Yesterday afternoon I saw Nguyen Huu Muoi‘s Scent of Burning Grass, a highly emotional antiwar film that is Vietnam’s official 2012 submission for the Best Foreign Language Feature Oscar. It’s basically a Vietnamese All Quiet on the Western Front about four North Vietnamese lads suffering the horrors of the Quang Tri battle of 1972, which was almost entirely a North Vietnamese vs. South Vietnamese face-off. It may be based on the personal experience of screenwriter Nhuan Cam Hoang, although this is just a guess.
I was affected by the depictions of suffering because I’ve never seen a Vietnamese-perspective drama about the Vietnam War, and because it reminded me once again (as if I needed reminding) that all combatants in conflicts such as these experience acute hell in more ways than I’d care to imagine. So despite the film’s problems, I was moved. There I was in a small theatre filled with Vietnamese, the only Anglo, watching a story about their pains and losses as it were, or rather the pains and losses of their fathers and grandfathers. I was inescapably affected.
But Scent of Burning Grass does, due respect, have problems. Or one problem, I should say. I’m speaking of an insufficient level of exceptional talent and refined professionalism, or at least the kind of exceptional talent and refined professionalism that would warrant even-handed comparison to the work of All Quiet‘s Lewis Milestone or, say, Paths of Glory‘s Stanley Kubrick or any number of respected wartime dramas.
The fim’s low budget creates technical believability issues that are irksome but not fatal. What is fatal, in my humble view, is that each and every actor has been told to over-act — to make feelings so explicit and upfront that one can’t help but feel annoyed.
And the digital projection at the theatre was appalling at times. Hardware commands would appear and light from the booth flooded the screen and compromised the image. Small-point-size English subtitles had been pasted into the margins of previous existing French subtitles that were slightly larger and yellow-tinted. This was tolerable except every so often the English subtitles would disappear for two or three or four minutes at a time.
A production guy whom I’ve been speaking to at Hanoi Film Festival parties told me that Scent of Burning Grass is, in his view, a “commemorative film” commissioned by and/or pushed along by the government rather than one that came out of Vietnam’s artistic community as it were. He was saying that there isn’t a sufficiently concentrated community of film artists in Vietnam, from which a process of honing and refinement and self-criticism naturally results.
And yet despite all this, I felt Scent of Burning Grass. And I’m glad I saw it.
Vietnamese actress Hai Yen (a.k.a., Do Thi Hai Yen), star of Phillip Noyce’s The Quiet American and more recently Story of Pao (’05), Adrift (’08) and Floating Lives (’10). I joined Hai Yen, her husband Calvin Lam and daughter-in-law Crystal Lam for a chat this afternoon on the outdoor terrace of Hanoi’s Hotel Metropole, a world-class establishment where Graham Greene, Charlie Chaplin, Jane Fonda, George H. W. Bush and Francois Mitterrand have stayed.
The usual deal when I visit and cover a regional film festival is balancing the necessity of respectfully attending and reviewing certain screenings and events with having to cover the general waterfront in the column (Zero Dark Thirty surge, coming Les Miz kickback) and going nuts in the usual hair-pulling way. What else is new?
The truth (of which I am not especially proud) is that yesterday I was a derelict guest of the Hanoi Film Festival and that all I did, really, was attend a nice festival party at a penthouse suite atop a big, swanky, Vegas-styled hotel. Apart form filing, I mean, and taking a two-hour walk in the old quarter. And that’s not much. After last night’s event I walked back to the hotel in the rain — about a 3 kilometer trek.
There’s an art to crossing streets in Hanoi. You can’t do it the New York way, darting quickly to avoid oncoming cabs or buses. You have to feel your way across, moving casually but ready to speed up or stop in the space of a heartbeat. Scooters and cabs swerve around you rather than you getting out of their way, like in New York. And you might run into a stray chicken or rooster at any moment. Just this afternoon I was standing on a corner and a red-necked rooster standing next to me took a leak.
