Bao gio cho den tháng Muoi

A beautiful, heart touching movie, everyone should watch to know about Vietnamese culture. And Dang Nhat Minh is really a great director, check out his other films.

As simple it could be, the movie took my tears in the last scenes. Somehow I could feel the bitterness and the extreme heartbroken feeling when the father touched the soldier's gun whom he believed his son. To understand that faith has extreme power to heal, though illusive it had to be. Dang Nhat Minh described war with a sensible point of view. Father, mother, wife and kids are the most vulnerable when it comes to war. They suffer the pain, a kid became brave and a wife said white liar. The painting of the countryside of Vietnam was well described, with sincere farmers. Just listen to their conversations, they are REAL. I believe every Vietnamese have lived those dialogs, simple but nothing more than caring and faithful.

"When the Tenth Month Comes" will probably appeal to a very small segment of the movie-watching public. Even foreign film buffs may find this movie simplistic and uninteresting. The strength of the movie lies in it's characterization of traditional pre-Communist values in Vietnam. The protagonist Zuyen who hides her husband's death from the rest of his family, provokes the question: who rightfully owns the memory of the fallen soldier. The film's answer is that it is the family, but not the state that has the right to the memory of the fallen soldier. Zuyen is wrong for hiding her husband's death from her father-in-law, but the rest of the society has no right to his memory, because they did not love him as she and his family did. The film is markedly pro-Confucian and anti-Communist. The English-subtitles for the movie were spotty at best. Non-Vietnamese may miss some of the dialogue, but the message of the movie comes across strongly. Recommended for die-hards and academics.

The legacy of the Vietnam war is described vividly from the real sufferers, not from Hollywood. The theme of this movie is somehow similar to the famous movies " Cranes are Flying" and " Ballad of Soldier" from the former Soviet Unions. Highly recommended.

All human emotions are reflected in this movie with great subtlety and within the context of the Viet Nam war tragedy. The plot and subplot are seamlessly weave into one another. All the roles are portrayed superbly. Ms Le Van as Duyen (Zuyen) has one of the most beautiful face in cinema. Above all she is a great actress. The cinematography is art work, showing the landscape of an ordinary vietnamese village in a lovely and poetic way. My hat off to director Nhat Minh Dang. The film is a true masterpiece. Long live the villagers of Viet Nam.