Abstract
In traditional Vietnamese movie (before 2000), rural and urban areas are often depicted by cinematic stereotypes as absolutely separated and
differentiated territories. Also, people living in these two spaces are often
represented by contrasted traits, for example, rural people are naïve,
while urban people are sophisticated or sometimes, disrupted. But in
contemporary Vietnamese cinema, rural and urban areas have been
"de-territorialized". The distinctions between the two spaces have
been blurred, especially in the films made by young directors. Vietnamese films
which are made in recent years show clearly that the personality of people are not sharply characterized
according to their origin, rural or urban area, but are often in a very complex
state. Often the characters have a mixed personality of rural and urban type. This paper approaches
Phan Dang Di’s films as typical examples to present the ideas of
rural – urban boundaries in urbanization process and the
de-territorialization trend in contemporary Vietnamese movie.
Keyword: Vietnamese
cinema, De-territorialization trend, Rural – urban
boundaries, Phan Dang Di’s films, Urbanization
Introduction
First and foremost, it is necessary to shed some light on the real
conditions in which urbanization and rural-urban boundaries arise along with
the development of Vietnamese society. In some aspect, this studies results
from reality itself and from the question: Has an urban civilization or an
urban society actually come into being in Vietnam?
The city
represents civilization, therefore urban studies itself is the study of
contemporary society and the interpretation of our ongoing existence. No
individual or academic discipline is able to capture and decipher the entire
field of urban studies, partly because new issues arise everyday as cities
constantly change and so does our perception on them. In the 4th century BC, the Greek philosopher Aristotle
began to perceive cities from demographic and societal perspectives, allowing
him to forge the foundations of modern planning as a discipline. In The Politics, he illustrated a utopian community
consisting of 5000 populations – which is “small enough so that a single citizen’s voice could
be heard by all the assembled fellow citizens.” On the nature of urban areas, Patricia
Clarke Annze and Robert M.Buckley said that: “Urbanization and growth go
together: no country has ever reached middle-income status without a
significant population shift into cities.” (Annze, 2009).
From a historical standpoint, in Vietnam, cities
(thành thị) are perceived as “a mixed hub of political space, which is located
within a stronghold (thành), and a market (thị), which lies next to and
provides supplies for the former’s population, and thus is always lively and
full of residences. A city in Vietnam, as in other Eastern countries under
feudalist dynasties, is first of all a combination of interdependent places and
spaces that together make up the identity of thành-thị”.
Under this viewpoint, under the Ly-Tran dynasties, from around the 11th
century to the 14th century, Thang Long imperial citadel bears clear
features of a city.
Although the history of Vietnamese cities can be said
to begin in the 11th century, Vietnam remains an agricultural
country. The majority of its population was farmers residing at villages, which
accounted for 90% of the total population until the August Revolution broke
out. Cities are perceived as islands arising from an agricultural ocean. Even
Thang Long-Hanoi, the largest city in the world, is not exempt from the
penetration of rural elements into every aspect of its daily culture.
Historically, the harmony between rural and urban areas is a significant
characteristic of traditional Thang Long – Hanoi. In terms of land, according
to cadastres, in two Hanoi’s inner districts under the Nguyen dynasty (Tho
Xuong and Vinh Thuan) there is still a large amount of agricultural wards and
hamlets, where different kinds of cultivated lands (rice, mulberry, flower and
vegetable fields), riparian alluvial grounds, over 4000 lakes, hills and
graveyards can be found. Residential areas, apart from houses, include adjacent
gardens and ponds. The sceneries around commercial towns bear even more
agricultural features (mud cottages, ponds and gardens, hamlets, fields,
bamboos, areca trees, etc). French author J. Boissière described Hang Theu
street (now Hang Trong) at the end of the 19th century: “Near Hoan Kiem
lake, there are gardens, areca trees and bamboos whose images are reflected on
the water, making whoever near the lake feel lost in an agricultural setting,
especially under the sunset…”.
