'Journey' showcases human side of war
Adam Goldstein, staff writer
May 23, 2007

In “Journey from the Fall,” writer, director and editor Ham Tran illustrates how the horrors and damages of war never end with a white flag or an armistice.

By following the struggles and hardships of a single South Vietnamese family at the end of the Vietnam War, Tran traces the persistent and pernicious impact of a struggle that separated parents from their children and husbands from their wives.

In mining the emotional depths of one family’s story in compelling and affecting, Tran manages to hint at themes that are much wider in scope and import. In this sense, “Journey from the Fall” is a film that boasts just as much historical pertinence as human pathos, and an equal amount of human drama and human nature. Though Tran’s narrative tendency to jump between different time periods and locations within the story can be confusing at first, he ultimately succeeds in his cinematic juggling act. This is a story that spans more than a decade and two opposite ends of the world, but still manages to retain its focus and its visceral impact.

Photo courtesy of Imaginasian Pictures Jayvee Mai The Hiep and Long Nguyen in a scene from director Ham Tran's "Journey from the Fall."

At its surface, it’s a film of survival and escape, as a family is broken apart after the fall of Saigon to communist forces. While Long Nguyen, who had fought with the American forces during the war is imprisoned in a communist “re-education camp,” his wife (Diem Lien), son (Nguyen Thai Nguyen) and mother (Kieu Chinh) are forced to flee to America. While his family makes a harrowing escape to the West in the hull of a small fishing boat amid a teeming crowd of fellow refugees, Nguyen must decide whether to risk a dangerous escape.

The resonant impact of the film is intensified by the actors’ personalities and life experiences, which closely mirror the dramatic action. Long Nguyen, who fled Vietnam on a small boat when he was 16, lends his name to his character in the film. Kieu Chinh, who plays the matron Ba Noi, was arrested in 1972 for her role in the anti-war film “Warrior, Who are You?” and, at the end of the war in 1975, fled on the last Pan-Am flight out of the country. Diem Lien’s father was in a communist re-education camp after the war, a setting that serves as one of the central sites of the film.

The actors invest their performances with an immediacy and authenticity that gives the action an absorbing, tactile tone. Indeed, the performances help tie Tran’s experiments in narrative chronology and settings together. The movie may skip from year to year and from place to place, but the believability and power of the performances remain constant.

In bringing one family’s personal memoir of struggle and sacrifice to the screen, Tran hints at the universal. By incorporating his own experiences, as well as those of the film’s cast, “Journey from the Fall” achieves a larger status as a parable of war and its long-term consequences.

Adam gives "Journey from the Fall":

Adam Goldstein is a staff writer for AsiaXpress.com. Adam can be contacted via e-mail at joe@asiaxpress.com.