For T.
This text is a translation from a
review, published in shomingeki No. 4, June 1997 with added comments.
The rice fields are shining greenish
golden. Nham, a 17 years old boy works with others in a brickworks.
We see how he works, how he sweats and how he moans because of this
strain. After the work he lays down on the bricks which are ready to
be burnt. The others, exhausted as well are gathering to relax. The
money he earned for this hard work he passes to his sister in law. He
walks home and the rice field is filling now the whole frame of the
image. The film is especially about the planting and harvesting of
the rice fields. The kind he picks up a rice spike and how he chews
on it is referential. He is looking to the blue sky where a plane is
flying.
Nhams father has died in the war. He is
living with his mother, his little sister and his sister in law Ngu
together. His brother (Ngu´s husband), moved away looking for work
to earn his living. Form time to time Ngu receives a letter from him
in which he informs her that his return will be postponed, a half
hearted promise.
Nham loves poems and works with his
family in the rice fields. There is an unspoken love between him and
his sister in law. His over voice comments suggest that everything we
see is already past. As a sensitive adolescent he resemble Harriet in
Jean Renoir´s The River. He experiences in comical and sad episodes
the life of this rural community. Seemingly banal episodes interfuse
this subjective narration.
A Television antenna is installed of the roof
of one of the few houses with a TV. Children are mocking about a
fashion parade broadcasted in Television. A pig walks through the
kitchen. Villagers are talking about how life might be in the big
cities. Seemingly banal events grow on the edges of the film´s
story. It seems the point of view of the directors is like an excited
child which is so absorbed by all these
neglibilities around Nham´s story.
Nham goes by bike to the station to
pick up a niece of his neighbour. This niece has left Vietnam many
years before. Sometimes the camera follows him close, another time
his drive is observed from the distance. Once the point of view is
absorbed by movement, the next time the cinematic space is shallowed
and emphasizes the two dimensions of an image.
Quyen the homecoming niece returns to
the village of her childhood. She wears sun glasses and differs so
much from the people in this village like a foreigner. She tells that
she has left the country to escape her husband. Later, she was in a
refugee camp in Hong Kongwhere she married for a short time an
American for leaving this camp. It is a clear hint to the tragedy of
the Vietnamese Boat People who had to leave Vietnam. This village
appears sometimes almost like an utopian place where the joys and
sufferings of a whole country is gathering, a widow mourning about
her husband who dies in the war, the Vietnamese who returned from a
foreign country and who is dreaming from her childhood. It is about a
return to the earth in a world of technical progress which intervades
only in small signs. Quyen, the stranger is rediscovering her home
village but at the same times as well her own alienation from her native home.
Last time I saw this film for the
32. time with my friend T. In Abries. I felt that in this nearly two
hours I showed a big part of my life. My passion for this films which
stayed with me for 16 years includes my love for the films by Ozu
Ford and Renoir and – I just discovered it recently – it prepared
myself for the wonders in the films by Terrence Malick. The same love
for the sensual visible world like Renoir and Malick, the same kind
how our point of view is absorbed by the things we see. And yes –
long before I even knew the name of Terrence Malick, it was the first
film where I sensed the “one big soul” all late masterpieces by
Terrence Malick are telling about.
I was strangely moved in the kind how
people are touching things or touching their hairs. The technique of
the films seems to retrait itself in front of the things it reveals.
Sometimes a glance rambles to a river where a boat is driving or
where children are swimming. Another time we see plants moved by the
wind. Images in European Cinema like that I only knew from another
masterpiece by Jean Renoir: Une Partie de Campagne.
Even the identity of Nham the narrator
seems to be absorbed in his encounters with the stories of others and
especially in his own sensual experiences. In one scene he looks
secretly at Quyen who is bathing in the the river. He takes her
clothes and begin to smell them. When Quyen sees him, he is scared
and disappears in the fields.
Another extraordinary moment in this
film. I forgot to mention the most important. The moment Nham takes
the shirt of Quyen who swims naked in the river, he closes his eyes.
And even his action seems to be caused first by a sexual excitement,
the expression in his face has as well something of a silent prayer
at the same moment. This is probably one of the most earnest erotic
scene in the history of Cinema.
A ritual festival, dedicated to the
ancestors with prayers and ritual dances. In the evening a wonderful
puppet show will be performed with men who move the puppets from
behind a curtain in a pond and who let the puppet dance on the water.
We see the fascinated glances of children and adults. In these
moments I do not think in the cultural context of this beautiful
performance to a culture strange to me. I remember the first puppet
show I have seen in my life.
There are two moments which are burnt
into my memory, strong moments which remind me that the true meaning
of the term eroticism always means the biggest respect in the
creation. Ngu, the lonely sister in law hugs Nham in a moment of
despair. He answers this hugging. The remain for a while hugging each other. Suddenly Ngu is scared by Nhams ejaculation and takes her arms
from his body. We see Nham and how he is surprised feeling the sperm
on his fingers.
In another scene Nham and his sister in
law discovering on a field a nest with new born birds. Ngu pets them
and touches their beaks with her tongue. She smiles and sings an old
Vietnamese folk song and is absorbed by this encounter like a child.
In Dang Nhat Minh´s film there is always a physical sensation for
the caressing of living bodies.
One of the most remarkable aspect in
this film is Nham´s gender role. He is grown up almost only among
women (men appear only as dead and gone or an uncle who is considered
as a failure), small girls, young women, old women. His sexual
awakening, one of the central elements of each films in this sub
genre “Coming of age-film is connected with this subtle violence
who finally puts Nham in his gender role the civilisation dictates
him. The military service which follows directly his adolescence is
quite a very sharp nobservation for this very gentle film. Finally
what distinguishes Nham from his sister in law from his mother and the
beautiful Quyen seems to be less biological than a social code.
Drunken truck drivers cause the death
of two little girls, among them Nham´s little sister. The death
invades with sudden violence into the world of this sensitive boy.
From now on the film will be a long and eternal sad farewell. In a
vision, Quyen who is waiting at the railway station for her
departure, sees a boat where the two dead girls are waving to her.
She says goodbye to Nham. A long time he looks after the departing
train. Home is for him something concrete a sensual sensation. For
Queyen the exile Vietnamese with the sad smile it is nothing more
than a lost dream.
Nham gets his draft into military
service. Sitting on a truck he writes following sentences on a paper:
My name is Nham. I am missing my village. But I will return none day.
He throws the paper into the lands ape. In another shot we see the
heavy wheels of the truck on a plastered street which separates him
and his beloved earth. The paper he wrote, is floating through the
air. Nham´s declaration of love to his native village is lost. We
see Ngu on a rice field. With the clothes and her dress protected
against sun and the sharp edges of the plants she is bent over doing
the hard work on which the life of the whole village depends on.
Suddenly the image freezes.
Thuong Nho Dong Que is a remarkable film.
Except some very few artificial moments and a few shots I almost have
forgotten its form. There is so much tenderness and attention to
details that every approach of analysis must fail What I have seen
and what I almost believed to have touched seems to me like a
personal memory for which I have to find a form for myself.
The miracle of this film is that it
evokes the longing to rediscover this world with all senses of my
body.
And yes, this text is written before
this film became an obsession for me. I saw it just a few time when I
wrote this text. Even though I saw it 32 times, I am not yet finished
with this film and I never will. It came back when I saw The
Tree of Life by Terrence Malick. The film came back when I
saw Robert Mulligan´s wonderful The
Man in the Moon – and this film is a very close relative
of Jean Renoir´s masterpiece The
River.
It is one of these films which
became a part of life and there is nothing I can do about.
Rüdiger Tomczak
No comments:
Post a Comment