You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone, and it suddenly hit me today, sitting in a swanky Hanoi hotel, that I really miss Tail of the Pup. The iconic hot dog stand disappeared almost exactly seven years ago. I might gone there three or four times at most (due to the health factor) but I loved that that vaguely gross architecture and the fact that it was sitting on San Vicente near Beverly for so many years (after being moved from its original location on La Cienega and Beverly).
The kids and I laughingly agreed in the mid ’90s that Tail of the Pup’s representation of a mustard-lathered dog on a bun looked (I’m sorry) like a bowel movement in progress.
Sigourney Weaver at original Pup stand on La Cienega near Beverly.
The Zero Dark Thirty tweets as of 8:20 am Hanoi time are a high because they’re all declaring that Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal‘s 157-minute effort is a hardcore get-down thing with a strong, pared-to-the-bone female lead (Jessica Chastain‘s Maya) and a tough-as-nails approach that eschews the usual, expected patriotic rah-rah stuff that a less austere and sophisticated approach might have delivered.
Jessica Chastain in Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal’s Zero Dark Thirty.
I won’t be seeing ZDT until next Saturday afternoon, but it appears as if this story of how Osama bin Laden finally got his is for people who seriously loved the dry, down-to-it focus of United 93 (i.e., myself) and/or were too hip and demanding to fall for films like Act of Valor. This is where I live, what I like, what I respect. Eff that rah-rah noise.
Portions of Todd McCarthy‘s Hollywood Reporter enthusiastic review read as follows: “Whether you call it well informed speculative history, docu-drama recreation or very stripped down suspense filmmaking, Zero Dark Thirty matches form and content to pretty terrific ends. And yet [pic] will be tough for some viewers to take, not only for its early scenes of torture, including water boarding but due to its denial of conventional emotionalism and non-gung ho approach to cathartic revenge-taking.
McCarthy’s suspicion is that ZDT‘s “rigorous, unsparing approach will inspire genuine enthusiasm among the serious, hardcore film crowd more than with the wider public.”
“Even though it runs more than two-and-a-half hours, Zero Dark Thirty is so pared to essentials that even politics are eliminated,” McCarthy goes on. “There’s essentially no Bush or Cheney, no Iraq War, no Obama announcing the success of the May 2, 2011 raid on Bin Laden’s in-plain-sight Pakistani compound. [And yet] the film’s power steadily and relentlessly builds over its long course, to a point that is terrifically imposing and unshakable.”
McCarthy’s most eloquent phrasings address the way Maya is presented, the quality of Chastain’s performance and how ZDT “could well be the most impressive film Bigelow has made, as well as possibly her most personal, as one keenly feels the drive of the filmmaker channeled through the intensity of Maya’s character
“Chastain carries the film in a way she’s never been asked to do before,” he writes. “Denied the opportunity to provide psychological and emotional details for Maya, she nonetheless creates a character that proves indelible and deeply felt. The entire cast works in a realistic vein to fine effect.
“Similarly absent is any personal life for the single-minded heroine; when it’s suggested at one point that she might want to have a fling, she colorfully replies that she’s not a girl who does that sort of thing. The film does question whether she gives up some of her humanity to so selflessly dedicate herself to this sole professional aim, but seems to answer that, for some, this is what represents the essence of life; everything else is preparation and waiting.
“Given no backstory, links to the world outside the CIA or any interest in smalltalk or other subjects, Maya occasionally has a drink to unwind but otherwise seems entirely incapable of shutting down her laser-like focus of her obsession. She becomes tolerably friendly with a gregarious, chatty female colleague (the ever-wonderful Jennifer Ehle) but most of the time is the only female in the room; she knows when to hold her tongue and her frustrations are legion, but she also finds her moments to assert herself and speak out to superiors when she suspects her contributions are being ignored, due either to her rank or because she’s a woman.
“Much as she did with the equally tightly wound protagonist of The Hurt Locker, Bigelow sends Maya through a mine field, this time consisting of bureaucratic trip-wires as well as potentially fatal traps. The director also successfully creates a double-clad environment that is both eerie and threatening, that of the supposedly safe and protected enclaves of the CIA that exist within the larger context of the Muslim world. From very early on, Maya seizes on the idea that the way to eventually track down Bin Laden is to identify and follow his couriers, as they will inevitably one day reveal where the Al-Qaeda leader is hiding.
