The
Quiet American |
After the recent success of 'Rabbit Proof Fence' comes another British release from the versatile Australian director Philip Noyce - 'The Quiet American', adapted from Graham Greene's novel by writer Christopher Hampton ('Dangerous Liaisons'). Noyce made his name in Hollywood with political thrillers like 'Patriot Games' and 'Clear and Present Danger', films which subtly questioned the American Intelligence community and American foreign policy. These themes are also to be found in 'The Quiet American', but it is a more mature, contemplative work, shifting the focus from action to character, and concerned not only with politics, but with the human condition. |
Michael
Caine stars as Thomas Fowler, a London Times journalist posted in French-occupied
Vietnam, who lives with a much younger local woman, Phuong (Do Thi Hai
Yen). Fowler would like nothing more than to be able to continue living
with Phuong, but his laziness, and the lack of noteworthy events in Saigon,
raise the constant threat of a recall to London (and to his Catholic wife,
for whom divorce is out of the question). Then into Fowler's life steps
Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), the quiet American of the title, an idealistic
young man claiming to be in Vietnam on a humanitarian mission to treat
trachoma, who wants nothing more than to save the Vietnamese. Fowler and
Pyle become good friends, united by their love for Vietnam and a common
veneer of gentility in a world where foreigners tend to be loud, drunken
buffoons. It soon becomes apparent that they also share a love for the
same woman, as well as a carefully masked capacity to deceive, and to
endorse acts of the most cold-blooded barbarity, in order to get what
they want. |
With
a plot involving US paranoia about foreign 'enemies', the improvident
supply by the US of arms and training to highly suspect local despots,
and the greenlighting by the US of some terrorist actions even as it roundly
condemns others, this is clearly a very political film which, despite
its setting in Indochina in the late 1950s, has all sorts of uncomfortable
resonances for the state of international affairs today. Yet by concentrating
upon the relationship between Fowler, Pyle, and Phuong (who in different
ways comes to symbolise Vietnam for both men), Noyce manages to collapse
all distinctions between the political and the personal, creating a drama
that is as compelling as it is critical. Anton Bitel, 09.09.2002 |