Vietnamese Showing at Sundance Stirs Emotions
Nguoi Viet, News Feature, Vu Qui Hao-Nhien, Posted: Feb 11, 2006
SALT LAKE CITY — Director Hàm Tran’s “Journey from the Fall” got it first test before a non-Vietnamese audience at the Sundance Film Festival, passing with flying colors.
Defying below-freezing temperatures and at a venue in Salt Lake City — 30 miles from the main Sundance gathering in Park City — 352 people, almost all of whom were non-Vietnamese, packed the Tower Theatre this past weekend to watch a drama about Vietnamese refugees.
The plight of the post-war Vietnamese was not lost on the crowd. As the screening ended, the audience stood to give the movie a standing ovation.
Producer Lâm Nguyen, 30, was taken by surprise.
“I was astounded. Usually audiences at film festivals, especially an A-list festival like Sundance, are very jaded. You will get applause, but to get a standing ovation? That was incredible,” he said.
Tran, 31, who worked with Lâm on the award-winning short film “The Anniversary,” was no less shocked.
“I can’t believe the audience reacted the way they reacted. That’s nothing like what we ever imagined,” he said. “It was a full house, and they were still pretty much all there after the end credits, and they stood up … it was incredible, I didn’t know what to say even.”
Now, to have the buzz generated at Sundance to transfer to another important audience: distributors.
The screening of “Journey from the Fall” here was its North American premiere. (Its world premiere was staged October at the Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea and it will screen again next month at the Bangkok International Film Festival.) Like most features at Sundance, this one wasn’t financed by a major studio but instead produced with money raised from within the Vietnamese American community. It is as independent as independent films can get.
“For us, having a distributor is very important,” said Alan Võ Ford, executive producer. “Obviously, the money is one thing, but one of the reasons we made the film is to tell the story of the Vietnamese people after the end of the war. It’s important to have the film shown in theaters, so that the story can be told to America, to the whole wide world... that behind the glitzy façade of the many Little Saigons all over the world is a long history of suffering and struggle.”
“Journey from the Fall,” or “Vuot Sóng” in Vietnamese, was shot in Thailand and Orange County, Calif. For the film, production designer Tommy TwoSon created a reeducation camp in the Thai jungle. He and his crew also painted several city blocks in Chantaburi, Thailand, to make it look like Saigon.
Producer Lâm revealed TwoSon’s secret.
“What differs a Thai town from a Vietnamese town, even when the architecture may be similar, is the color. Thai people paint their houses and boats differently. For the boat escape scene, we used a Thai boat and had to dress it up, too,” he recalled.
The film follows a Vietnamese family through its trials after the fall of Sài Gòn. When the North Vietnamese army overruns their city, army officer Long (played by Long Nguyen) refuses to leave the country. As he later defiantly says to his captors, “The day Saigon fell is my memorial.” But even while he arranges for his family to flee, his wife Mai (Diem Liên) decides to stay behind as well.
This fateful decision leads to Long’s imprisonment in a series of reeducation camps while Mai, their son Lai (Nguyen Thái Nguyên), Long’s mother Bà Noi (Kieu Chinh), and their friend Phong (Cát Ly) escape the homeland in a tiny boat, facing storms, starvation and pirates. Their journey, however, does not just end with their arrival in America but continues in their adopted homeland.
Believing that his loved ones are dead, Long endures beatings, hard labor and confinement in a tiny metal shed with fellow prisoner Thanh (Jayvee Mai The Hiep). As he spirals into a deep despair, his faith is revived when a mysterious visitor brings news of his family’s survival in the new world. In one moment his fate becomes clear, and Long sets in motion a dangerous plan to escape himself and join them in freedom.
And so begins his journey.
The movie’s theme of love, family, friendship and sacrifice tugged at viewers’ hearts. That most of its dialogue is in Vietnamese with English subtitles did not lessen its emotional appeal.
Ben Sutton, waiting in the lobby, watched viewers as they left.
“I saw the ticket taker come out of the theatre, and he was crying,” Sutton said. “And I thought, to move a man to tears, even with subtitles, that must have been some very strong performance!”
During the question-and-answer session that followed, one audience member said, “I know a lot of stuff that happens at Sundance hasn’t been bought by anybody for distribution. If somebody doesn’t want to buy this, tell him to talk to me.”
As Tran later said, “This proves what I have always believed. Although the story is set in Viet Nam, it is not an exclusively Vietnamese story. It’s about friendship, it’s about the humanity in all of us. It carries universal values that should appeal to every ethnicity.”
But the most emotional moment was yet to come.
Just as the gathering delved deep into discussions of technical detail, one Vietnamese man in the audience raised his hand.
His voice cracking, Thành Nguyen spoke up:
“What I just want to say here is the movie tonight touched me so much. I was just a little boy, at 14 years old, left alone on a boat, (and) went through the same experience. My dad passed away when he was still in Vietnam after he got out of reeducation camp.”
As silence filled the room, Nguyen continued: “I’ve been waiting for the last 20 years to see something like this. A film that tells the story that probably many of us, many, many of us in America, went through. The life, the struggle at the beginning that we all went through, where we are today as a Vietnamese community.
“For 20 years,” he continued, close to tears, “we see many films that talk about the Vietnam War but don’t show the human, the emotional side of it. This is so great. I’m so, so grateful to have this film.”
His voice trailed off, and the room exploded in applause.
As much as the images touched those like him, his words touched the filmmakers right back.
“It was reaction like that gentleman’s in the audience that warms our hearts,” Ford said. “It makes us feel good that we did the right thing. My family went through the same thing like the family in the film, and there are million of others that went through the same thing.”
Tran agreed.
“To have your work appreciated so much, it was incredible.”
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