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DVD Cyclo
The city was once named Saigon; it is now called Ho Chi Minh City, and in this powerful second feature by Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung (The Scent of Green Papaya) it looks like a lost circle of hell.
Cyclo is a survey of a society in decay, in which conventional plotting gives way to a series of enigmatic episodes and haunting observations. There are two main characters: Cyclo (Le Van Loc) is a poor urban teenager who scratches out a living operating a bicycle taxi in the murderous city traffic; the Poet (Hong Kong star Tony Leung) is the son of an upper-class family who has depressively drifted into pimping and fencing--wartime rackets still thriving in the new Vietnam.
Images of appalling violence are played against backgrounds of banal, everyday bustle--a buzzing flow of meaningless, insectlike activity. Hung's vision may be dispiritingly bleak, but his filmmaking is vivid and inventive. Each shot is distinguished by a particular quality of lighting, framing, or texture that lifts it out of the ordinary and into the realm of the strange, ravishing, and insinuating. --Dave Kehr
I have watched this a couple times. I visited Vietnam a few years ago and found it beautiful, but troubling. There is a very dark side to Ho Chi Minh City because many people move there illegally (you need permission from the VN government) from rural areas to try to eek out a living. They are very poor and can be easily victimized because of their status. It is not a stretch to believe that some poor cyclo driver could end up like the young man in this movie. Cyclo drivers are usually extremely poor and often sleep overnight on their cyclo for two reasons. No place to go, and a need to protect what little livelyhood they have. Life on the mean streets of HCMC (and there are plenty really mean streets) is a real nightmare. Anyway, I found this movie to be in the same genre as Blue Velvet or Apocalypse Now as it goes from troubling in the beginning to a violent nightmare at the climax. This is not a film for the faint hearted or someone looking for positive insights into the Vietnam of today.
CYCLO
Most Americans understand and regard American Cinema as the definition of cinema because we can all relate to it, and quite frankly we understand American culture more so than any other culture. It is our nature. Cyclo is an example of of what defines cinema in Vietnam...because it translates Vietnamese culture to screen. Yes it is dark, yes circumstances are very depressing. These conditions are extreme to the point that many Americans don't believe they are real and therefore don't care to make the effort to understand. If you understand Vietnamese culture at all, then you will understand this film. The film will make sense and will not be a scattered senseless conglomerate of troubling scenes and character revelation. There is indeed a very strong, seamless plot. Now if you don't understand Vietnamese culture, or the cultures of most third world countries in general, all of the above might apply. American culture is not the only culture, and certainly not the only truth. The story in cyclo is indeed very true to life for Vietnamese people. This film is raw, brutally honest all the while presenting this truth with a refreshingly original, edgy style. The presentation does not dilute the depth of the story or the characters' circumstances. The story certainly doesn't romanticize and glorify the culture and certainly is not fodder for attracting tourists, but it is however very true to the culture and reflects many lives of Vietnamese people. This is a movie from someone who understands and feels what it is like to be Vietnamese and live in these conditions. Watching this movie takes you on that trip, lets you feel like you've been to Vietnam not as a tourist, but as a poor Vietnamese person struggling to make ends meet in a mediocre existence. Life there is simple, being able to eat and have family around is enough to make many happy and content as it is hard enough with the poverty to be able to feed a family. It is rare that movies can take viewers on such a trip and let them feel conent with simple needs and desires. If you are willing to open your mind and learn about Vietnamese culture through this movie, then I beleive you will be taken on such a trip.
A love poem to the city
In Vietnam, a cyclo is both the driver of a bicycle taxi and a name given to the taxi itself. In Tran Anh Hung's 1995 film Cyclo, the cyclo driver is a naïve 18-year old (Le Van Loc) whose innocence is corrupted by the choices he is compelled to make to escape the circle of grinding poverty. Cyclo is far removed from the director's introspective and contemplative dramas (Scent of Green Papaya, Vertical Ray of the Sun) that preceded and followed it. In Cyclo, Tran assaults our senses with the churning swirl of colors and sounds of Ho Chi Minh City, capturing the vibrations of the city with its street markets, pavement cafes, sidewalk vendors, and choking traffic. He also shows the underbelly of the city: its violence, flesh for hire, and atmosphere of poverty, dirt, and decay. While the violence is graphic and unsettling, it is not exploitative and without the glamour associated with gangster films. Cyclo has little dialogue, mostly gestures and silences, and cinematographer Benoit Delhomme's focus on the underlying beauty of the city gives the film a lyricism that renders the violence ambiguous.
