By Jason O'Brien jaobrien@charter.net
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Le Ly was brought up in the ancient village of Ky La in Central
Vietnam and one of the first tasks was to recreate the entire
place in Thailand which included planting some four-hundred hectares
of rice paddies. Village life is peaceful enough in the 1950s,
but with the coming of first the French and then the Viet Cong
in 1962, life is quite literally turned upside down. This is the
significance of the title; Mother Earth (Me Dat) and Father Heaven
(Ong Troi) provide, while humans live in the middle, but sometimes
they switch places and leave the people in turmoil. Le Ly's life
takes violent twists all too often, and we see her tortured by
South Vietnamese authorities (under the watchful eyes of American
'advisers'), raped by a Viet Cong leader, seduced by a wealthy
man in Saigon and eventually fending for herself on the streets
of Da Nang selling contraband while her sister is a prostitute
for American GIs.
The change in her life comes when she unexpectedly meets Sergeant
Steve Butler a U.S. Marine, whom she marries and leaves for America
with. Eventually their marriage breaks down as Steve tries to
drink his way out of his nightmares brought on by being carrying
out black ops while in Vietnam. He commits suicide, leaving Le
Ly to raise her three sons alone. Being a resourceful woman she
prospers (though we pass over this briefly) and returns in 1986
to Ky La.
From a short description like that the film doesn't appear to
offer much in the way of excitement or blisteringly original storytelling.
But this is Oliver Stone, and there will always be something worth
watching for. What we have in Heaven & Earth is one
of the strongest scripts he has ever committed to celluloid backed
up by a cast who have the talent and depth to carry it off. Hiep
Thi Le plays Le Ly with the mixture of naivety and resolve to
make us believe that this totally unknown amateur actress, who
only auditioned because her friends did, is a woman who grew saw
too much suffering in her life yet managed to transcend it all.
The late Dr. Haing S. Ngor and Joan Chen are pillars of familial
strength as her parents and Tommy Lee Jones (his second of three
consecutive appearances in Stone movies) as Steve Butler turns
in one of his most subtle roles ever. Veering rapidly from tenderness
to ferocity he literally becomes the tortured Vietnam veteran
stalking the screen, and a scene where he calmly loads a shotgun
and puts it against Le Ly's head is not for the faint-hearted.
Neither is his quick glance at a checkout chick who looks at Le
Ly with ill-disguised contempt. The interplay between the forceful
and short Hiep Thi Le and the towering menace of Tommy Lee Jones
makes their scenes together, particularly in America, is incredibly
strong.
But good actors are for naught if there isn't anything decent
for them to say and do, and this is where Heaven And Earth's
hidden strength lies. Stone has managed to mix the personal and
political once again but from such a different angle that we're
not aware he is saying as much as he is. Unlike the traditional
sweeping biopic that this film draws on there are no clearly defined
values here. Traditional village life offers a certain amount
of stability and tranquillity, but is too bound up in its tradition.
The contrast between Vietnam and America is as visual as it is
thematic. This is an Oliver Stone film after all. A conscious
decision was made between Stone and Richardson to shoot the two
regions differently, but not to make them two separate worlds.
Thus eschewing the typical audience expectation of a perfect pastoral
idyll and hardened urban (or suburban in this case) nightmare
the film presents us with panoramic views of rice paddies under
the watchful eye of the mountains and delirious American suburbia
of the early 70s, each containing stylised elements of the other.
The heavy downlighting that was so heavily used in Natural
Born Killers makes a couple of appearances in both countries,
heightening both the menace of the Viet Cong and Steve Butler,
each cloaked in whatever veneer suits them. The Viet Cong may
come preaching freedom from French domination, but they bring
with them the same brutality. Steve may be Le Ly's saviour from
a collapsing country but he poses as much of a threat to her as
she faced in Vietnam.
A poll conducted on the Oliver Stone mailing lists, which I
personally oversaw and scored, showed that Heaven And Earth
is the least liked of all Stone's movies. On watching it again
I fail to see why. Perhaps it is the fact that this relatively
conventional story fell between the masterpieces of JFK
and Natural Born Killers and lacked the paranoid frenzy
that fuelled them both. A more lyrical biopic, complete with a
Kitaro score, might not seem to fit in with his work before or
since but this film shouldn't be so easily dismissed. Even just
drinking in the startling images of rippling rice paddies or jets
of flame it is obvious that Heaven And Earth was not a
minor project which Stone was only mildly committed to. He imbues
the film with all the passion we expect of him. Who else could
make the approach to a fridge or shopping at a supermarket so
hilarious? Visual lushness aside though, Heaven And Earth
is one of the most strongly character driven films Stone has done,
with a cast that does the script justice. Le Ly is not the cipher
of Jim Garrison, nor the satrirical charicature of Mickey and
Mallory, nor even the mysterious demon that lies at the heart
of Richard Nixon. She is one woman and this is her story. That
isn't to say that we aren't meant to learn something from the
film, but this is a much more personal lesson, an encouragement
to look inside ourselves. Perhaps it is the simplicity of this
approach that surprised so many people. While we see the obligatory
atrocities that took place in Vietnam we are in fact following
Le Ly's rise above such horror and her need to help those she
left behind to recover from the trauma. As with just about any
film about such a momentous and tragic event there is always the
danger of being lulled into a false sense of security about the
fate of the Vietnamese people. Think of films made about the Holocaust,
and how many people suffered and died compared to those who survived
and you'll see what I mean. The story of one exceptional and very
lucky individual is just that; an exception. As the heart wrenching
final scenes show, most of the Vietnamese people have never recovered
from the war. For them there is nothing left but the land, if
that. Their plight continues.
