Finding 'The Beautiful Country'
Nguoi Viet, Movie Review, John Esther, Posted: Aug 03, 2005
Hans Petter Moland’s “The Beautiful Country,” which opens Friday, is a long-overdue film that poignantly illustrates one young Vietnamese man’s journey to find his Vietnamese mother and his American father.
“It’s a magnificent odyssey about a human being who encounters just about every shade of humanity,” Moland said.
Essentially carrying the film in his first feature role is a longtime resident of Orange County, Calif., 34-year old Damien Nguyen, who plays Bình.
Stuck in a Vietnamese village, Bình is known as a bui doi. A racial slur, which translated means “less than dust,” the term is given to Vietnamese children with American fathers. Bigger than most Vietnamese, Bình’s American features are a constant source of ridicule among the Vietnamese folk.
“When I read the script I thought, ‘Well I don’t know if I had enough physical attributes to say that I would be of someone who was half-American,” said Nguyen, whose parents are both Vietnamese. “But I believe in storytelling, and I think the audience has a tendency to buy into what’s presented toward them if it’s done in a believable manner. In this case it was, more so because the audience is more caught up into the conditions he was under, being who he is rather than who he was physically.”
Now a grown man in the year 1990, Bình wants to find his parents. The only clue he has to discover them is a photo of a young Vietnamese woman with a baby standing next to an American man.
After he gets a clue, he finds his mother (Kim Xuân) and his half-brother, Tâm. His mom does not know what happened to Bình’s father; her husband disappeared without a trace. Unfortunately due to an accident, Bình’s reunion with his mother is brief.
Forced to flee to the country, Bình and Tâm leave their mother behind. With small funds and the marriage certificate his mother gives him, they board a packed fishing vessel crossing the South China Sea. They do not get far and wind up in a Malaysian refugee camp under armed guard.
At the camp they befriend a Chinese prostitute Ling (Bai Ling). She is not very nice to most people but she likes Tâm, so the three of them stick together after a riot breaks out at the camp.
Forced to flee, the trio swim out to a freighter. On board, they meet Snakehead (Temura Morrison) and Captain Oh (Tim Roth). If they want to stay on, Bình must become an indentured servant. Otherwise it is back into the water.
Once on water bigger obstacles begin to roll against Bình before he finds his father (Nick Nolte) in Texas. Slavery, starvation, stealing, murder and loss are just a few of the woes making up his journey. What is admirable is that big Bình triumphs using his brains rather than his brawn.
Directed by the Norwegian Moland and written by Sabina Murray — who has a Filipino mother and an American father and grew up in Australia and the Philippines — “The Beautiful Country” has a more balanced look at yet another victim of the Viet Nam War than just about every Hollywood film about the subject. The movie’s funding came through various European sources and is being distributed in the United States by Sony Pictures Classics.
Bình is a child who has grown up in a country that does not want him, into a man who is immigrating to another country that presumably does not want him. The film refuses to take sides for the Vietnamese or Americans whose citizens treat Nguyen in fairly equal measures of fear, loathing and compassion.
“Often when people are too involved, often they’re too indulgent,” said Ling about the director and writer’s nationalities. “With some distance, it makes it more objective and real.”
As a boy who traveled to the United States with his parents, Nguyen could identify with Bình’s plight in terms of what his parents had sacrificed to bring him and his siblings. For the film, Nguyen returned to Viet Nam for the first time. Some of his extended family took a day’s journey from Sài Gòn to visit him on the set.
Nguyen did not encounter racism growing up in Orange County as Bình did back in Viet Nam.
“It was more this form of ignorance,” said Nguyen, the fourth of seven children. “I was just this new guy. I looked different. I dressed different. I acted different. People just didn’t know what to make of me. So there was this distance between myself and new classmates or new people that were around me.”
This attitude toward Nguyen continued until he got into high school. He felt his growing up was based on the close-knit Vietnamese community, watching television and on the local school system more than seeing his parents, who worked many jobs.
Nguyen enrolled in California State University, Fullerton, before moving to local community colleges where he found his fondness for acting. Backed by an impressive performance, Nguyen’s role in “The Beautiful Country” could launch his career. Nguyen could not be happier for himself, or Bình.
“Bình has a quiet strength about him. He has this perseverance and I would like to think there’s a certain part about that inside me. Everyone has struggles in life and it’s just how you overcome those struggles and tribulations that define you as a person,” Nguyen said. “I think I’m in a pretty good spot now. It was a great experience and an arduous process, but it’s been a long time coming.”
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