Cyclo has lost both parents and lives in near poverty with his grandfather (Le Kinh Huy), who continues to work fixing bicycle tires despite his failing health. His younger sister (Phan Ngoc Lieu) earns a living by shining shoes outside of restaurants and the older sister (Tran Nu Yen-Khe) works as a cook and delivery person. Cyclo's father was also a pedicab driver but was killed when he was hit by a truck. Cyclo's boss (Nguyen Nhu) is known only as the Boss Lady (none of the characters in the film are named) who leads a criminal operation while taking care of her retarded son (Bjuhoang Huy). When Cyclo's bicycle is stolen by a rival gang, the young man is recruited by the Boss lady and her associate, The Poet (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), a small-time hoodlum and pimp, to work off his debt.
The Poet is involved with robberies, sabotage, drug trafficking, and prostitution and is no stranger to homicide. He is strangely sympathetic to Cyclo, however, and seems to share with him the common longing for an absent father as revealed in the poetry he reads to him. Cyclo asks to join his gang but, in response, is forced to witness a mobster singing lullabies while he knifes a victim who is bound and gagged. Unknown to Cyclo, the Poet recruits his older sister into prostitution, making her available to men interested in various fetishes while preserving her virginity, presumably out of his own love for her. When her virginity is finally violated, The Poet tracks down and brutally murders the offending patron. Cyclo is forced to stay in an apartment away from his family and told to perform errands for the gang such as smuggling dope hidden in slaughtered cattle and throwing a gasoline firebomb into the building of the rival gang that stole his pedicab.
Tran's vision is hallucinatory and unnerving and I often found myself unable to distinguish between what is real and what is a dream. The story is told from Cyclo's perspective and we enter his mind to witness his steady descent into confusion and fear, culminating in a memorable sequence where he combines pills and liquor and drenches himself in blue paint. Cyclo is disturbing and raw but it is an original work of art, both a brutal and often bizarre look at Saigon's mean streets, and a searing love poem to the city and a young man who finally steps outside the vicious circle to discover himself beyond the chaos.
The lush, super-chic ambience of Tran Anh Hung's third feature, The Vertical Ray of the Sun, presents a beckoning, irresistible vision of Vietnam. The film opens with a sexy brother and sister waking up to the sound of Lou Reed's laconic voice on the stereo. They stretch, practice tai chi, meander toward a late breakfast, and playfully flirt with each other. This morning ritual--slightly disturbing but mostly alluring--recurs as a quietly resistant motif to the disappointment that awaits each character introduced. Shot on location in an impossibly hued Hanoi (lime green and chartreuse abound), the film trails after three beautiful sisters during the month that separates the anniversaries of the deaths of their mother and father. Attempting to protect the ideal memory of their... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Tran Nu Yên-Khê - Nhu Quynh Nguyen Director(s): Anh Hung Tran DVD Release Date: Released the 18 December 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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"Watching it is like seeing a poem for the eyes." That's how Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert described this exquisite, Oscar-nominated, French-Vietnamese film from 1993, which begins in the 1950s and ends more than a decade later during the early years of the Vietnam war. The story is set almost entirely in a Saigon house where a 10-year-old orphan girl named Mui arrives to work as a servant. As she grows into a beautiful young woman, Mui is quietly and carefully observant of everything around her, from the scent of green papaya (hence the title) to the relationship between her employers. The film takes its visual cues from Mui's observations--it's a placid, soothing film that lingers over the physical and emotional details of its setting and story.
What a lovely film that touches the heart. It is truly an enchanting film with story lines that make you feel deeply in your soul. There were scenes that were so beautiful ... like the red flowers during summer time. The Vietnamese dress was breathtaking...in white floating within a forest of red. Take your time to welcome in a new culture and savor the beauty of its country. This movie is like a fresh air on a summer day. Highly recommended!!! More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 26 February 2002 This item is currently not available.
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The Quiet American proves that elegant and intelligent filmmaking can be emotionally powerful. Michael Caine plays Thomas Fowler, a British journalist in 1950s Vietnam with a lovely Vietnamese mistress named Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen) and a jaded view of the political strife teeming around him. He befriends a seemingly innocuous American named Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), who falls in love with Phuong--and slowly, Pyle's real purpose in Vietnam becomes revealed. Fowler finds that, to hold on to the carefully balanced life he's created for himself, he must make choices he's long avoided. Caine and Fraser are both superb and give a human face to complicated politics; as a result, The Quiet American manages to be compelling as both history and a story about very specific people... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Michael Caine - Brendan Fraser - Do Thi Hai Yen Director(s): Phillip Noyce DVD Release Date: Released the 29 July 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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I agree with the previous reviewer that this is an amateur production - appears to be a husband and wife and their camcorder. There is a long segment on Thailand tacked on the beginning for some reason and the narration is flat. The dvd cuts abruptly from location to location.
The only reason we still have this DVD is that my 3-year old, who was adopted from Vietnam, requests it periodically. The scenery is nice and gives some idea of what it's like to be there but this DVD definitely should not serve as your introduction to this beautiful country. More Info about this DVD Director(s): Sheryl Brakey DVD Release Date: Released the 20 January 2003 Usually ships within 24 hours
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