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"Green Dragon" is a movie released this month in
the United States. Its director is Timothy Linh Bui, who along with his brother
Tony Bui produced the prize-winning movie "Three Seasons" three years
ago. Three Seasons had all the scenes taken in Vietnam, while Green Dragon was
shot within Camp Pendleton, the U.S. Marines base camp in California.
The
story is about the first wave of approximate 135,000 refugees from Vietnam
after the Republic of (South) Vietnam collapsed on April 30, 1975. The American
authorities moved them to one of the four military camps temporarily used to
shelter them for preliminary process. Camp Pendleton was one of them. The
events took place within the camp and lasted about 6 months until all refugees
had been resettled.
Casting
of the movie included the well-known actors Patrick Swayze, Forest Whitaker,
Don Duong, actresses Kieu Chinh (a famous star of the Saigon's 60s and 70s) and
Le Thi Hiep. The two teen-aged boy Trung Nguyen and girl Jennifer Tran are also
in the cast list.
Scenes
in Camp Pendleton reflect different types of persons of a society with their
characters, aspirations, attitudes, emotions... all blend together at a narrow
location in a strange country. They are afraid of the unpredictable future, facing
fears of the new world outside the camp they have never known. Some are
disappointed; others are looking on the bright side. There are others who
nourish great expectation for a bright future in the country they believe a
Paradise on Earth.
In
a symbolic scene, Minh (Nguyen Trung) doesn’t know that he and his sister Anh
(Jennifer Tran) have just become orphans. After the two children left Vietnam with their uncle Tai
(Don Duong), their father, ARVN Captain Cuong, was killed in his last battle.
Days later their mother fled Vietnam and starved to death on a small river boat
without food and water after weeks drifting on high seas.
Minh
wakes up, stepping across a barrack large house over hundreds of people lying
on the floor towards the door flooded with bright light. Getting out of the
door, Minh looks up and under the blue sky the American Old Glory is streaming…
Minh
finds a good friend in the cook Addie (Forest Whitaker), both strive to
communicate over the language barrier. Differences in culture are exemplified
at the mess hall when Vietnamese refugees don’t eat fish. In Vietnam, “chicken
is more expensive than fish.”
In
certain cases, some refugees are afraid of leaving the camp for localities
where sponsors will welcome them, until they are forced to go on buses. The
camp also witnesses large families torn apart; each adult son and daughter goes
one direction to the unknown destinations where there is someone who sponsor
them.
An
ARVN general is confronted by an ARVN subaltern officer who yells at him in a
verbal attack, accusing him for abandoning his command post while his troops
are still fighting. The general, who was fighting the French along with the
Viet Minh, defected to the nationalist side when he realized that Viet
Communist Party is against the ultimate interests of the Vietnamese people. He
says it’s the first time he was betrayed, insinuating that the second time was
by the Americans. Washington is blamed for the defeat of Saigon at other scenes
in the movie.
Under
the stress of remorse, he commits suicide.
The
dead general is a typical case of many ARVN officers who are filled with
remorse for their escape from their home country in the last days of the
republic they are obliged to fight to death to defend. But before ending his
life, the old man sowed seeds of chili outside his tent. It’s Minh who is
watering the sapling that grows into a tree and bears fruit after a few months.
The seeds are brought from Vietnam to be planted by the old in strange soil and
taken care by the young can bear healthy fruit, why not the Vietnamese
refugees?
Further
details of the movie can be found at www.greendragonmovie.com.
Telling
stories of the refugees fleeing a Communist regime, the movie asserts the right
cause of the anti-Communist Republic of Vietnam. It also justifies the
objectives of the war defending South Vietnam against the Communist invaders by
the various aspects of the greatest waves of political asylums in the history
of the world, of the United States, particularly of Vietnam whose people have
never been an adventurous race.
There
were about 135,000 Vietnamese people evacuated out of Saigon by the U.S. Armed
Forces from April 20, 1975 to the early May 1975. Nearly 1.5 million others
fled Vietnam by boat and by foot since then to the early 1990s. All of those risked their lives fleeing the
Communist tyranny, in defiance of dangers of pirates, stormy weather and boat
mechanic failures that killed from 50,000 to 100,000 refugees on their ways out
of Vietnam on seas and in jungles.
It’s
great because their path of a thousand miles to the camps in South East Asia
nations and across 9 to 12 time zones, nearly 7,000 to 12,000 miles to be
resettled on the other side of the Pacific, to Australia and Europe. It also
reveals to the world the true colors of a despotic regime that dubs itself a
patriotic and revolutionary movement and won the war by the means of barbaric
terrorism and propaganda.
The
waves of refugees from Vietnam, by their hardships, deaths, volition,
determination and courage have won the support of many scholars, writers and
journalists who had once taken side with the Viet Communists in the Vietnam
War. However, by ignorance of the realities in Vietnam or personal unethical
interests, many others are still advocating Hanoi against international appeals
for human rights and democracy in Vietnam.
“Green
Dragon” should be supported as a more realistic explanation of the heroic
struggle against the Communist dictatorship in Vietnam. To those who knowingly
advocate the “bad guys,” the movie may serves as an eye-opening lecture that
they should learn well. If any message
should be sent from Green Dragon, it could be “Please don’t make money and fame
out of blood and sweat of the miserable, oppressed Vietnamese people.”
Last
week, Hanoi officials for Culture and Education sternly criticized Don Duong,
who was starring a North Vietnam colonel in “We Were Soldiers,” for distorting
the image of the North Vietnamese Communist soldiers. Hanoi authorities might
get him into trouble.
More
possibly, Don Duong and his two nephews might face difficulties and
restrictions from the Hanoi after its authorities will have watched the Green
Dragon if they plan to make other movies in Vietnam.
Overseas
Vietnamese wish that other movies at greater scale and with bigger money about
the tragic but heroic waves of the Vietnamese refugees would be on the screen
before long.