Avatar in Hanoi
Such is the day-to-day irrelevance of the American war to life in Vietnam that I hadn’t even considered the poignancy of watching Avatar in Hanoi.
That is until the umpteenth unsubtle Vietnam reminder sledgehammered it home during the movie (I think it might have been the burning of the forests). Then I started to wonder what was going through the minds of the audience.
Then it dawned on me that I was the only westerner in the movie theater. Most people would assume that I was American. Would they be stirred enough to take it out on me?
Sure the movie was only two parts Vietnam allegory to one part Iraq and one part tree hugger but it still felt enough to stir the audience. What were they thinking?
The fall of Saigon bit when the US forces are run out of town? Did that click?
On the way back I shouted over the traffic noise to Our Woman from Hanoi (for want of a better term that might have to stick).
What did she think of the Vietnam subtext?
No reponse. By this time we were at the lights.
I tried again.
The Vietnam thing? The people in the trees? They’re you.
“We are the weird blue Aliens?” she said.
Yes, I replied. The good guys.
Hmmm.
It hadn’t twigged.
It it hadn’t twigged with her then the chances are it hadn’t with anyone else in the cinema.
So it was special effects movies. The Americans were the bad guys because the script made them that way. No other reason.
Me? I thought the film was naff. The 3D was pretty at times but mostly just gave me a headache.
On leaving the cinema there was a mildly famous singer performing on the pavement alongside a car he was advertising. He was way over amplified.
A crowd had gathered. The traffic had stopped. It was louder and more vivid than anything I’d seen in the past two and a half hours.
We fought our way out and were revived by pho on the way home.
To sum up – not even the unsubtle Vietnam war subtext in this colossally successful film can remind young Hanoians of the war nor stir either nostalgia, pride nor aggression.
It’s broken box office records here and has been showing for three months.
Yet I think most Vietnamese would be very surprised to find out it has anything at all to do with their country.
“Our Woman from Hanoi” ‘spose its better than “Wor lass”
Hey Steve, I actually went to see Avatar in Hanoi a couple weeks ago in Hanoi, while waiting for the train to Sapa, and I was definitely the only American in the theater. I saw it before in the US and I can assure you that the audience reaction was exactly the same. Folks there were rooting for the Na’Vi and against the “American corporation.”
My hypothesis for why the Vietnamese crowd didn’t think it told their story is because it didn’t. The (hackneyed, cliched, dopey) plot actually resembles European colonialism of Africa closely and really has nothing to do with the American War. If young Vietnamese are truly aware of the motivations behind that one, they certainly know that it wasn’t to plunder the natural resources and leave with them at any cost.
I saw the film as well but I Always thought of it as Dances With Wolves in Space. I never once thought that it had anything to do with the war.
I think the war theme in the movie should suggest that the Vietnamese must have been reminded of their clash with the Americans. Although, most movies have the same theme but this one tops the audience’s interest so it should make an impact in anyway.
I saw it and really, a bunch of things came to mind: the decimation of Indians in North America, African slave trade, Aborigines, Iraq war, Vietnam/American war…basically any instance of the west trying to destroy indigenous people(s).
I heard a pod cast with the director and that was his thinking- not necessarily any one event.