WORLD TOUR Day 51 - Vietnam
BEFORE: From Cambodia it's a short hop to Vietnam, and my last film set in Asia. Linking from "The Killing Fields", Spalding Gray was also in the film "Twenty Bucks" with Brendan Fraser (last seen in "Bedazzled").
THE PLOT: An older British reporter vies against a young American for the affections of a Vietnamese beauty.
AFTER: Although (slightly) less depressing than last night's film, this really counts as another downer, sort of a think-piece about international politics and the turn to Communism that took place in Southeast Asia in the 1950's. Once again we see events through the eyes of a reporter - only here it's a jaded one with little interest in filing stories, yet he must do so to be useful to prevent being recalled to London, which apparently is even more dreary than Saigon.
This prompts him to head north and report on the developing turmoil in the region, accompanied by an American member of the OSS (precursor to the CIA), who also expresses an interest in the reporter's girlfriend, a former taxi dancer. The love triangle that develops is a pretty blatant metaphor for the political situation in the background. The Vietnamese girl represents her whole country, with the American upsetting a stable relationship with her European master, for selfish reasons of his own. The American may be quiet, but he also may not be as dumb as he appears.
The very strong implication here is that America's actions/missteps in Vietnam in the 1950's had terrible repercussions, in trying to sow dissent in the country and back a new military faction, it created a power struggle that ultimately led to the Vietnam War. In fact, the 1955 novel that this film is based on predicted the war so well that author Graham Greene was supposedly under surveillance by U.S. intelligence until he died in 1991.
Taken another way, it could also suggest that the petty jealousy of two men created a tinderbox situation that killed thousands, and that this also prevented the one man who could have stopped the war from doing so. You make the call.
Also starring Michael Caine (last heard in "Cars 2"), Do Thi Hai Yen, Robert Stanton (last seen in "Mercury Rising"), Holmes Osborne (last seen in"Windtalkers").
DISTANCE TRAVELED TODAY: 130 miles / 210 km (Phnom Penh, Cambodia to Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam)
DISTANCE TRAVELED SO FAR: 23,864 miles / 38,409 km
RATING: 4 out of 10 dance tickets
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