Journey From The Fall
3 stars
Long Nguyen, Diem Lien, Kieu Chinh
Directed by Ham Tran
Rated R
Opens Friday
My best friend is Vietnamese. He once told me that he knew exactly what his life was worth in gold. It was the amount his parents paid for his passage as an infant to America. His family didn’t leave Vietnam, he said. They escaped.
You don’t see many movies about the aftermath of the Vietnam War from the Vietnamese perspective. My guess is that most Americans would rather not be reminded of the mess we left behind. But once the communist regime took over, many who had sided with the U.S. escaped as so-called “boat people”—refugees who fled to America. Others were captured and taken to “re-education” camps. Journey from the Fall shows us that neither option was very pleasant.
The film follows Long (Nguyen), a man imprisoned for his political ideals after the fall of Hanoi in 1975, and his mother, wife and son, who attempt to escape to America at Long’s urging. Long then contends with what is essentially a death camp, where, dressed in rags, he’s forced to clear mine fields at gun point. Meanwhile, his family, crammed into a tiny ship’s hold with dozens of other refugees, has to deal with the threat of capture, pirates and, ultimately, painful assimilation into American culture. It’s powerful stuff, but unfortunately, the film does a curious thing with the timeline.
We begin in 1981, flashback to 1975, stop for a while in ’79 and ’77, and that’s just when the film remembers to give us a title card with the date. The narrative jumps around time more than Marty McFly ever did, and the disorientation leads to quite a headache. Viewers are likely to spend the first half of the film struggling to establish a chronology, but writer/director Tran seems determined to thwart us. Long learns that his family has perished at sea, which means the family’s story is a flashback, right? No. Turns out that’s a lie, so the two stories are running simultaneously ... until Long’s family mentions that Long died in prison, which means Long’s story is the flashback. But wait—Long’s death turns out to be a rumor as well. Grrrrrrrrrr.
A linear narrative would’ve freed our minds to enjoy the outstanding performances, reflect on the suffering of the Vietnamese people and ponder the possibilities of history repeating itself in Iraq. I suppose all of that’s still possible. Just remember to bring Tylenol for the film’s first half.