| |
Vietnamese actor hit for role in US
film
By Tran Dinh Thanh Lam
HO CHI MINH CITY - Condemnation and disciplinary
measures being imposed on a well-known Vietnamese actor
for his role in two Hollywood movies, including one that
touches on the Vietnam War, are the government's latest
moves to ensure more order in cultural and artistic
activities.
Attracting national attention is the
case involving Don Duong, 45, an actor branded by
state-run newspapers as a "national traitor" for his
role in two US movies, including We Were
Soldiers. A resident of this southern Vietnamese
city, Duong has appeared in numerous domestic
productions about the Vietnam War years. But now,
Vietnam's National Film Censorship Council (NFCC) wants
him barred from acting for five years and from traveling
overseas.
The controversy erupted after bootleg
copies of We Were Soldiers - which focuses on the
first major battle between North Vietnamese forces and
US troops in 1965 - came on sale in early July at Huynh
Thuc Khang, the city's popular quarter for pirated
compact disks and digital video disks. Within no time,
government officials, press commentators and film
critics had condemned the movie as distorting the truth
about the US involvement in the Vietnam War, reflecting
the issue's sensitivity nearly three decades after US
troops pulled out in 1975. The film censorship council
concluded that We Were Soldiers "rubbed out the
frontier between just and unjust wars, said that the
Vietnamese army lost the battle while in reality it
wins, and has finally distorted the true image of Uncle
Ho's soldiers".
As for Duong, NFCC deputy chair
Luu Trong Hung said he "has lost honor among the people
and has become an instrument in the hands of forces
hostile to the Vietnamese nation" by taking part in the
offensive movie, where he played the role of a North
Vietnamese commander. The council made its
pronouncements after the Ministry of Culture and
Information asked it in early October to state its
position on the film.
We Were Soldiers
depicts the battle of Ia Drang in Vietnam's Central
Highlands in which the 7th Air Cavalry led by
Lieutenant-Colonel Harold Moore, played by Mel Gibson,
is overrun by a more experienced North Vietnamese army
led by commander Nguyen Huu An, played by Duong. The
movie is based on the book We Were Soldiers Once ...
and Young by Moore, who is now a retired
lieutenant-general.
Movie critics say the film
tried to show the human, courageous and self-sacrificing
side of soldiers on both sides, and has scenes of US and
Vietnamese families grieving for their soldiers.
But although history records the North
Vietnamese as having won the bloody three-day battle in
which about 400 US troops find themselves surrounded by
some 2,000 Vietnamese soldiers, the film appears to show
that the US side won. Tran Thu Ba, 24, a third-year
university student, said, "The film is not worse than
the other Hollywood films on the Vietnam War. The main
problem is that this time it is the other side who was
more humane and who won the battle."
The state
media were far more vitriolic in their reactions.
"This is a very politically reactionary movie
with the wicked intention of distorting the legitimate
national liberation struggle of the Vietnamese people
and at the same time justifying the unjust war of
aggression of the American imperialists," the newspaper
Nguoi Lao Dong (The Laborer) declared in a front-page
commentary.
The army's official newspaper Quan
Doi Nhan Dan (the People's Army) soon after joined in,
commenting in a front-page article that the movie "did
not reflect correctly the truth of history of the just
war by the Vietnamese people". Duong had tarnished the
image of the Vietnamese soldiers and people, and had
"sold his conscience cheaply and become a national
traitor", Quan Doi Nhan Dan said.
The media also
took issue with an earlier Hollywood acting role by
Duong, who played the role of the head of a refugee camp
in the 2001 movie Green Dragon that starred US
actor Patrick Swayze. The film censorship council also
said that Green Dragon, which depicted the life
of Vietnamese refugees in a US camp after the war,
contains many scenes that "distorted the reality" in
Vietnam. The council proposed that the Culture Ministry
and the Ministry of Police ban We Were Soldiers
and Green Dragon and that they refuse entrance
visas to Randall Wallace and Tony Bui, the respective
directors of the films.
Foreign Ministry
spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh agreed with these
recommendations, saying last week that Duong "could be
punished for going abroad [to the United States] with a
wrong purpose, eventually to work in movies but not to
visit relatives as he had stated".
"It is very
regrettable that an actor who used to enjoy popularity
in Vietnam, who took part in big movies now has taken
part in movies that damage his own image. That's the
most severe punishment to an actor. It will be heavy
losses for an actor when he loses popularity," Thanh
said.
In early October, Culture Ministry
officials removed a Vietnamese film starring Duong,
Me Thao Thoi Bong (The Glorious Time in Me Thao
Hamlet), from the list of the country's movies
screened at the 47th Asia-Pacific Film Festival in
Seoul.
(Inter Press Service)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
