Home Again Reviews New York Times
Review/Film; Going Back Dwelling, Over again and Again, To Notice Vietnam and to Notice Herself
- From Hollywood to Hanoi
- Directed by Tiana Alexandra
- Documentary
- 1h 18m
Meet the commodity in its original context from
July 21, 1993
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Section C , Page
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"From Hollywood to Hanoi," opening today at Motion picture Forum, is an intense, personal, supremely self-confident feature-length documentary that owes a lot to the cinema journalism of Michael Moore, the man who confronted General Motors in "Roger and Me." Like the Moore moving-picture show, "From Hollywood to Hanoi" is as much about the moving picture maker backside it as information technology is virtually the field of study information technology appears to be exploring.
On the surface that subject is life in Vietnam today, so many years after the stop of hostilities. In fact, "From Hollywood to Hanoi" is the record of one remarkable young adult female's efforts to construct a coherent identity out of bits and pieces of lives lived as a serial of compromises.
Tiana, who wrote, directed and produced "From Hollywood to Hanoi," was named Thi Thanh Nga when she was born in Saigon, where her father was in charge of press and information for the S Vietnamese Government. In 1966, when she was even so a little girl, she and her family moved to the United states of america after her father became convinced that the Regime cause was lost. They settled first in Washington, where her father worked for the Voice of America, and later moved to San Jose, Calif.
"We tried to become perfect Americans," Tiana says on the soundtrack. Her brothers grew up to get policemen. At the age of 16, she ran away to Hollywood to be an actress, appearing in Sam Peckinpah's "Killer Elite" in 1975, amongst other films. She was likewise in "Pearl," the television mini-series, some kung-fu movies playing a sort of female version of Bruce Lee, a music video made in France and a karate video. The roles bachelor to Asian actresses being limited, she became increasingly obsessed by her real-life part equally an Americanized Vietnamese. Who was she?
To discover out, she fabricated the commencement of a series of trips back to Vietnam in 1988 over the objections of her male parent. She has continued to render several times a twelvemonth, ever with a photographic camera and with an insatiable desire somehow to reconcile the two sides of her life. The initial result of these explorations is "From Hollywood to Hanoi," the packed and layered journal of a very special innocent abroad.
Tiana would seem to be a woman with the gift of gab, a lot of push and except for her need to learn, a redeemingly skeptical point of view. In Vietnam there are emotional reunions with long-lost relatives, including an uncle, a one-time Due south Vietnamese Defense Minister recently released afterward 13 years in a Authorities re-pedagogy army camp.
There also are interviews with Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, the sometime commander of the N Vietnamese forces, and Le Duc Tho, who led the North Vietnamese delegation to the Paris peace talks. Information technology's clear that the ii men were enchanted by Tiana, whom they seem to regard as a sort of prodigal girl returned. There are interviews with Amerasian children whose American fathers abandoned their Vietnamese mothers, and visits to a hospital where, in what is said to exist an Agent Orange ward, state of war victims still languish.
Poverty is everywhere. Though relations between Vietnam and the United States have not returned to normal, Tiana notes that the dollar has returned to Saigon, which is what everyone yet calls Ho Chi Minh City. She attends a functioning of Tennessee Williams's "Glass Menagerie," which is played, every bit she describes it, with a ferocity better suited to Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" In Hanoi she meets and dances with Oliver Stone, the American film director.
Back in the United states, at a benefit performance of "Miss Saigon," she runs into Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the former American commander in Vietnam. She doesn't hesitate to push a microphone into his face and ask him why, in the movie "Hearts and Minds," he said that Asians exercise not value human life as dearly equally people in Western civilizations do. The surprised general thought he was just going out to see a Broadway testify.
Though Tiana has included the "Hearts and Minds" prune in "From Hollywood to Hanoi," the general at first insists that he never said whatsoever such matter, only he goes on to explicate what he really meant, none too successfully.
The film makes superb, sometimes sarcastic use of textile from quondam newsreels and propaganda films. As important, though, is the way the managing director portrays her amore for her begetter and the other members of her family in this country. In many ways hers is a divided family, but it also appears to be an unusually potent and loving one. There'due south a lot of rich, sometimes still raw material hither. From Hollywood to Hanoi
Written, directed and produced past Tiana (Thi Thanh Nga), in English language, French and Vietnamese with English subtitles; cinematography by Michael Dodds, Bruce Dorfman and Jamie Maxtone-Graham; edited by Roger Schulte; released by Friendship Span Productions. Film Forum ane, 209 West Houston Street, Due south Village. Running time: 78 minutes. This film has no rating.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/21/movies/review-film-going-back-home-again-and-again-to-find-vietnam-and-to-find-herself.html
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