 THREE SEASONS
(PG-13)
Review by John P. Brackin
Acclaimed Film Depicts Modern Vietnam
The first American movie filmed entirely in Vietnam
was also the first to win three major awards at the Sundance Film
Festival, including both the Grand Jury Prize and the coveted Audience
Award. But without the popular appeal of previous winners like The
Brothers McMullen or even The
Spitfire Grill, Three Seasons
was relegated to a smaller, art-house audience (Garden Hills in Atlanta,
for example) and unfortunately never appeared in many smaller markets.
The film is now available on video from October Films, and for those of
you who missed it at the theaters—likely, most of you—it’s well
worth seeking out.
Written
and directed by 26-year-old Vietnamese-American Tony Bui, the film takes
place, not in the jungles of wartime Vietnam, but in the lingering
capitalism of present-day Saigon. The choice is significant as it
symbolizes a departure from the more familiar combat films and allows
Bui to explore the war’s impact, as opposed to the war itself. He
focuses on the individual struggles—the real, personal conflicts that
define a society—and in doing so achieves what no other American film
has even attempted: the depiction of the Vietnamese people in human,
empathetic terms.
The
first, and perhaps most puzzling, storyline follows a young woman who
takes a job at a local lotus compound. She lives a seemingly idyllic
life, harvesting lotus blossoms in the morning and selling them on the
streets in the afternoon. But when she tries to introduce a new work
song into the daily harvest, her older, more experienced co-workers
respond only with silence.
The
issue, it would seem, is one of tradition: these are people so
entrenched in their ways that a single shift in their daily routine
represents a threat to their entire way of life. And yet, when she
begins selling flowers on the street, she loses business to a competitor
who sells plastic bouquets from the back of a van.
The
second storyline features Harvey Keitel and includes the only spoken
English of the film. James Hager (Keitel) is a former GI, looking for
the daughter he fathered during the war; his search leads him to the
“Apocalypse Now” disco—an actual bar in Saigon, named for the
Francis Ford Coppola film—where he finds, instead, a street kid named
Woody, who makes his living selling trinkets from a suitcase. The
suitcase is stolen at one point, and Woody holds Hager responsible,
setting off a second search throughout the rain-drenched streets of the
city.
The
final storyline is the heart of the film, both dramatically and
symbolically. Hai (Don Duong) is a cyclo driver who falls in love with
an ambitious, “social-climbing” prostitute named Lan (Zoë Bui).
Naturally as a cyclo driver, earning just pennies a day, he can’t
afford the financial rewards she so desperately wants; but he can offer
her something potentially greater: himself.
Of
course, she doesn’t seem particularly tempted, but the
choice—between Hai’s simple ways, on the one hand, and the
westerners and their wealth on the other—forms the central question of
the movie: Which culture will you choose? And this is the very question
that defines Vietnam today. Poised at the cusp of tradition and
modernization, which culture will the country choose? And at what cost?
But in a way, it doesn’t really matter
what she chooses—or what Woody does or what Hager does or whatever;
each story tells its tale, speaking poignantly to the country’s
modernization, but the real story rests within the subtext. Above and
beyond the individual storylines, the real message seems to be that
Vietnam is a real country, with real
people and real human
feelings; and though this might sound corny or trite, for a country
depicted for three decades through combat footage and political
posturing, it’s practically revolutionary.
In the
future, when we look back at this film, we may well consider Three Seasons a benchmark achievement: as the first film of
writer-director Tony Bui, certainly, but also as a hinge in American
perception of Vietnam. The film’s contemporary setting recasts the old
question from “What happened over there?” to “What happened over
there after we left?” And that’s a worthy question for both the film
and our time. Our two countries are moving slowly toward reconciliation,
and as Three Seasons suggests, our filmmakers may soon be as
well.
© 2003 John P. Brackin
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