'Fall' shows scars that persist after Saigon

1/2 out of four stars. Stars: Long Nguyen, Diem Lien. Rated: R for violence. How long?: 2:15. Where: Orpheum

On the day that America's story in Vietnam ended, the story of "Journey From the Fall" begins.

Ham Tran's wrenching and powerful film begins on April 30, 1975, the day Saigon finally fell to North Vietnamese forces and the Americans evacuated. Many supporters of the South Vietnamese government are trying to get out of the country any way they can, but Long (Long Nguyen) opts to stay and fight the Communist forces that aim to, as he derisively puts it, "liberate Vietnam from Vietnam."

It's a very costly decision for both Long and his entire family, as Tran shows us in a story that has the twists and turns of a melodrama but the wounded heart of an intimate family drama. Here is a story that involves daring escapes, perilous sea voyages, and tearful reunions, but Tran keeps the material so muted and spare that we can't help but believe in it, and feel deeply for the characters being buffeted about by turbulent times.

Long is immediately captured and put into a brutal re-education camp with other South Vietnam supporters, where prisoners are worked until they drop, if they're lucky enough not to be ordered to sweep the land mine fields surrounding the camp. The emaciated Long sustains himself with memories of happier times for himself and his wife and son, flashbacks that Tran shows as if they were flickering old home movies.

Meanwhile, Long's wife (Diem Lien), mother (Kieu Chinh) and young son (Nguyen Thai Nguyen) don't know whether he is alive or dead, and decide to try to leave the country among the millions of Vietnamese refugees known to the world as "boat people." It' s an incredibly hazardous undertaking; even if the family can find passage in the cargo hold of a rotting fishing boat, they'll have to contend with disease, hunger, betrayal and even a terrifying midnight raid by Cambodian pirates.

Tran goes back and forth between the divided family's experiences, and for a while it's a close contest whether Long or his family is having the worst of it. As harrowing and exhausting as their stories are, it's almost a relief when the third act of "Journey From the Fall" turns out to be a relatively sedate look at the survivors, now living in Orange County, California, in 1981.

But that placid exterior can be misleading, as all the survivors are deeply marked by the horrors they have just endured. As they try to make a normal American life for themselves among the orange trees and dodgeball games of California, they quietly agonize over the family members left behind in Vietnam, never knowing for sure if they're alive or dead.

As thrilling as the Vietnam scenes of escape are, it's this third act that's really at the heart of the film, as Tran insightfully shows the full sweep of the Vietnamese immigrant experience. He's helped greatly by some terrific performances in the film, from Lien's stoic wife, who seems frozen with grief, to Nguyen's Long, who tries to retain some humanity in the midst of inhumane circumstances.

As the country argues over if and when to end another war in another country, "Journey" has an unexpected sting of timeliness. But it also stands on it own as a film that tells what happened in the country after the closing credits for most American films about Vietnam have rolled.
source:www.madison.com