The Hanoi Film Festival began last night at a large government building two or three blocks from the Movenpick. I was happy to attend in my natty suit-and-tie and be part of the throng. The opening-night event was professionally handled and designed, and it was entirely pleasant to hang with Hanoi’s elite and learn a little about this and that. People clapped as I walked up the red carpet for no reason other than it was the polite or spirited thing to do. I smiled and felt mildly embarassed.

Opening-night festivities of film festivals are exactly the same the world over, and if I was running a film festival I would deliver the exact same routine. And opening-night attendees are the same; ditto the pre-screening schmooze hour and the post-screening after-party. With a few minor cosmetic chances I could have been at any film festival anywhere. Everybody wants to be famous and well-dressed and respected and desired.

Anyway, I was standing in the upstairs hall and listening to Hoang Tuan Anht, Vietnam’s Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism, give a speech about the aspirations of the festival and of Vietnam in general, and a thought occured. I looked around at the middle-aged men in tuxedos and women in beautiful ball gowns and various expats and guests amiably chatting and the waiters and busboys running around, and I thought to myself, “The United States fought a war and lost the lives of 58,000 men to stop this?”

The people running this event are technically Communists and that was once a fearsome term to some, but who cares now? There was once reason to be concerned about the bureaucratic rigidity and corruption of a system dedicated to fighting capitalism but look at this country now, just trying to survive and prosper and get along. People are the same the world over. People change, societies adapt, money ebbs and flows, prejudice fades.

The U.S. fought a ruinous and tragic war so that the fathers of the people currently running things in Vietnam could be prevented from unifying the country and, in the minds of the U.S. hawks and conservatives, from helping to perpetuate worldwide Communist domination, which of course went out the window in 1989 and ’90. The left saw through the crap in the ’60s and early ’70s but now even the dimmest people in the world realize that the Vietnam War was an appalling and sickening tragedy caused by blindness and obstinacy and willful ignorance.

I wish I could say that the opening-night film, a fanciful thing called Hot Sand about a magical mermaid, was good or even half-decent. I’d hoped it might aspire to the level of Neil Jordan‘s Ondine (’09) or Ron Howard‘s Splash (’84)…nope.

Sonja Heinen of the World Cinema Fudn and Berlinale co-production market

My Vietnam atmosphere pics are mounting up, I realize, and perhaps are starting to seem a little monotonous to some, but this is what’s happening on my end and I’ll be seeing it through. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and every day (sorry for the cliche) is a feast for the senses and not incidentally the soul, and it’s Sunday anyway so where’s the harm?

My flight from Hue landed at 9:30 am, and I was back at the Hanoi Movenpick by 10:15 or so. At 12:30 pm I went to a lunch at Ly Club with Hanoi Film Festival sponsor and Vidotour president and CEO Nguyen Mai, Vietnamese actor Chi Bao, finance director But Dinh Anh and actor-model Nhan Phuc Vinh. Then I walked back to the Movenpick with good-natured Vidotour employee Nguyen Son.

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With the ecstatic gushing for Les Miserables following Friday’s Avery Fisher Hall screening, it’s a given that the backlash will kick in…when? After the first round of LA screenings this weekend? Or a bit later? I knew a backlash was in the cards when Lyn Stairmaster wrote at the end of his rave, “Questions, bitches?” That meant “put up your dukes….the fans of this film will face you on the barricades.” But if Les Miz is as good as some insist, the counter-backlash will kick in sometime in mid-December and it’ll be clear sailing.

If Gabe the Playlist is reading this, I’d appreciate a thought or two.

The five-day Hanoi Film Festival begins today…well, tonight for me. My Hue-to-Hanoi flight leaves this morning around 8:30 am, but I’ll need to settle down and check in and file a bit before opening-night festivities. I’ll be working it for four days straight and then leaving Hanoi for Tokyo around midnight on Wednesday, 11.28. And I definitely intend to rent a scooter and buzz around while wearing a surgical mask. And I’m looking forward to whatever occurs and hoping to see something striking or even startling.

Here are the 14 films in competition. Two of the non-regional films — A Separation and We Need To Talk About Kevin — are last year’s news, but it should be interesting to gauge reactions to Michael Haneke‘s Amour, which I’ve now seen three times. The festival is handing out cash prizes to regional filmmakers. There’s a trip to Ha Long Bay planned for Tuesday.

Sonja Heinen, Berlinale co-production market and a project manager of the World Cinema Fund, is running or officiating over the Hanoi film campus, which is some kind of advisory-instructional program. I don’t know her but she’s German and my maternal grandfather was of German ancestry and here we are in Hanoi with bombs bursting and bullets whizzing past our heads.

Baby, it’s dark outside at 5:20 am. Actually it’s now 5:40 am. Time flies when you’re filing.

Vidotour guide Nguyen Thai Binh (center) and family, at family-run restaurant in Hue — Saturday, 11.24, 6:55 pm.

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The drive from Hoi An to Hue took a good 200 minutes due to (a) the road snaking up and down a large green mountain, and (b) traffic rules dictating maximum speeds of 60 kph, or roughly 40 mph. I checked into Pilgrimmage Village around 2:25 pm and now it’s off to Hue, renting scooters, the Citadel, a dinner and a moonlight put-put cruise down the Perfume River.

Is there any way to process trailers for films like this except to say to yourself “here we go again”? Another assault on normal everyday domesticity by “the other.” And yet it seems (a terms that means nothing when you’re talking about a trailer) a cut or two above. Maybe.

