Southeast Asian directors have made a number of excellent films, but few are available in this country. Most of the videos to be found in Asian video stores are produced in Hong Kong or India. But if you look hard, you may find a few films produced in Southeast Asia, particularly from the Philippines. In addition, you will find numerous karaoke videos, sing-along videos with the words printed on the screen. You can practice your Vietnamese or Tagalog this way!
Southeast Asia has often served as an exotic backdrop for American films, as in the old Bing Crosby film, Road to Bali, South Pacific, and The King and I. There is a host of American films about the Vietnam War and its aftermath, but few if any of these films convey much about Vietnam itself. While they largely look at Southeast Asia through Western eyes, the following films, available in video format, are generally worth seeing:
| The Killing Fields. Based
on the true story of the friendship of a US and Cambodian reporter before and during the
deadly Pol Pot era. Year of Living Dangerously. Western love story filmed against the rising tensions in Indonesia prior to the alleged communist "coup" and subsequent right-wing military takeover in 1965. Although filmed in the Philippines, and although the film's central Indonesian male character is played by an American actress, the film nonetheless conveys a sense of Indonesian culture and politics at that critical time. Note: The film was banned under the Suharto regime and was only publicly shown in Indonesia in November 2000 (New York Times article). Indochine. A story of a wealthy French plantation owner and her adopted Vietnamese daughter, and their mutual relations with a young French naval officer, set against the backdrop of the coming demise of French colonial rule. Gorgeous scenery and grand historical sweep, even if the characters are a bit cardboardish. The Lover. An unusual French film which explores an illicit love affair between a poor colonial French girl and a wealthy, Paris-educated Vietnamese Chinese man. While containing steamy bedroom scenes, the film conveys a wonderful sense of Vietnamese street life as well. |
|
 A Dayak longhouse along the Rajang River in Malaysian Borneo |
Scent of Green Papaya. Made by a Vietnamese director about a Vietnamese
family during the 1950s, yet filmed in France, this film lingers over the intimate social
and natural details of the troubled family's existence. Slow moving yet haunting in its
own way. Jakarta. A contemporary Grade-B thriller, a joint-Indonesian production, interesting mainly for its classically Javanese plot twist. Heaven and Earth. This film, directed by Oliver Stone, tells the more-or-less true story of a Vietnamese peasant woman's struggle to survive the destructiveness of the Vietnam War. It comes as close as any Hollywood film has to telling a Vietnamese's side of the story. |
Beyond Rangoon. The main virtue of this film is that it introduces Myanmar and its repressive military regime to American audiences. Beyond that, the film is typical of many Western films about Asia: an American heroine, who despite incredible naiveté, seems better able than the Burmese themselves to outwit and resist the relentlessly- evil government soldiers; the almost uniformly cardboardish characters; the stilted dialogue. The film was shot in Malaysia.
November 10, 2000