“As we know, she’s right, but it takes years for the tactic to pay off. Even once she and her cohorts track down the long-elusive Abu Ahmad, following his vehicle through the chaotic streets of Rawalpindi is a nightmare. But after a succession of road blocks, setbacks and dead ends, Maya finally convinces herself that Bin Laden is holed up in the house in Abbottabad, whereupon her convictions ascend to ladder of command to the point where the CIA director (James Gandolfini) braces himself to enter the Oval Office and recommend a stealth raid to the president.
“Bigelow and Boal play a long game, moving from the brutal opening through impressively detailed but not always compelling vignettes of the CIA at work to interludes in which Maya’s ferocious dedication begins to possibly play dividends and finally to the climactic forty minutes, which lay out with extraordinary detail and precision the almost improbably successful operation that begins at Area 51 in Nevada, where we first see the amazing stealth helicopters ideally designed for such a mission, and ends with Maya identifying the body that’s brought back.”
“In between is an exceptionally riveting sequence done with no sense of rah-rah patriotic fervor but, rather, tremendous appreciation for the nervy way top professionals carry off a very risky job of work; Howard Hawks would have been impressed. Slipping low through mountain passes in darkness from Afghanistan to Pakistan with rotor noise muffled by special equipment, the two choppers drop off their Navy SEALs, one then crashes in the yard but, remarkably, the noise seems not to arouse any locals just yet.
“Because of the black-and-green, video-like quality of the night vision imagery, these momentous events possess the pictorial quality of low-budget Blair Witch/Paranormal Activity thrillers, which merely contributes further to their weirdness. And because of the deliberate pace at which the men make their way through the house, an unsettling airlessness sets in, a feeling of being suspended in time that’s unlike any equivalent climactic action sequence that comes to mind.
“But quite apart from its historical significance, at least the scene is here to provide a welcome catharsis, as at one time would not have been the case. The filmmakers initially embarked on this project before the Bin Laden raid took place, which would obviously have resulted in an entirely different sort of film, dramatically and philosophically; without a resolution, it could hardly have helped from being an existential tale of quite substantial dimensions.”
Here is Richard Corliss‘s thumbs-up Time review, and a respectful but somewhat less enthused response from Variety‘s Peter Debruge.
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
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.
Danang is a big, sprawling, intensely commercial beach town — the city with the most vibrant economy in all of Vietnam, according to Binh, my local Vidotour guy. The thing to take pictures of is the remnant of the US air base here during the Vietnam War. And the beaches are very pretty but bleachy white. Everywhere you look it’s bleachy this and bleachy that. Baking heat, white sands…and last year at this time is was cool and rainy, I’m told.
But I’m staying in the five-star Palm Garden Beach Resort, which is right on Cua Dai Beach and close to the historical city of Hoi An, which is 2000 years old.
Huong of Vidotour met me in Hanoi’s Movenpick lobby at 7:15 am, and we left for the airport directly in order to safely catch my 9:20 am flight to Danang (which is where I’m posting this from). I forget the driver’s name but he’s as cool and smooth as Huong. Scooter traffic is heavy in Hanoi around 7:30 am, and it gets a lot heavier an hour later.
Vietnam Airlines flights from Hanoi to Danang take exactly an hour.
The Vietnamese Dong vs. the US dollar is about 20,833 to 1. Seriously. So a lunch that might cost $5 or $6 US costs about 100,000 or 120,000 dong. 500,000 Vietnamese dong are worth about $24 dollars, so 2 million dong is worth $96 clams, give or take.
Huong leading me out of the Movenpick before jumping into the van.
It’s relatively common on Japan Airlines flights (or at least it was on last night’s Tokyo-to-Hanoi flight) for passengers to wear surgical masks, presumably out of fear that circulated fuselage air contains high levels of bacteria. Incidentally, I sat in coach from Honolulu on and nobody leaned their seat back into my 18 inches of private space. In fact no one leaned their seats back at all. Do Asian people understand more clearly how rude and thoughtless this is? Or were they simply fortunate enough to be born without the American asshole gene?
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