The Beautiful Country film reviews
The Beautiful Country
BY NICK SCHAGER ON JUNE 23, 2005 GO TO COMMENTS (0)
Social outcast Binh (Damien Nguyen) is known in his homeland as "bin duh"
(translated as "lower than dirt"), a spiteful designation earned by his half-breed status as the
child of a Vietnamese mother and an American G.I. father. Binh's pariah position marks him
as part of the continuing legacy of the Vietnam War, and Hans Petter Moland's The
Beautiful Country casts Binh's perilous journey to find his father in the U.S. as a defiant,
courageous act of self-actualization.
Though more narratively conventional than the work of Terrence Malick, Moland's
film nonetheless exhibits the same entrancing serenity and attention to environment as
found in Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line (Malick, as it turns out, is one of the film's
producers). And his supple, understatedly sentimental depiction of Binh's quest (set in
1990) is given equal measures of grit and grace by Stuart Dryburgh's cinematography,
which oscillates between gorgeous establishing shots of Binh's various stops (including an
overcrowded migrant boat, a Malaysian refugee camp, and an underground Chinatown,
NYC dormitory for illegal workers) and close-ups of the wounded man's countenance.
Binh dreams of becoming a shoe salesman upon reaching U.S. shores, an
unsurprising aspiration considering that a lifetime of physical and verbal abuse (nearly
everyone he meets feels obligated to call him "ugly") has led the quiet, timid young man to
maintain a perpetually deferential, downturned face aimed at others' feet. Newcomer
Nguyen breathes life into Binh with only a smattering of dialogue (in Vietnamese and broken
English), instead conveying both agony and resolve with his large, emoting eyes.
Furthermore, his tender, tremulous rapport with a Chinese prostitute named Ling (Bai Ling)
whom he befriends in a Malaysian prison is a beacon of poignant hope amid the allencompassing atmosphere of misery.
Moland's humanistic story about xenophobia, man's persevering spirit, and life's
bitter ironies—such as when Binh learns, after a wrenching sea voyage to Manhattan that
cost his young brother his life, that the U.S. government is flying Vietnamese-American kids
to the States for free—only stumbles during its final act, when the director unwisely
complements Binh's arrival in Austin, Texas with disruptively cheesy '80s-style music. Yet
with a wrenching, inconclusive finale, the filmmaker refuses to succumb to the desire for pat
reconciliation and resolution, thereby shrewdly acknowledging the unfair, ongoing, and
often-irreparable wounds caused by conflicts both national and personal.
BUY: VIDEO | SOUNDTRACK
D I R E C T O R ( S ) : Hans Petter Moland S C R E E N W R I T E R ( S ) : Sabina Murray C A S T : Nick Nolte,
Tim Roth, Bai Ling, Damien Nguyen, Glen Bradford, Thi Hoa Mai, Dang Quoc Thinh Tran, Thi Kim
Xuan Chau D I S T R I B U T O R : Sony Pictures Classics R U N T I M E : 100 min R A T I N G : NR Y E A R :
2004
http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/the-beautiful-country
From Slant Magazine: according to Wikipedia, this is “an online publication that features reviews of
movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and
musicians.”
A Son of Two Nations, Stoically Searching for His Father
By A. O. SCOTT Published: July 8, 2005
The title of "The Beautiful Country," an earnestly humane film by the Norwegian
director Hans Petter Moland, refers both to Vietnam, where the story begins, and to the
United States, where it concludes. Stuart Dryburgh's cinematography testifies to the
truth of the description in both cases, beautifully capturing the humid, verdant
landscape of the Vietnamese countryside and the dry, craggy plains of west Texas, as
well as the bustle of Hanoi and Manhattan. The hero, Binh (Damien Nguyen), belongs to
both countries, and therefore to neither. The son of a Vietnamese woman and an
American G.I., he lives as a pariah in postwar Vietnam, performing menial labor and
enduring the contempt of the relatives who grudgingly allow him to live with them.
Roland Neveu/Sony Pictures Classics
Binh (Damien Nguyen), rear, makes his way from Vietnam to a refugee camp and then to the United States.
Multimedia
Video
Movie Minutes: 'The Beautiful Country'
The year is 1990, midway between the fall of Saigon and the present day, and
Binh, like a cast-off stepchild in a Grimm fairy tale, sets off to find his way in the world.
[too much plot summary here, so I removed a chunk.]
The basic narrative of "The Beautiful Country" is powerful and timely. Relations
between the United States and Vietnam may have evolved in the last 15 years, but the
global traffic in human labor is, if anything, a more acute and pervasive problem today,
and the middle section of the movie presents some of its cruelties without blinking.
While Sabina Murray's screenplay is hardly immune to sentimental excess, it does, like
Binh himself, succeed through a kind of clumsy stubbornness.
