ever find of the vocation of the peacemaker: "All of us should speak the word of the heart and of the religious faith we live: no ideological or political doctrine should be considered more important than life and love for our fellow human beings...

...Commonweah 814 T HICH THIEN MINH remained unquieted...

...The remarkable event was the result of cooperation in the long struggle against Diem, who had intended the division and erosion of Buddhism in Vietnam...

...The authorities haven't explained his death...

...The next year, 1974, the cease-fire collapsing, the Buddh- ists took the initiative a step further, launching a campaign called "Do Not Shoot Your Own Brother.'" Buddhists were asked to commit themselves to four vows through which to "extinguish the flames of war": demonstration of love and reverence for life...

...The latter two, especially, seem to circumscribe events in this film, which begins with the stoking of a blast furnace in Chicago and ends in a river in Texas...

...But late on it's not her brother, Bill (Richard Gere), who actually doe the juggling...

...Aurally the film is much the same, witl stretches of dialogue going unheard...

...In the first sentence of her narration, fc instance, Linda tells us, "Me and my brudder, it used to be jm me an' my brudder...

...One might be more helpful to people dying of war than Kitty's neighbors were to her...

...He is the author of Thomas Melton: A Brief Biography...

...But the cell Thich Thien Minh died in was in a prison...

...In that parable one could see Americans at another window: the window of the television screen, watching in that austere electric light the death of Vietnamese, watching without screaming, or weeping, or imagining getting in the way of what American taxes were buying in the casualty store...

...In January 1973, when the Paris Peace Accords were signed, Thich Thien Minh was head of the Unified Buddhist Church...

...and determination to refuse taking up arms to attack our brothers...

...Characteristics attributed to one person get switched t. someone else this way...

...Among the material circulated was a letter from Thich Nhat Hanh, head of the Vietnamese Buddhist Peace Delegation in France, over- seas representative of the Unified Buddhist Church...

...He had been preaching annoying, well-attended and widely-publicized sermons attacking the Saigon and Hanoi governments for corruption and terrorism...

...The room of a monk is called a cell...

...In August, he was cited in Amnesty's annual Prisoner of Conscience Week, this year on the theme, "For- gotten Prisoners...

...Identities slip and slide as if Linda wer making them all up and gets confused sometimes...

...IFOR had published and widely distributed news of the arrest and the urgent need for response...

...On behalf of the Church's Executive Council, he wrote a letter to be read aloud in all the pagodas of South Vietnam which, I suppose, will one day be included in an- thologies of important statements of world religious leaders...

...The harassment, arrest and imprisonment of Buddhist monks and nuns in Vietnam is no new thing...

...He was one of the principal strategists of the continuing Buddhist struggle to end the war...

...Although there are rivers an~ woods somewhere nearby the farm, each place is a separat and discreet setting, We never see the continuity among them how one gets from one to the other...

...The group included Representative John Conyers of the U.S...

...The regiments of General Giap, as he has since written, were astonished to discover no army confronted them...

...His life was very different from that Kitty Genovese had lived, but the deaths were rather similar...

...Asked by his visitors what he was guilty of, the crippled monk responded, '+My only offense is that I believe in peace...

...It was that same summer that Thich Thien Minh was first imprisoned...