Bitter fruits of the past
HANOI - A man raises himself on tip-toe, straining to
see above a wall. Peeping at the house where he once
lived, he stares at a guava tree his father once planted in
the garden. Now it is out of reach.
With this opening scene from his latest film, House of
Guavas (Mua Oi), 63-year-old Vietnamese director
Dang Nhat Minh invites audiences to peep at a period
in Vietnamese history that remains politically sensitive.
With rare empathy and candour, the film follows a
family of French-educated intellectuals who lost their
Hanoi home during the communist campaign of urban
land reform, which peaked in the north in 1959 and
1960. Aimed at fostering social equality, the campaign
left a legacy of disrupted lives and bitter property
disputes that continue to this day. The subject
represents a marked departure from Vietnam's usual
cinematic fare of heroic soldiers and self-sacrificing
villagers.
It took two years for the Vietnamese government to
approve the script. But now it looks like House of
Guavas could emerge as a breakthrough film for Minh
on the international commercial circuit, with universal
appeal in its profound treatment of memory and human
resilience. Thanks to deals signed at the Cannes festival
in May, the film is due to hit cinemas in France, Greece,
Turkey, and Canada by the end of the year. Talks with
a U.S. distributor remain in progress.
So far, though, few Vietnamese have watched House of
Guavas, as it has still not been released at home. Those
who have seen it have been impressed: "I was very
moved by that film. I share that memory," says
prominent Hanoi actress Nguyen Nhung Quynh. Like
others, she believes the movie reflects a new level of
government tolerance. "The film shows that the
leadership in Vietnam wants to tell the truth about the
mistakes they have made toward intellectuals," Quynh
asserts. "If that film script had appeared five or ten
years ago, I don't think it would have been made."
Even today, a less well-known film-maker might well
have been turned down flat. But Minh enjoys solid
respect in Vietnam's state-controlled film world. In a
career spanning more than three decades and nine
feature films, he has portrayed any number of
self-sacrificing villagers and heroic soldiers, and was
even entrusted with a bio-pic about the nation's first
president, Ho Chi Minh. But for all that, he has never
been regarded as a propaganda machine.
The son of a French-educated Hue doctor who was
active in the communist resistance, Minh was
dispatched to Moscow to learn Russian in 1955. When
he returned to Hanoi, the state assigned him the dreary
job of translating Russian subtitles on a horde of
imported Soviet-bloc films. An unusual introduction to
film, but it was to lead to an absorbing career as a
director, with Minh moving swiftly from state-imposed
plotlines to his own screenplays. For Guavas, Minh
says he drew on the experiences of his wife's family,
among other families who suffered similar losses.
More broadly, the story sprung from his conviction that
collective memories sanctioned by the state should not
obliterate individual memories. "A civilized society is a
society that respects private spiritual property," says the
director, sitting at his kitchen table in Hanoi.
Minh maintains that Vietnam's gradual reform policy
known as doi moi, launched in the late 1980s, began to
revive such respect. Still, he admits that he never
approaches his material too boldly: "I always feel like
I'm walking a tightrope," Minh says.
House of Guavas chronicles one family's loss of its own
private world. Set in the mid 1990s, but laden with
flashbacks to the late 1950s, it builds sympathy for the
"bourgeoisie" rather than demonizing them. The film tells
of a lawyer, who builds a spacious home on a quiet
Hanoi street for his wife and three young children.
Holding hands, the family sways to classical melodies
from an old Victrola; a daughter practises piano; a son
playfully traces his mother's shadow in pencil on the
wall.
Soon, this genteel world is rudely shaken. Communist
comrades arrive to use the bottom floor of the family's
home as an office, and the lawyer moves his family
upstairs. "My father was happy with what he called his
'contribution to the cause,'" recounts the daughter in an
adult reminiscence. But when the comrades tire of the
rambunctious children upstairs, they finally evict the
family altogether.
Cast out from his home, the lawyer pours his energy
into translating a voluminous legal dictionary. After his
death, his daughter attempts to have it published. But in
one evocative scene, a gust of wind scatters the
yellowed sheets into traffic. Similarly, Minh rues what
he sees as the wasted hours of writers and thinkers in
his Hanoi sphere. "I've encountered many intellectuals in
the same position," comments Minh. "Their efforts are
meaningless. They don't change anything."
Helplessness also besets the lawyer's second son, who
suffers a fall from the guava tree and moves into adult
life brain-damaged and obsessed by memories of
childhood. His sister cherishes the same memories, but
manages to forge a new life as a mother and teacher.
She warns him not to return to the old house. He does
anyway--only to be ejected by its new owner, a
high-ranking, callous cadre who flings him into a mental
institution.
"Some people thought he was retarded for living in the
past," explains Lan Huong, who won the best actress
award at the Singapore film festival in May for her
sensitive portrayal of the sister. "But it is the person
who lives without memories who is retarded. When he
forgets everything, it is very painful."
Stolen property
Some in Vietnam have criticized House of Guavas for
being too sympathetic to the sufferings of the educated
elites during the early days of communism, but others
say it doesn't go far enough. "He wants to reflect his
generation's tragedy, but the film only goes half-way,"
says Duong Trung Quoc, general secretary of the
Association of Vietnamese Historians. For example, it
refers only fleetingly to the current frustrations of many
Hanoi dwellers trying to stake legal claim to their former
property.
It's a good bet the film won't make it to local television
screens. Minh's last feature, the 1995 Nostalgia for
Countryland was criticized in local media for its sombre
portrayal of rural hardship, and never appeared on the
small screen in Vietnam. Nguyen Thi Thu Hue, a writer
for Vietnam Film Television and longtime fan of the
director, claims Vietnamese villagers wouldn't
understand House of Guavas. Others wonder whether
international audiences will understand the film, given
their skimpy knowledge of Vietnamese history.
The director has just completed his own international
odyssey, working on the Hollywood-funded The Quiet
American, which is based on Graham Greene's classic
novel about U.S. bungling in Indochina. Its multi-million
dollar budget was mind-boggling for Minh, who
managed some shoots in Vietnam and assisted the
production in a Sydney film studio. By contrast, he
completed House of Guavas with primitive equipment
and state funds of just 750 million dong (about
$52,000), plus about $116,000 in French and Swiss
funding for post-production work in Paris.
Referring to his sojourn in Sydney, the director muses,
"I cannot learn anything from this. I can only dream."
With scant technology at his disposal, Minh must revert
to the basics: imagination and guts.
By Margot Cohen - The Far Eastern Economic Review - July 5, 2001.
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