This film is truly a great accomplishment for Vietnam and the Vietnamese-American director. Despite having a budget of roughly only two million USD, it is the most expensive film ever produced by the country.
The film is able to capture the authentic essence of Vietnamese culture through the story and themes; mainly that of suffering and respect for parents. The story follows the life of a poor hunchbacked man and a servant woman from North Vietnam who experience suffering through war and living in poverty.
The film is heart wrenching as the painful scenes are not over dramatized or unbelievable. You really grieve for the family, and even life at points. This film certainly has no happy ending because it remains true to the lives of many Vietnamese people.
The film's shortcomings are mainly technical issues, which are due to the small film industry in Vietnam and the inexperienced production company. Despite those problems, the cinematography is beautiful and the film has many impressive scenes without the use of CGI or special effects.
This film was incredibly hard for me to obtain. As of summer 2008, there is no commercial release in Vietnam (due to rampant pirating), NA or Europe. Only Taiwan has released a DVD. This was the one I purchased and I was hoping the distributor would do a good job of presenting the film, but I was disappointed. The DVD presents the film in a matted 4:3 screen and the transfer is quite poor. You would think the film was much older based on the quality. The authentic DVD wasn't cheap either, so it was quite disappointing.
This film deserves to be seen by many and hopefully we will see some release in the future that does justice to the original material.
The film is able to capture the authentic essence of Vietnamese culture through the story and themes; mainly that of suffering and respect for parents. The story follows the life of a poor hunchbacked man and a servant woman from North Vietnam who experience suffering through war and living in poverty.
The film is heart wrenching as the painful scenes are not over dramatized or unbelievable. You really grieve for the family, and even life at points. This film certainly has no happy ending because it remains true to the lives of many Vietnamese people.
The film's shortcomings are mainly technical issues, which are due to the small film industry in Vietnam and the inexperienced production company. Despite those problems, the cinematography is beautiful and the film has many impressive scenes without the use of CGI or special effects.
This film was incredibly hard for me to obtain. As of summer 2008, there is no commercial release in Vietnam (due to rampant pirating), NA or Europe. Only Taiwan has released a DVD. This was the one I purchased and I was hoping the distributor would do a good job of presenting the film, but I was disappointed. The DVD presents the film in a matted 4:3 screen and the transfer is quite poor. You would think the film was much older based on the quality. The authentic DVD wasn't cheap either, so it was quite disappointing.
This film deserves to be seen by many and hopefully we will see some release in the future that does justice to the original material.