Journey from the Fall

Great work for your first (public) movie, producers. And of course, it has to be a great teamwork for such a successful film. Although the movie is a bit abstract, it serves to bring back the painful memory of Vietnamese boat-people and remind our people of the cost we, our family members, our loved ones, had paid for where we are today. Freedom has its costs. The movie really shows how passionate you are about making movies and the missing part of Vietnamese history and writing about it in cinema pictures. The casting job was very well done. Long Nguyen and Diem Lien are very true to their roles. Kieu Chinh is irreplaceable. The lighting can be improved.

Having been a Vietnamese linguist for several years now, and going to the country several times and putting forth effort to know about the history and the culture, this movie might have affected me more than most white folks in America who weren't alive in 1975 to know about the last 30 years of Vietnam since the "conflict". I feel there are many reasons that a movie like this deserves as much attention as possible. History of the Vietnamese after the fall of Saigon from the perspective of the Vietnamese is rarely touched upon. America seems to have done a decent job at smothering our failure to "liberate" Vietnam and the repercussions to the Vietnamese people over the years as a small footnote in history. There are plenty of movies about American soldiers DURING the conflict, but not about Vietnamese people, and the hardships of the years after our withdrawal. The information is there if you look into it, but I'd say the majority of people from my generation and younger don't know much of what happened unless they made a proactive effort into learning more. Journey from the Fall is a momentous step in making known the hardships of many emigrants that reached America - and others left behind. Journey follows a few of the families who had husbands taken away to re-education camps. They were concentration camps led by the Communist soldiers, for Vietnamese who fought against the North during the war. Amongst hard labor and endless torture, the "students" were given lectures on the failures of America and the fruitless efforts of faith in anything that isn't Communist. Their lives were filled with propaganda and an endless struggle to resist the breaking of their will to conform. In this section of the story, Journey follows Long, one of many who was a former South Vietnamese officer who juggles the appeasement of the cadre and his desire for freedom. He, and a handful of others do their best while being moved from one camp to the next to provide their family news of their survival, and also try to escape by way of the river, or across a mine infested jungle to safety. Between Long's journey to freedom from the camps, his own family is trying desperately to smuggle themselves into a small fishing boat. Long's mother, his wife Mai and young son struggle for their lives and sanity in a boat that has a malfunctioning engine, and while drifting hopelessly along the ocean they are bombarded by pirate attacks. Some go insane and lose their will to live after being repeatedly raped and terrorized. Journey from the Fall could have ended with the arrival of the survivors to America, but instead has one final chapter about the efforts to conform to American life. Reaching America is only part of the struggle.

With three major story arcs (the camps, the fishing boat journey, and arrival in America), Journey has a lot to juggle in establishing the main characters, and providing enough drama and information of each major event in one movie. It could easily have been made into a trilogy. Make the first movie about the camps, the second would be the journey to America, and the third could be life once they reached America. Nonetheless, they did an admirable job at providing enough drama and familiarity with each of the three sections without sacrificing greatly in emotional impact. Journey should have been more harsh on the struggles of escaping the country. From what I've been told about and heard from survivors, this movie is more tame than it could have been. If it gave a little bit harder of an edge into the torture and struggles of the re-education camp victims, it might help bond our emotional attachment. I'm not saying to increase the violence, but that it should have at least implicated a little more than was provided. Also, the struggles of drifting to sea to an unknown fate could have been more frightening than what ended up on screen. For a 135 minute movie and so much happening within that time frame, it's like taking a 1000 page novel and shortening it to 400 pages. You KNOW there's a lot that is missing when all is said and done, and while the gist of the pain and struggle is presented, it also seems like with more time given, the pain of their struggles would be more apparent.

As I mentioned before, Journey from the Fall does an excellent job putting information that would work for an amazing movie trilogy into one film. It's not perfect, mostly because I feel that there was too much to juggle into one movie. At the same time, Journey is an important film, because it sheds light on a time in recent history that hasn't been given much attention. There are horrible historical events around the world that we don't hear about, but many movies exploit those events, or movies aren't made about them at all. This is one of those few movies that has its heart in the right place. It's not just education, but also a solid drama that rings true from almost every direction.

First I must add that I am an Vietnamese (American Born) growing up without the strong Vietnamese community ties and a little of the isolation and cruelty depicted in the movie. This movie gave me a visual of some of the stories that my father could not talk too much about and others that I could have never have known about if it weren't for talking to people that I met over the years, who spoke of refugee camps and such. I could identity with at most half of the movie personally... So there is still some objectivity in terms of how I view the quality of the movie. The cinematography was dramatic and you could see the camera work reflected the different times and places vividly. I can only say that you should watch it... as much as you are moved to watch Schindler's list and movies similar (as this movie is commonly compared to for the Vietnamese Diaspora)... this movie takes a single POV of a family and the interactions between people that intertwine. It is a dynamic movie and every actor, how big or small a role, even those of the officer in the camp, are so strong. A conversation between two minor older actors was so touching and helped established the heart of the story. The time line jumps are disorienting, you are caught off guard why some events happen much like a season of Lost, but by now... you know the broad story of the Boat People and the Vietnam War. The movie depicts the time in between that the news doesn't carry and the time jumps help carry the POV of each actors view.

If you go... bring tissues and be prepared to be changed when you leave the theater.

Make no mistake about it,the Vietnam war was a nightmare for all who were present. It was a war that we could have lost (and did!). Until now, any story of the Vietnam conflict was told mainly from the American perspective. Journey From The Fall is the first film (at least for us Americans) to tell the story from the Vietnamese experience. The plot seems to be a trilogy of stories during the fall of Saigon. A family is torn apart when the father is imprisoned by the Viet Cong and is sent to a re-education camp (read that as concentration camp)to be whipped into a proper Vietnamese citizen. The rest of the story concerns the rest of the family who manages to make it to America & be a part of the fabric that is the American experience. This is a film that is at times brutal to watch, but is a testament to the endurance of the human spirit. About 98 to 99% of the film is spoken in Vietnamese with subtitles, but don't let that keep you from seeing this heartbreaking, but uplifting & powerful film.

I want to thank Mr. Ham Tran and his team for making this true and tearful film.

It brought back many memories when life was full of hardships, sufferings and miseries.

It's now the past for so called "the boat peoples", however, the Communist is still controlling Vietnam.

Life is getting better after the fall of communism in the East Europe, but freedom is still the dream of the Vietnamese...

Wish them have all the courage and lucks ... till one day the sun will rise, the kites will fly ... in that wonderful country !