In the 18th century, a Western missionary commented while visiting
Thang Long: “not only is each village a commune but big cities are divided into
wards, each of which is itself a commune”.
In daily life and also in social organization, a permanent economic linkage and
relationship between urban and rural areas necessarily existed in Thang
Long-Hanoi. In conclusion, despite its early introduction in the 11th
century and its progression through the 19th century, when Western
cultural traits rapidly spread across Vietnam, and even till now, the
urbanization of Thang Long-Hanoi and of many other cities in Vietnam is not
regular and radical.
For one thing, cities and countries are places,
whereas urbanization is a process in which changes occur in spatial,
demographic, economic and environmental terms, which generate urban living
spaces from rural ones. Urbanization is inevitable in any country where the
process of industrial and trade development is seen. It is a shift from
dispersed agricultural activities to centralized industrial activities in a
certain area. It is a complex socio-economic phenomenon, which happens across a
huge area and lasts long enough to transform agricultural-rural societies where
farmers live into urban-industrial spheres where urban dwellers live.
Urbanization is also a process wherein the population converges in cities and
the role of cities in social development generally surges.
Urban
society usually goes with the process of modernization, specialization and
therefore with a radical transformation from agricultural modes of production
to industrial and service modes of production (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2016). It began in the West and established there patterns
that later spread to the world and to places where village customs, modes of
production and business were replaced, and where life became industrialized and
functioned in a scientific and regularized way with a synchronized management
system manifested in urban planning, public traffic, daily life and employment
and livelihood. For its part, Hanoi has until now – as remarked by historian/culturalist
Tran Quoc Vuong – still a “big village” rather than a big city. Although Saigon
bears more resemblances of a city thanks to a long time being manipulated by
colonial regimes (French and American), in whose mother countries the concept
of “modern city” originated. Similar to Hanoi after 1954, Saigon after 1975
became partly “villagized” in the same manner as the North due to historical
conditions and its particularly old-fashioned urban management system, before
quickly returning to its urban trajectory after the Renovation had been
adopted. However, compared to other Asian cities that have completed their
process of “urbanization” such as Taipei, Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo,
Hanoi is nevertheless a “village” as far as its outdated daily customs and
habits are concerned (Vuong, 1981).
Not only a “young” type of art in the
world, film is also a recreational industry that is more popular, up-to-date,
commercialized and socialized than other types (Oxford Dictionaries, 2016). “Since its introduction at the end of the 19th
century, this type of art has become one of the most popular and influential
media in the 20th century and beyond.” (Encyclopedia
Britannica, 2016). A product of modern society, film
sharply reflects all the aspects of modern society, including the interaction
and transition between “rural” and “urban” areas. It is in this setting that we
choose film as an interdisciplinary and cultural object through which to study
urbanization and the boundaries between urban-rural areas in contemporary
Vietnam.
Among
the series of images and symbols/topics that produce the greatest influence on
the Vietnamese cultural and aesthetic dynamics and cinema in particular, “rural
areas/countryside”- not “urban”, despite the long-term urban history - is an image which has a strong, persistent and
lasting lifespan. Rural areas/countryside also becomes a grip, a root from
which the discourses on “Vietnamese identity” in the movies spring. The wartime in Vietnam (1945-1975) and the next 10
years (1975-1985): Vietnamese cinema vividly reflects the national
personality through the image of rural
areas: Chung một dòng sông (Together on
the Same River, 1959), Con chim vành khuyên (Passerine bird, 1962), Đến hẹn lại lên (Back up an appointment, 1974), Cánh đồng hoang
(The abandoned field: free fire zone, 1978), Mẹ
vắng nhà (Mother Away, 1979), Bao giờ cho đến Tháng Mười (When the tenth month
comes, 1984)… In the Renovation area, since the introduction of
the “open door policy” to the 2000s of the 21st century (1986-2000), rural
areas are put in contrast with urban areas: Thương
