Some films shout at you for two hours and you never really hear a thing. Others, like Moland's magnificent The Beautiful Country, rarely rise above a whisper and you hear them in your dreams for weeks. The story begins in the Vietnamese countryside in 1990, where a young man named Binh (Nguyen) lives his days and nights like a highly industrious shadow, useful but hardly noticed, and when noticed, despised for having been fathered by an American G.I. Such children were known in Vietnam as bui doi—less than dust—and the designation has left Binh quiet and unsure of himself, longing to meet this faraway father but harboring little hope he ever will. The balance of this heartbreaking film is the story of Binh's unexpected passage to America—from Saigon to a nightmarish Malaysian refugee camp to the belly of what amounts to a slave ship bound for New York. Nguyen is extraordinary as he portrays Binh's silent soulfulness, and later, his growing confidence and strength, and Nick Nolte appears briefly but to devastating effect as a blind veteran who just may be the man Binh's looking for.