Review Written by Craig Andrews, auteur and controller of the Film Society home page
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Sandwiched between the twin controversies of JFK and Natural
Born Killers sits Heaven And Earth, one of Stone's
quieter moments. This, his third film dealing with the Vietnam
War, is a doubly surprising one but also a logical extension of
his work to that date. Firstly it is the story of a peasant farmer,
not an American soldier, and secondly it is the story of a woman.
Given the difficulty with which Stone dealt with female characters
in his earlier films this was a brave move, especially for a director
who had by then been charged with every thought crime, including
misogyny. The gamble pays off in every sense, especially with
the engaging lead character and script.
Her village still stands, but her family is shattered.
She is not accepted by her family for what she has done. They
think she has turned her back on them and her people. Her mother
eventually hugs her, wisdom letting her see how futile the war
has been, but Le Ly is still an outsider. Never accepted in America
and unable to really return to her home village.
The position of women in society is one of the things to receive
a subtle lashing, with Le Ly once being referred to as a "stupid
peasant girl", despite the fact that she most certainly isn't
as we see later. Life in America is no more or less free than
in Vietnam, and perhaps more hypocritical. Land of opportunity
it may be (forgive the cliché) but Steve feels a woman's
place is in the home and only lets Le Ly work to pay the bills.
Even then the job is fairly menial, just the industrialised equivalent
of work in the rice paddies. It's later in life, after Steve's
death, that Le Ly makes the most of her talents and succeeds on
her own. This aspect of the story seems to have been missed by
many viewers who weren't expecting Oliver Stone to paint such
a glowing, though tragic, portrait of one womans triumph over
adversity. One criticism over this (such a common mistake, people
criticising Stone when they should be applauding him) was that
Le Ly only makes the transition to independence after going to
America with Steve, arguing that it places the emphasis on this
heroic if dangerous American soldier. I for one don't agree with
this. There was no hope left in Vietnam, the country was disintegrating
and if Le Ly had never left she would never have realised her
full potential and most likely would have been killed for marrying
an American. In America she is still faced with problems like
Steve, his chauvinism and volatility, and the prejudice facing
her. Le Ly makes her own life with a mixture of the potential
freedoms that America provides her (even though society might
seek to deny them to her) and her fellow refugees desire to do
the same. Ironically despite living in America and taking advantage
of the better things life there can offer her, Le Ly works from
a Vietnamese background, among the Viet Kieu. And instead
of hoarding wealth in that time honoured American way she uses
it charitably, setting up the East Meets West Foundation in 1986.
Mixing together the two cultures is what makes Le Ly's story such
a powerful one; that a woman can go through so much in her life,
both good and bad, and never give in to despair and hopelesness.
Then to use her individual success to help those who never had
the chance she did, those who suffered more than she during the
Vietnam War, and are still suffering to this day.
This is of course typical Stone territory. There are no easy answers,
possibly no answers at all for anything greater than the individual.
Anyone who comes offering freedom and an easier life just can't
be trusted can they? Stone is as critical of the Viet Cong as
he is of the Americans in Vietnam. But in the end this is the
story of Le Ly and her search for balance, inner peace, and a
place to belong. She can't find all of these things of course,
no person can, but she makes for herself the best place she can
in whatever situation life has thrown at her. This dovetails oddly
with Nixon, where that convoluted and contradictory man
spoke of "peace at the centre", and displays Stone's
own fascination with Buddhism and the peace it could help him
find in his own confused life. An example of both the personal
nature of Oliver Stone films and the increasing web of conceptual
continuity he seems to be building up among his body of work.
But the land and rice don't care for the suffering of humans.
In the final shot of the film we return to the image of a mountain
looming large over Ky La. Through all the seasons, all the violence,
every conquering army, the mountain has always been there, its
image repeated like a mantra. This suffering will pass, personal
tragedy dies with the individual and wars come to an end, but
the land will remain. Father Heaven and Mother Earth will change
places again and again, and we helpless mortals will always be
trapped in the middle, but if we make the most of our lives then
living hasn't been in vain no matter how unbearable it may become.
This is the message of hope in the face of despair that Heaven
And Earth brings to the viewer, especially the hope of Oliver
Stone. In Platoon he and his fellow Americans destroyed
a village that had stood for a thousand years. In Heaven And
Earth neither French nor Viet Cong nor Americans can destroy
the spirit of the land, and their atrocities will fade away as
life continues. Is this Oliver Stone's quest for forgiveness?
Watch the film again and decide.