nhớ đồng quê (Nostalgia for
Countryland, 1995), Hoa của trời (Flowers of the sky, 1995), Những người thợ xẻ (The
Sawyers, 1998)…The
Vietnamese origin and personality is
perceived to originate from rural areas, where the Vietnamese find their
ultimate safe haven and tranquility. Whereas cities are imagined as a place
full of anxiety and nervousness: Tướng về
hưu (The Retired General, 1988), Vị đắng tình yêu (The bitter taste of love,1990), Chuyện tình trong ngõ hẹp
(Love story in narrow alley, 1992), etc…
At the
beginning of the 21st century, the image of rural areas/countryside is no
longer perceived as a place associated with the so-called “Vietnamese
personality ”: Chơi vơi (Adrift, 2009),
Bi, đừng sợ! (Bi, don't be afraid!, 2011), Đập cánh giữa không trung (Flapping
in the middle of nowhere, 2014), Big father, small father and other stories
(Big father, small father and other stories, 2015), Căn phòng của mẹ (Homostratus, 2013)…In these
movies, what is reflected is the portrait of a nation in the process of finding
its personality and transgressing the
boundaries between rural and urban areas. There, globality and locality
intermingles: the presence of “normal foreigners”, increasing evidence of the
deep influence of Western foreign cultures, the youngsters who struggle to find
themselves, all of which do not belong to any fixed space – time
coordination…Familiar discourses on Vietnamese identifiable traits such as
water rice, rural areas, green fields, femininity…are resituated in a
discursive situation. Each movie attempts to provide a different
representation, interpretation, perspective or answer – through their account
of the rural spaces – thus presenting each particular and unconventional
perspective of the independent directors on the issue of “national personality
”.
Within the
scope of a paper, we want to primarily focus on the works of Phan Dang Di to
illustrate his profound interest in the image of urban areas in the
transitional and integrating era of Vietnam, his unified perspective on the
rural/urban boundaries and its suggestive yet practical treatment of realistic
materials. Apart from Khi tôi 20 (When I am 20, 2008), Bi, đừng sợ! (Bi, don’t be afraid!, 2011),
Cha và con và… (Big father, small father and
other stories, 2015) written and directed by Phan
Dang Di himself, we delves into Chơi vơi (Adrift, 2009) written by Phan Dang Di –
and discovers the image of cities deeply embedded in the movies of Phan Dang Di[6].
The
spatial boundaries: From boundaries to non-boundaries
The original
movies made by Phan Dang Di usually take a big city as their target of
scrutiny: for Bi, don’t be afraid!, When I am 20 – it is Hanoi (the 2000s, and
a glimpse of Hai Phong); for Big father,
small father and other stories – it
is Saigon (the 90s as Vietnam had commenced its Renovation and Integration.).
If the contexts of Phan Dang Di’s movies are dissected, three spatial
groups can be seen:
First of all are urban spaces,
with bars,
disco clubs, railways, bridges, hotels-hostels-boarding houses, ancient French
mansions/old houses, train stations, hospitals, etc. In general, the urban
architecture and arrangement is messed up, disorganized and even repulsive and
the size and volume of buildings and apartments is disproportionate: desolate
moldy old residences stand next to majestic bright constructions; slumdogs lie
on the fringe of flashy and dazzling cities; crowded and hectic beer halls
under the bridge stand side by side with sumptuous and lavish restaurants. In Bi, don’t be afraid!, the character
Quang frequently stands aloof next to an old grey door of an apartment, zooming
out to the entire city; similarly in Big
father, small father and other stories, Van and Vu meet each other and
share their love next to the window of an old residence; the prostitute in When I am 20 also works in an old
apartment. Factories, which constitute an important indicator of urbanization
and modernization, in Di’s movies are depicted as primitive, manual and
cluttered places (the water ice factory in Bi,
don’t be afraid!, and the nut and bolt factory in Big father, small father and other stories, etc.). Trains running across cities, which is
familiar in the context of cities, are perceived by the characters (Quang – Bi, don’t be afraid!, the prostitute – When I am 20 ) with unfamiliarity as if
they were exotic and foreign to them. In Di’s movies, crowded and busy urban
sceneries are hardly seen, and in the same degree advertising panels appear
only scarcely. The ordinary beer halls normally presented in these movies, the
incoherent local dialect of the female barber, and wandering and petty
individuals living in the dwells along Sai Gon River – all illustrate such
areas torn between traditional countryside and modern city.
