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Heaven and Earth
Le Ly
................... Hiep Thi
Le
Steve Butler
............ Tommy Lee Jones
Mama
.................... Joan Chen
Papa
.................... Haing S. Ngor
Eugenia
................. Debbie Reynolds
Warner Bros. presents a film written
and directed by Oliver Stone. Produced by Stone, Arnon
Milchan, Robert Kline
and A. Kitman Ho. Based on the books "When
Heaven and Earth Changed Places" by Le Ly Hayslip with Jay Wurts and "Child of War, Woman of Peace" by Le Ly Hayslip
with James Hayslip. Photographed by Robert
Richardson. Edited by David Brenner and Sally Menke. Music by Kitaro.
Running time: 138 minutes. Classified: R (for violence, language and
sexuality).
This is the third of Oliver Stone's
movies about the Viet Nam
war and its aftermath, the others being "Platoon" and
"Born on the Fourth of July." This one is a true story, though I
assume certain liberties have been taken, of a Vietnamese woman.
During her childhood, the French destroy her village. Then in her
teen years, the Viet Cong
come, demanding the loyalty of the villagers, torturing and raping any
(including Le Ly, on
the basis of a mistake) who appear to give aid and comfort to
the enemy. Then came the Americans, who transform everything. Now Viet Nam is a bog of
prostitution, cigarettes, drugs, corruption, suspicions, hatreds. Le Ly is forced to go to the city
and work for a Vietnamese man who fathers her first son to the
angry response of his wife. Le Ly is reduced to begging and selling goods to soldiers
in the streets.
At this point, Steve Butler appears,
a Marine officer who seems to genuinely love and understand her. He makes
her his wife, and the family flees Viet Nam with the American pullout, settling in San Diego,
at first with Butler's family. Steve cannot make it financially, and his
bitterness turns to viciousness and eventual suicide. In the course of
events, Le Ly learns
that his work in Viet Nam
was to assassinate Vietnamese who collaborated with the Cong. What the film tells us is that he was in effect
a serial killer, who after the war is wracked with guilt over it.
Le Ly herself prospers in the US. She visits her
family in Viet Nam,
and encounters more bitterness: family members resent her wealth while
they have so little. But there is reconciliation.
Oliver Stone is, of course, one of
the most deeply ideological of directors, and in many ways he expresses
here his loathing for American values and culture. To his credit, he
does not glamorize the Viet Cong:
they are brutal. But their brutality is the brutality of self-defense, we
are told, the brutality made necessary by people who want the freedom to
govern themselves. The Americans are the real wreckers of the peaceful
culture. Butler seems to typify the whole American war effort:
sheer murder under the guise of nation-building.
Also, in America, we see scenes of
huge refrigerators and supermarket shelves filled with all sorts of food,
to the amazement of Le Ly.
And we see shovels of it being emptied into the sink disposal unit, after
mass quantities have been conspicuously consumed by Steve's fat female
relatives.
Nevertheless, Stone does not hide
the fact that Le Ly does
eventually find happiness in America and through her prosperity is able to
help the poor of her own country, doubtless far more than if she had
stayed there. Nor does he hide the fact that the Communist rule puts Le Ly's family into a state
of constant poverty and suffering. Yet it is not clear how
these inconvenient facts have modified Stone's value judgments.
It is a very beautiful movie. Hiep Thi Le
and Tommy Lee Jones give wonderful performances, as do the others in the
cast. Stone's critiques of American materialism are certainly
not entirely wrong, though they come across to me as rather heavy-handed.
The film has a deeply Buddhist sensibility. Repentance and reconciliation inhibit bad karma. But is that not, in the end, a form of selfishness just as much as that which Stone has been quick to condemn in the American culture? Would that Christ had been allowed to speak his Word of peace, so truly to lift the burdens of these afflicted people.