South East Asia and Soviet Russia Linked by Vietnam War Films

The Continuing Relevance of the Vietnam War Across Generational and Geological Boundaries

In the films When the Tenth Month Comes, Karma, White Badge, Three Seasons and The Beast, there are at least two key themes the writers and directors have implemented in order to represent the impact of the Viet Nam War on the people involved in different geographical locations and in different generational perspectives. The first key theme is that war can not only effect those involved during the conflict, but can also have an adverse effect on those not directly involved for generations to come. The second is that one does not have to live in Viet Nam in order to have been or be influenced by the effects of the war.

The general formulas used in the films to demonstrate these points are to take a centralized hero, heroine or both and place them in situations that test the limits of their cultural and traditional beliefs. Particularly with the Vietnamese melodramas, the heroes and heroines must suffer some form of loss in the form of a lover, family or both in order to reach a point of desperation. It is in this desperation that the traditional Vietnamese values are either maintained or cast aside in order to make an attempt at survival in the face of a changing world.

In Dang Nhat Minh's When the Tenth Month Comes (1984), the above formula is followed to a certain degree with the heroine Zuyen carrying on in the traditional manner of both a dutiful wife/mother and a responsible daughter-in-law to her ailing father-in-law. While her husband is deceased, she must maintain that he is alive, not for her own sake, but because she fears the pain of knowing he is dead would be too much for her father-in-law to bear. She knows he doesn't have much longer to live, so she holds out as long as she can.