Second are rural places: rivers, canals, fields,
village gates, graveyards, banyan trees, wood stoves, etc. The image of South
Vietnamese rural areas/farmers in Phan Dang Di’s movies is not as clear-cut and
vivid as in traditional accounts. For example, the large river flowing into the
ocean in Big father, small father and
other stories and the adjacent communities, who fish for livelihood and
live with natural canals, are different from how they are supposed to be in
traditional Northern traditional rural areas, with their edges sometimes
blurred. Even the fields, village gates and graveyards in Bi, don’t be afraid! are only glimpsed at instead of meticulously
depicted.
Third are the suburban, outer
or adjacent and neighboring areas: the series of barren boarding houses along Sai Gon River,
floodplains-canebrakes, meadows, sandbanks, the dykes near Red River, the Long
Bien bridge leading to suburban Hanoi, the cluster of natural resorts, etc. As
far as the number of scences is concerned, scenes in which the characters are
set in these spaces account for a relatively high proportion: they reside in
these adjacent areas more than next to streets or in other urban areas. These
spaces act as buffer zones that connect two trajectories of the characters: Mr
Sau travels from the countryside to city, Vu and Thang returns to their country
to live and work after having inhabited and studied in cities. Both cities and
rural area are looked at and observed from these spaces. For example, Mr Sau
fetches jack-fruits and glutinous rice cakes from Tien Giang to his children in
the city; and Van follows Thang to visit Vu at his boarding house. Both Mr. Sau
and Van show off similar actions as soon as they enter the house: they
unconsciously look up to the ceiling, on which there is a small hole through
which Vu can look down. Therefore, rural and urban atmospheres are synchronized
and combined in the living spaces of these peri-urban residents. In Bi, don’t be afraid!, Bi’s pastime is
wandering through dense meadows and canebrakes near the Red River and seeking
for small secrets, which are both frightening and extremely fascinating –
together with the rural kids. In these films, the urban-rural boundaries are
removed, or at least “blurred” and harmonized as the characters move into
“buffer” or peri-urban zones.
As mentioned above, in the collision of these spaces and the transgression
of boundaries, an incomplete and undone process of urbanization reveals itself.
Things are arranged in a disorganized fashion, and everything is jumbled, mixed
up, inadequately planned, tangled up and untidy. To represent these radically
contradictory spaces in his movies, Phan Dang Di often utilizes extremist
angles: overly wide or narrow, and brightness and harmonious light are often
followed by darkness and extremely contrasted light, making it difficult for
the audience to distinguish between rural and urban components according to
their standardized size and volume. For example, “rural areas” are at times
noisy and have their dark sides - in Big
father, small father and other stories và; and cities are not infrequently
endless, silent and chillingly borderless – in Bi, don’t be afraid!.
However, the boundaries between these spaces are often unclear, as the
former rural-urban distinctions gradually transform into adjacent and
peripheral spaces and even into non-spaces. As geographical borders are
eliminated – these spaces even overlap and intermingle with one another and
infiltrate the daily, existential life of its inhabitants, become a kind of
“nowhere land”, which is floating, mysterious, indistinct, indefinable or
indescribable, such as the infinite meadows in Bi, don’t be afraid! or strangely silent mangroves in Big father, small father and other stories or
the cosmic beaches in Adrift, etc.
The cultural and social boundaries –
urbanization or the enlargement of rural areas?
As far as the cultural traits and daily habits practiced by the urban
dwellers in Phan Dang Di’s movies are concerned, the aforementioned deficient
urbanization shows itself even more vividly. It is reflected in a “village
culture” and in every daily meal, every routine and the treatment of daily
issues by the characters.
