CAST

Le Ly: Hiep Thi Le

Steve Butler: Tommy Lee Jones

Mama: Joan Chen

Papa: Haing S. Ngor

Eugenia: Debbie Reynolds

The Vietnam War has caused much grief for many people. It tore through our country and ended the lives of over 50,000 of our soldiers, but we tend to forget that the war also caused grief to the people whose land we covered with dead bodies. Oliver Stone’s Heaven & Earth reminds us that we were not the only people who lost in Vietnam.

The film opened with the most beautiful pictures of any other Stone film, which captures the harmony between the small Vietnamese village and the land of their ancestors. The villagers lived directly off the land and the only hint of technology is a bicycle. Then, the French came and wreaked havoc on the village. Young Le Ly witnessed her father (Haing S. Ngor) cry his eyes out while their house burnt to the ground. But they rebuilt what they lost, like their ancestors had done for centuries.

Le Ly (Hiep Thi Le) grew up, and saw her country once again at war, but this time with itself. The country was divided into North and South Vietnam and the village’s allegiance was divided between the South Vietnamese government troops supported by the Americans, and the Viet Cong “rebels.” At daytime, the government soldiers with the Americans defended the village by literally herding the villagers into a small area like pigs, while teachers corrupted the minds of the children with propaganda. At night, they returned to their base camp, which allowed the Viet Cong to enter the village unmolested. They accused the villagers of helping the Americans, and, in order to instill fear within the villagers, shot some of them.

One day while working in the fields, Le Ly witnessed a deadly Viet Cong ambush on an American patrol. Thinking Le Ly could have been a conspirator of the attack, the Americans kidnapped her and took her to an interrogation camp, where, through electrocution, snakebites, and insect stings, they hoped to receive a confession that she was a Viet Cong supporter. Because Le Ly was innocent of the accusations, she never confessed, and, when her mother (Joan Chen) bribed a military official, returned to her village. Once she arrived, the villagers were immediately suspicious of her and her ties with the American military, which prompted the Viet Cong to abduct her from her home. They believed she was a traitor, but instead of killing her, two young soldiers raped her.

It became evident that the village was no longer safe for her, so she and her mother moved to Saigon. Saigon had been overwhelmed with American culture and looked similar to New York City. There, they began working as maids for a wealthy family. The father of the family noticed Le Ly, and soon enough, they had an affair and she was pregnant with his child. She and her mother were kicked out of the house with no money to support the child, so she began to sell cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana to American soldiers.

One day, an American soldier named Steve Butler (Tommy Lee Jones) stumbled into her life. Initially, she thought he wanted her for sexual purposes, but soon realized that he wanted her as a wife. They fell in love, had another child, and, when South Vietnam was on the verge of collapsing, they moved to San Diego, California. There, Le Ly believed she would be able to lead a good life for her and her children.

In California, Le Ly was introduced to a completely new culture. When she met Steve’s family, she bowed as a greeting and offered to help cook, while Steve’s mother and sister hug her, insisted on cooking for their guests, and treated her and her children as Steve’s souvenirs from Vietnam. Le Ly had never seen frozen peas, ovens, refrigerators, or forks and knives before, but was immediately introduced to all of them at her first diner.

At that diner, it was revealed that Steve was once married and his ex-wife was entitled to half of his paycheck. Therefore, in order to earn more money, Le Ly got a job working with circuits and developed plans to start her own business, but when Steve found out, they argued. Her mother once told her, “If you ever talk back to your husband, may you have two red cheeks: one from him and one from me.” Le Ly abandoned her roots and began acting like an American wife, and realized just how far she had gone from her origin.

Many people believe this film was Oscar worthy, and had it been released in any other year, I would agree. But, in 1993, Schindler’s List, the triumph of Steven Spielberg and of film in general, dominated the hearts of everyone, including the Academy. Kitaro’s amazing score for this film was outdone by the beautiful, Hebraic score of the great composer (and Stone collaborator) John Williams. However, a case could be made that Robert Richardson deserved an Oscar because this is definitely the most beautiful film Stone has made.

Heaven & Earth was Stone’s third film that focused on the Vietnam War. This film again shows that in the Vietnam War, there were no good guys or bad guys: the Viet Cong are depicted as viscous, merciless barbarians, and the Americans as destroying all that is pure, and the Vietnamese civilians as people who will do anything to survive, even betraying their friends. The Vietnam War was the gathering of different people, with different beliefs, with hate, with fear, and with guns.

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