Word: ly
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...Heaven & Earth. Oliver Stone is back for a third tour of Vietnam, after Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July. But for once in an American movie, the focus is on the Vietnamese, and on the sufferers: the land and the women. Phung Le Ly (played by newcomer Hiep Thi Le), growing up in the idyllic rice farmland of central Vietnam, becomes the victim of every possible atrocity as civil war heats up in the late '50s. She is tortured with knives, electric prods, snakes, even ants; she is brutalized by the republican army and raped by the Viet...
...make sure you get the point. The films get longer, more ponderous; they sit on your chest until you finally surrender to their good intentions. In the process, they may become sentimental, cautionary fables of mistaken identity, compiling atrocities and piling them on photogenic victims. Suffering sanctifies Le Ly and Gerry's dad and Andy, makes them objects of veneration to the faithful; everyone wants to kiss the hem of their torment...
...simple as magazine trend pieces may try to make it seem. Certainly not Heaven & Earth, which is thematically grotesque but visually gorgeous: the camera takes in the spectacle of Southeast Asia (Thailand mostly, stunt-doubling for Vietnam) with the rapture of an intelligent lover. Because it traces Phung Le Ly's life story, the film is dramatically misshapen: its most singing moments are in the first half. And audiences may be as weary of Stone's haranguing about Vietnam as they are afraid of people with AIDS. But if Stone simplifies and distorts, he often does so brilliantly, like...
After making some complusory opening remarks and introducing the film, Jones leaves the theater allowing the audience to soak up what is being billed as the final installment in Stone's Vietnam trilogy ("Platoon," "Born on the Fourth of July"). Based on the autobiographical memoirs of Le Ly Haslip, the movie chronicles the harrowing odyssey of a Vietnamese woman as she trades her war-torn homeland for an alien America. Jones, who plays Sgt. Steve Butler, Le Ly's jaded and abusive G.I. husband, says the film is "not about war, but more about the soul." The movie, which...
...Palme d'Or at Cannes this year, brings its gorgeous panorama of Chinese history and sexual hysterics to U.S. screens in early October. Oliver Stone has returned to Southeast Asia to film Heaven and Earth through a Vietnamese and feminine perspective, basing his movie on the memoirs of Le Ly Hayslip. And if you can't wait for the December opening of Heaven and Earth for a Vietnamese take on the ravages of war, scout around now for From Hollywood to Hanoi, a singeing documentary journey on film by Tiana Thi Tranh...