Among daily routines, the family dinner held together by the urban
characters clearly stands out as a residual cultural practice typical of rural
areas. The families in Bi, don’t be
afraid! and Big father, small father
and other stories are still three-generation families – which are
traditional, and whose mentality requires the presence of all family members to
begin their meal. The dishes made by the wet nurse (crab soup, floating sticky
rice ball and dumpling, boiled chicken, etc) in Bi or the betel nut mortar of Hoa’s grandmother in When I am 20 all bear clear rural marks.
The scenes wherein Duyen uses lemonade to wash Cam’s hair, Cam wraps herself in
a blanket to make herself sweat and cure her cold, Cam’s decrepit mother
diligently weaves her wedding dress hoping for her wedding day to come… (Adrift); the scenes in which the
characters party, joyfully exchange wishes on the wedding day, participate in
the funeral, or even meet each other without any reason (Bi, don’t be afraid!, Big father, small father and other stories) –
all reflect different traditional and genuinely rural customs frequently
practiced by Vietnamese.
A particular feature that stands out as a rural custom in urban areas is
the treatment of deseased family members in Bi,
don’t be afraid!. In this movie, the director fully sketches out the
portrait of a conventional family right in Hanoi, which tries to maintain every
traditional custom and retain the time-honored mentality and rituals during a
funeral. After her father in law dies, the broom “decorates” his body and puts
socks and gloves on him. The funeral lasts for quite a while and has all its
rituals retained; the son and his wife strictly follow the dress code by
wearing elongated funeral attires. On the first death anniversary (after a
year), relatives and family members get together in a warm dinner to talk and
reminisce about the moments at the funeral. In a spiritual sense, Bi’s family members’
burning incense before their ancestors’ altar, or the broom and her nephew’s
visiting her father-in-law’s grave as soon as the first death anniversary
finishes, are all familiar “practices” in Vietnamese traditional culture.
The daily routines of the urban families in Phan Dang Di’s movies are still
disposed towards patriarchal and lineal characteristics typical of Vietnamese
families – which are deeply influenced by Confucius values. In fact,
Confucianism is a philosophy that “sees the world through familial relations,
sees life and social-administrative relations through the lense of an extended
partriarchal familial model” (Vuong, 1999).
Ideas on familial hierarchy and lineage and the position of the eldest son are
still embedded in the minds of Phan Dang Di’s characters even in the period of
urbanization: Bi’s grandfather, despite having gone off for years, is patiently
waited for by his wife and other family members, still desiring to serve and
provide for him; during family meals – the family members sit according to
their assigned position; after Bi’s family comes back from his grandfather’s
funeral, the wet nurse tells his father to stay home to “pay homage” to the
deseased grandfather, because “you are the eldest son, who is irreplaceable” (Bi, don’t be afraid!); Vu’s father does
his best to find him a good lady so they can “carry on the lineage” (Big father, small father and other stories);
Hai’s mother always treats her eldest son decently as if he were a “small king”
although Hai has created his own family (Adrift),
etc.
In terms of arts, deeply inscribed in the urban way of life are the songs,
melodies and other “art performances” associated with the Northern and Southern
rural areas: Trống cơm (Tambourine) – a Northern folksong (Bi,
don’t be afraid!); Chàng đi săn (Hunter) – a Khmer folksong; Nỗi buồn hoa phượng (The sadness of flamboyants)– a pre-war track
played in both rural and urban areas; the kids that sell lottery tickets and perform
such performances as fire breathing and snake-swallowing at pubs, etc. (Big father, small father and other stories). A characteristic of Phan Dang Di’s
movies is that his characters’ jobs and professions are more or less
artistically-inclined, but nevertheless resemble folklore theatrical and art performances rather than the professional
and luxurious shows typical of urbanity.