Not that the New Yorker‘s Richard Brody is strange, far from it, but his views over the years have sometimes felt apart and exotic from my own. Which is fine. It’s just that “not everything distinctive is good” struck a chord.

This, I realize, is not anyone’s idea of an exceptional video clip. But if you’ve never been to Vietnam and you want a little taste of what it’s like to be driving back to Hoi An from My Son around 6:20 pm (it gets dark here fairly early) just as you’re turning onto Route 1A, here you go. This delivers about 33% of what it really felt and looked and sounded like. This is travel as it should be. Raw, robust, chaotic, aromatic, tingly.

For whatever reason I can’t load the Les Miserables rave posted by Hollywood Reporter award-season columnist Scott Feinberg, and I’ve got really great wifi over here. The Universal release is going to win Best Picture apparently, and hats off to Tom Hooper and the gang if it does. If it’s over, it’s over. I can live with this, and perhaps I’ll celebrate it. The proof is in the pudding.

I actually felt the wave coming a week ago when a lady friend told me she and her daughter can’t wait to see Les Miserables “because I know I’m going to melt.” That convinced me more than Feinberg’s report.

Just keep in mind that it’s natural for trade reporters to feel flattered and excited at having been given a first-anywhere peek at a heavily hyped Oscar-bait release from a big studio, and that this can sometimes result in a more enthusiastic response than you might get from a dispassionate, even-keel viewer at another venue. I’m just saying.

L.A. Times reporter Glenn Whipp writes that “granted, the reaction mirrored the rapturuous tweets that greeted the year’s other high-profile festival films such as Lincoln, Argo and The Master, and should probably be taken with a grain or two of salt. At these early screenings, haters are few and far between.

He also noted that L.A. Times film writer Steven Zeitchik “apparently was the only one keeping his handkerchief in his pocket.”

“Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables [is] a very well done if methodical take on the musical staple,” Zeitchik tweeted. “Hathaway is a stand-out, albeit in very few scenes; Jackman and Crowe singing is solid but doesn’t reach for as much.”

The screening happened Friday afternoon at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. It’s now 8:27 pm in Manhattan and 8:27 am (Saturday) in Hoi An.

Data Lounge’s “Lyn Stairmaster” reports as follows:

“It’s 100% successful, absolutely great on every level. It will be hard to beat for Best Picture, Best Director (Tom Hooper), Best Actor (Hugh Jackman) and Best Supporting Actress (Anne Hathaway). The little kid who plays Gavroche should be up for Best Supporting Actor. The one new song ‘Suddenly’ is lovely and could be up for Best Song if there’s a category.

“There was huge applause after pretty much every musical number, particularly Jackman’s and Hathaway’s. Russell Crowe (Javert) is the only one I had a teensy problem with because he’s not a singer like the others but he still looks great and acts it well.

“Hooper, Hathaway, Eddie Redmayne (Marius), Amanda Seyfried (Cosette) and Samantha Barks (Eponine) did a q&a afterwards. Hooper gave a speech before the screening, telling us he had only put the finishing touches on it at 2 am on Wednesday morning.

“Questions, bitches?”

Before heading out to My Son Binh took me to the modest manufacturing headquarters of Ha Linh, the longest-running, most established maker of bamboo lanterns in the area. 15 or so employees, age-old craftsmanship, beautiful vibe. I bought three mid-sized lanterns for about $3 a pop…or was it less? Wires and bulbs included.

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Yesterday afternoon Binh (my brilliant Vidotour travel guide) and the driver took me about 45 kilometers southwest of Hoi An to the hallowed shrine of My Son, a cluster of ancient Hindu temples built between the 4th and 14th Century. The trip meant driving for an hour through a symphony of rural atmosphere and flavor and cultural detail. I felt like a wide-eyed lad of five. Everything was new. To die for.

Hindu temple at My Son — Friday, 11.23, 3:55 pm.

Vidotour guide Nguyen Thai Binh (just call him Binh) at the entrance to the shrine.

I sat in the back seat and drank it all in. Earthy aromas, water buffalos, fields and rice paddies, three or four lively ragtag villages (which weren’t even acknowledged on the iPhone 5’s map app), dense forest, hundreds on scooters and bicycles.

The valley at My Son was a site of religious ceremony for kings of the ruling dynasties of Champa, as well as a burial place for Cham royalty and national heroes. The Cham (who still live and maintain a marginal culture in Vietnam) more or less ran the show in what we now call Southern Vietnam until the 15th Century of thereabouts.

The temples (made of brownish, orange-y brick) are located in a valley surrounded by two mountain ranges. The area is roughly two kilometers wide (although it felt smaller), and is close to Duy Phu in the Quang Nam district, and about 10 kilometers from the historic town of Tra Kieu. The temples dedicated to the worship of the god Shiva.

I told Binh that I was a bit of Hindu in my early 20s due to a series of LSD meditations with readings of the Bhagavad Gita.

Most of the temples were destroyed by U.S. forces during the Vietnam War. That’s really something to be proud of, U.S. Air Force! There are four or five huge bomb craters in the vicinity. Binh isn’t sure precisely what year this happened, but the planes were apparently trying to kill some Viet Cong who were hiding in or near the temples for shelter. Binh’s grandfather, Vo Trong Khiet, was a Vietcong solder from 1965 until his death in the mountainous area near Laos sometime around 1968 — Binh isn’t sure exactly when.

It’s quite a feeling for an American walking through and knowing that your guys did this. Hell, they weren’t my guys. They never have been. Yes, war is war and you do what you can do lay waste the opposition, but you’d think the guys dropping the bombs would’ve thought twice.

One of the bomb craters from the U.S. aerial attack.