| |
| The Sound of the Violin |
From the Vietnamese Newspaper Toui
Tre
On the Documentary The Sound of The Violin
in My Lai
What Is Needed Beyond Tears...
The Voice of the Ho Chi Minh CYL, Ho Chi Minh City
Thursday, 9/24/1998. No. 112/98 (2859). The Twenty Fourth Year.
The sound of the violin rises, melodiously on a misty Tra Khuc river
on an early morning in March. The veteran's voice resonates, "When
returning to Viet Nam, I carried my violin from America because
I wish to offer a gift to the souls of the departed, as well as
for those who're living in My Lai now. This is the voice from the
bottom of my heart..."
Director Tran Van Thuy had the same wish as Mike Boehm, a veteran
in the Cu Chi battle field, having nothing to do with the Son My
happening, but silent tears come to his eyes whenever he says the
two words Viet Nam. Mike Boehm returned to Viet Nam to build a peace
park in
Son My. Tran Van Thuy came to Son My to make a documentary, with
Mike being the narrator. They were fortunate because CBS could have
the capability to bring Hugh Thompson and Lawrence Colburn - two
"humane faces" in the American troop that did the massacre 30 years
ago in My Lai - back to this once blood-soaked land.
Everybody knows that My Lai used to be the horror to humankind's
common sense: houses, gardens, rice fields, cattle and 504 people,
mostly the elderly, children, and pregnant women, were completely
destroyed by American soldiers in just four hours on the morning
of 3/16/1968. The whole world was terrified, angered. The longest
trial in the history of America was established to punish the killers.
Five hundred witnesses and 23,000 pages of documents were called
upon.
But what is going on in My Lai today? For the past 30 years, the
children in Son My have been running bare feet on devastated dirt
roads, the adults' faces in Son My have been ever pale and skinny
from struggles with poverty, hunger and catastrophes to earn a bowl
of rice and piece of clothing. Americans like Mike Boehm, Thompson,
Colburn... feel responsible for that. And tears, held back from
so many years of torment and remorse, now rise to their eyes and
stream down, silently...
Yet it would be a fragmented documentary if there were no theme
to link them all together. And this is where Tran Van Thuy showed
his talent: seeing that this theme is in the sound of Mike Boehm's
violin. All the foreign filmmakers were there in Son My to shoot
scenes like the Vietnamese ones did, and of course with more modern
equipment, higher technology and skills. They watched the Vietnamese
crew work with nonchalant eyes. But when Tran Van Thuy brought Mike
to the communal grave, where the American soldiers had slaughtered
12 Son My people, when Mike opened his violin case, and when the
music of "Farewell to the Soldier" and "Prayer" soared up and sailed
on the rice fields of Son My, they realized what it meant and understood.
Perhaps when watching these pictures, many will be surprised why
these small and poor Vietnamese, who have had to store up so much
pain, can have such calm faces whereas the Americans - old and young
- seem so haunted, regretful, and guilty, and have cried so much.
We don't have the answer, neither does director Tran Van Thuy. Probably
the calm and repressed comment by writer Vo Thi Hao, narration writer
for "The Sound of the Violin in My Lai", is the closest to the truth:
"We have grown accustomed to enduring. Enduring and forgiving."
We have forgiven. Tears- though late- of Americans have been shed.
The music of "Farewell to the Soldier" and "Prayer" has risen, shiveringly.
But Son My needs, we need, something that is more than tears and
the sound of the violin. THU HA (the Vietnamese journalist who wrote
this article)
Other Articles about the Sound of
The Violin in My Lai
Article from the Vietnamese newspaper Thanh Nien
The Vietnamese Association of Cinematography
Article from the Viet Nam News
|
|
|