Beside all of the above features, the presence of “foreign” cultural
elements contributes to certain incongruity and vagueness that blurs the
rural-urban boundaries. For example, the foreigners in these movies always turn
upon such spaces that are beyond the urban-rural binary as natural resorts and
deserted beaches. Upon entering these places, they recreate various tools according
to their favorite size and ideas (such as the enormous mud bath barrel in Big father, small father and other stories, the
isolated parachuting scene in Bi, don’t
be afraid!, etc.) to such an extent that these cultural tools cannot be
categorized as either rural or urban.
The making of personality and gender
– beyond every territorial boundary
According to a standpoint that almost became a stereotype in Vietnamese
movies in the past, the concepts of “rural” and “urban” areas often referred to
distinctly separated spaces and territories and were closely related to the
making of human’s personality: rural and urban areas are associated with a pure
personality and a broken personality ,
respectively. Accordingly, individuals that keep residing in rural areas
maintain their pure personality as
good-natured, innocent, honest and nice personalities; whereas those who
migrate to cities from rural areas, or the urban dwellers themselves, are often
regarded as “foreign, displaced” individuals, who have lost their direction in
life or fell into even worse trajectories (Thời
xa vắng/ A Time Far Past, The Retired General, Nostalgia for Countryland, etc.). Giang Minh Sai in A Time Far
Past, after having come to Hanoi and married Chau – a beautiful yet egoistic and
calculating female “burgher” – becomes a coward and feeble man, who has
abandoned his personality and sincerity typical of a soldier whose background
was from the countryside. Thuy – Thuan’s urban daughter-in-law in The Retired
General – also
presents her selfishness, shamelessness and apathy in her lifestyle and attitude
towards others. Meanwhile, the rural characters are often depicted as simple,
honest and kind individuals that represent the “pure” and general Vietnamese personality
. In A Time Far Past, Sai’s first lover (Hương)
maintains her warmth and femininity despite having been through countless ups
and downs and changes; Mr Co and lady Lai – honest peasants who migrate to the
city to serve as houseworkers in Thuan’s family as seen in The Retired
General – are
actually Thuan’s closest and most loving friends rather than his cold-blooded
children, etc.
As for contemporary Vietnamese cinema – especially for young directors such
as Phan Dang Di, these boundaries are “de-territorialized”, leading to the “de-identification”
of these characters based on these spatial underpinnings. Through his movies,
Phan Dang Di deterritorializes both urban and rural areas, blurring the
boundaries and distinctions between these two spatial categories. This leads to
de-identification, meaning that rural and urban areas no longer contain fixed
identities as construed by former viewpoints.
In Big father, small father and other
stories, the main characters reside mostly in “peri-urban” spaces and
receive little impact from both rural and urban areas. But more importantly, in
the noisy, boisterous yet instinctual and innocent world of these “young boys”,
their personality is not clearly defined
and is almost “in the making” – therefore it is difficult to define whether
they are influenced by either environment where they had lived (their original
rural places or urban places where they struggle for livelihood).
One of the two main characters – Vu – is a complex and multi-dimensional
character, who has special interactions with his environment and living
conditions. Vu is a young photography student in the 1990s, where Vietnamese
society witnesses all-round changes in economic, political and social aspects
(which are reminded by several details: the old currency, fixed phone booths, the
vasectomies encouraged by the government or motorbike stunt shows, etc.). Right
at the beginning, Vu’s father’s visit to his son by boat in which he carries the
jackfruit from his hometown garden, a series of sticky rice cakes and a camera
worth two tons of rice reveals that Vu was born in a wet countryside and into a
Southern rural family. Nevertheless, Vu is figured by the director as an urban
“intellectual” boy, who is white, gentle, smiley, naïve and pure. Despite
having been in different settings, from hectic and anxious urban environments
to silent and boundless rural spaces, Vu keeps his personality unchanged. In
chaotic urban atmospheres, Vu is an observer (primarily a photographer) rather
than a participant, as if nothing could change him: the dance hall filled with
drugs and violence where Thang works as a bartender, the arduous sweatshop
where Cuong works, the disordered pub where Tung and Mai earn their living as
streetsingers, etc. In his poor wet countryside: having lived and studied in
the city for quite a while, Vu still engages in chasing games with the rural
boys, plays with forest spiders like a kid, and refuses his father’s request to
marry Huong only to “stabilize his lineage”. If Cuong takes a vasectomy and
earns money as a broker to buy a mobile phone that may help him “court” a
girlfriend, Vu takes it at the end of the movie to show his resolute departure
from his gender – in a proactive and chilly way. Finally, by which spatial
environment is Vu’s personality regulated and shaped: The darkroom, the dance
hall, the hospital, the swamp, the river, or the forest? The answer is Vu is
not entirely trapped in any of these spaces – as Thang, Cuong, Tung are
“imprisoned” by the city or Vu’s father and older sisters are “shaped” by the countryside.