At first, Binh does not seem especially resourceful. He is quiet and slow-moving,
and the height he has inherited from his Texas father makes him look especially
awkward next to his smaller Vietnamese countrymen. Mr. Nguyen is an actor of more
determination than range, and he is forced to say some pretty corny lines in halting,
heavily accented English. After a while, though, a patient charisma emerges, and his
performance overcomes some of the obstacles placed in its path by the script.
These consist mainly of speeches that spell out themes and emotions grander
than anything dramatized on screen. It is never a good thing when characters
philosophize about their misery, and worse when those responsible for that misery take
their turn. The worst culprit in this regard is Tim Roth, who plays the scarily soft-spoken
captain of the ship that carries Ling, Tam and Binh to New York. "You have an
independent mind," the captain says to Binh. "Some people admire that. I'm not one of
them."
Still, it is hard not to admire the independence and ambition of "The Beautiful
Country," even if the film does fall short of its epic intentions. Its best parts are not the
overwrought, underwritten scenes in which Binh and Ling pour out their hearts in
English that is meant to be all the more poetic for missing articles and auxiliary verbs,
but rather those quieter moments that light upon odd, telling details. In their cargo
hold, for example, the migrants pass the time by conducting a tournament, complete
with side bets, in which contestants compete to see who can rattle off more brand
names, sports teams and other useful bits of contemporary American commercial
jargon.
Mr. Nolte, appearing in a few scenes at the end, brings a rugged gravity to the
story's gentle, elliptical conclusion. Like much else in the film, the reunion between Binh
and his father exists on the far edge of credibility, but its overall delicacy and sincerity of
feeling make its faults forgivable. Which is fitting enough, since forgiveness, after all, is
both the movie's subject and its guiding spirit.
"The Beautiful Country" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult
guardian). It has some violence and strong language.
Directed by Hans Petter Moland; written (in English and Vietnamese, with English
subtitles) by Sabina Murray, based on a story by Ms. Murray and Lingard Jervey;
director of photography, Stuart Dryburgh; edited by Wibecke Ronseth; music by
Zbigniew Preisner; production designer, Karl Juliusson; produced by Edward R.
Pressman, Terrence Malick, Petter J. Borgli and Tomas Backstrom; released by Sony
Pictures Classics. Running time: 125 minutes. This film is rated R.
WITH: Nick Nolte (Steve), Tim Roth (Captain Oh), Bai Ling (Ling), Temuera Morrison
(Snakehead), Damien Nguyen (Binh), Tran Dang Quoc Thinh (Tam) and Chau Thi Kim
Xuan (Mai).
http://movies2.nytimes.com/2005/07/08/movies/08beau.html?ex=1146801600&en=7f0607674e0747f
5&ei=5070
from The New York Times
OUTCASTS FIND STRENGTH IN AN ODYSSEY TO U.S.
By Walter Addiego Friday, July 15, 2005

Bai Ling as Ling in The Beautiful Country. by Roland Neveu/courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
The Beautiful Country: Drama. Directed by Hans Petter Moland. With Damien Nguyen, Bai
Ling, Nick Nolte and Tim Roth. (Rated R. 125 minutes. At the Embarcadero.)
Binh, the central figure in "The Beautiful Country," is an outsize and disheveled young
Vietnamese man who slumps and averts his eyes as he endures the insults of family members
and others. The year is 1990, and as the son of a Vietnamese woman and an American GI, Binh
is despised in his homeland because of his mixed racial heritage. His kind is referred to as bui
doi, which, we're informed, means "less than dust."
The abuse Binh suffers at home, and his determination to find his father in America in the face
of many obstacles, are the subjects of this quiet, moving and beautifully shot drama by the
Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland. Binh is a living legacy of America's involvement in
Vietnam, and suffers as such. But Moland's outlook is compassionate, and his main character is,
first and always, a human being.
Taller than his countrymen and constantly put down as ugly, Binh (Damien Nguyen) has been
mistreated for so long that he hardly speaks, and offers little resistance to the contempt he faces
while performing menial tasks.
[. . . . A passage of too much plot summary here]
To this point, "The Beautiful Country" is a long story of unremitting hardship, so much so that
the film eventually threatens to sink under its accumulation of misery. We admire Binh's
endurance, but his experiences are so relentlessly awful that they come near to producing
compassion fatigue in the viewer.
The conclusion will strike some as abrupt. A sudden, and maddening, revelation pushes Binh
over the edge, and he takes off for Texas, where his father (Nick Nolte) is working as a
handyman and has his own sad story to tell. But I see the ending as succinct rather than rushed,
and its spirit of charity serves as a moving counterpoint to the long recital of Binh's afflictions.
As Binh, newcomer Nguyen is persuasive in growing from oxlike submission to competency. Bai
Ling nicely conveys the self-contempt that's as essential to Ling's character as her benevolence.
Nolte brings admirable depth to his brief appearance, and Roth is an old hand at the kind of
creepiness his captain embodies.
Moland, especially through the cinematography of Stuart Dryburgh, lends the proceedings some
of the somber beauty of the films of Terrence Malick, who is one of the producers.
-- Advisory: Language and a vulgar sexual gesture.