Vu’s personality therefore possesses a
kind of “zen” quality: despite having passed his puberty and engaged in
different lifestyles, Vu retains his childlike, candid and emotional worldview.
This personality itself contributes to
changing the viewpoints associated with “spatialized” and “territorialized”
identities characteristic of Vietnamese movies that deal with urban-rural
areas.
In Bi, don’t be afraid!, the
entire complex world of adults is seen through Bi’s innocent eyes – a pure, immature,
spontaneous and unbiased pair of eyes. Bi wanders aimlessly from place to
place: from narrow passages in the ancient house and the ice water factory to
crowded and busy streets, to corn fields and sandbanks along the Red River,
even to village graveyards in suburban areas. Bi is able to talk and make
friends with the rugged “workers” at the ice factory, shares secrets with his
cold grandfather, who has returned after years abroad (and who is fearful to
his family), willingly plays with the rural kids spattered with mud, sleeps
with “Ms Thuy” at night yet comes back to his parents whenever he sleeptalks, and
he loves to walk to the graveyard with his mom and naturally talk with
grasshoppers and locusts. Bi throws an apple into the ice pack at the factory,
puts a maple leaf into the ice tray of his family’s fridge, secretly nurtures a
tiny watermelon until the day it fully grows up, and plucks a small flower in
the dense meadow. Bi’s world holds numerous secrets and beautiful memories, and
thus is outside any territorial or spatial boundary. His perspective penetrates
every margin between things: urban or rural, natural or humanistic, adult or
childish, rich or poor.
Also in Bi, don’t be afraid!, the “progressive
development” of a human life starts to reveal itself through the four male
characters – rather than four complete lives: first is an innocent, pure,
joyful and carefree boyhood (Bi), followed by a prideful, romantic yet short
adolescent (the student), followed by adulthood, which is associated with
relentless responsibilities and being lost in complicated relationships and the
vain pursuit of happiness (Bi’s father); and at the last station, as the man
has been through all his life events and fully grasped its essence, he remains silent
and ready to welcome his death (Bi’s grandfather). This hidden narrative
progress makes it difficult for us to define which space among the
aforementioned spaces influenced and shaped one of these lives (urban, rural
areas or suburban, market areas, etc.).
In addition,
in Di’s movies, the issues of sexuality and sexual orientation as seen through
the characters constitute a “problematic” discourse that penetrates all living
spaces: whether the characters originate or reside in rural or urban areas,
their sexual/erotic urges and desires are intense and strong. In Big father, small father and other stories, the
homosexual attraction between Vu and Thang begins in the city – where they
share the same residence, but starts to intensify more vigorously and “frantically”
on the river flowing near Vu’s hometown, and becomes even more passionate and
rigorous after they come back to the city. Huong is an orphan that spends her
whole life in the countryside, but unlike other traditional stereotypes of
rural girls that are bashful, timid and closed, she shows no reluctance in
showing off her desire and longing for happiness and finding her Self. Deeply
burried in the urban women in Bi, don’t
be afraid! (Bi’s mother
and aunt) and Adrift (Cam, Duyen and
Vy) is a passionate and burning desire for romantic and sexual experiences,
which are unfortunately repressed, hidden and ignored – not unlike the rural
women in Nostalgia for Countryland (Dang Nhat Minh), Bến không chồng
(Luu Trong Ninh), Khách ở quê ra (Visitors from the countryside, Duc Hoan)...
From a perspective of intertextuality: Comparisons
with other Asian films of the same theme. The case of Apichatpong’s films
Hanoi
and Saigon in Phan Dang Di’s movies easily remind us of Taipei and other
Taiwanese cities in the 80s of the 20th century as featured in Hou
Hsiao-Hsien’s movies, wherein the process of industrialization and
urbanization is undone and the interactions and hybridities between urban and
rural characteristics linger in the habits and lifestyles of urban inhabitants.
(For example, his A time to love, a time to die or Three Times were illustrative of the extremely
fast development of Taiwan as it entered
the first stage of urbanization). Meanwhile, as for Hanoi at the beginning of
the 21st century or Saigon in the 1990s as portrayed in Phan Dang Di’s movies,
this process is still in a “transitional”, intermediary or beginning period and
is far from complete. His movies portray the urban loneliness present in Tsai
Ming-liang’s movies in the early 1990s for example, which specifically
designates the status of Taipei at that moment as a “metropolitan” (What time is it there?, I don’t’t want to sleep
alone, The Hole…). With the introduction of Asian “metropolitans”,
such topics as the making of cities,
urban life, urban alienation, urban loneliness, urban nostalgia, and urban love
stories, etc. became the favorites of Tsai
Ming-liang, Lou Ye, Jia Zhangke,
Kore Eda, Fruit Chen and Wong Kar-wai, etc. For these directors, the city is conceived
as an important
object and even a character
in their movies, in which the relationship between human and city and urban
dwellers themselves are dissected at different levels and through different aspects.
The disinterest in urban area as an image/theme is a
distinction of a Thai director that won the Palme d’Or - Apichatpong
Weerasethakul – comparted to other renowned Asian film directors.
The materials used by his movies contain a cross-temporal/non-temporal
character although most of their settings and stories can be inferred from
contemporary life in Thailand. Apichatpong’s movies regard the city not as an
important factor in their narrative and do not talk about urban citizens. In Tropical Malady, in which the city is
featured the most, the city is briefly portrayed through the eyes of a casual
bystander (observer) rather than an urban citizen. Another variant of “the
city” in Syndromes and A Century is a
fictional city in the future, which is not a real city in the present.
Apichatpong departs from the “urban” streamline pursued by contemporary Asian
movies, probably because the most important thing his movies are interested in
is the journey to find a human’s “core” or “essence”. Such a journey demands
the characters to turn back to their most primitive and instinctual state and
ways of life, a primordial status where human lives within nature and next to
nature, which is far different from the artificial ways of life among which
“urban” lifestyle is a typical one.
Compared to the case of Apichatpong, Phan Dang Di’s
movies share many similarities and parallels: for example, their movies all
feature wandering characters that, whenever facing challenges, choose to evade
them and return to nature – as “rogues of the forest”. Nature serves as a
hideout and safe haven for anyone in spite of its insidiousness and roughness.
However, in Phan Dang Di’s movies, his characters’ lives often fluctuate
between two environments: “the artificial coexistent life” and “the primitive
natural environment”. For this reason, the issues of deterritorialization and
de-identification in Di’s movies also constitute a prominent and problematic
topic faced by the audience. His movies illustrate the Vietnamese urban life in
the context of incomplete urbanization and residual “village” customs that still
influence the lifestyle, thinking and daily routines of the characters. Behind
these movies is a dynamic and complex reality of Vietnamese contemporary
society in its development.
Conclusion
It can be concluded that Phan Dang Di’s movies
illustrate life of people in Vietnam in the context of incomplete urbanization
where “village customs” still influence the lifestyle, thinking and daily
routines of urban people. In his films, rural–urban boundaries are blurred or eliminated.
The spatial, cultural and personal boundaries do not show only rural or urban
features, but often express the mixture of both.
His movies reflect the dynamic and complex reality of
Vietnamese contemporary society in its period of urbanization and globalization.
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