Release Date: November 22, 2002
Starring: Michael Caine, Brendan Fraser, Do Thi Hai Yen, Rade Serbedzija, Tzi Ma, Quang Hai
Directed by: Phillip Noyce
Written by: Christopher Hampton, Robert Schenkkan
Distributed by: Miramax Films
MPAA Rating: R (images of violence, some language)
Thomas Fowler, the British journalist played by Michael Caine in Phillip Noyce’s version of The Quiet American, seems to have come to Vietnam for all of the same reasons that any Westerner comes to Southeast Asia in the movies: the beautiful, submissive women, the readily available hallucinogenic drugs, and the inky blackness of the hot, muggy nights that conceal both the past and the present. But, as Fowler extols in his opening monologue, and as many others before him have learned, the deceptive seduction of all three is merely surface-deep.
Fowler lives a content life of fantasy, the kind that, in any story like this, stands waiting to be disturbed. Leave it to Noyce’s sturdy, entertaining period drama, which is based on Graham Greene’s 1955 novel, to provide the means: Shortly after the film begins, Fowler, a correspondent in Saigon during the early 1950’s for The London Times, meets Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), the titular American who introduces himself as an economic aid worker. The two become fast friends -- Fowler is amused by Pyle’s tenacity, and Pyle finds Fowler’s instance at keeping the world at arm’s length confusing -- but not for long. Pyle falls for Fowler’s mistress, Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen), and Fowler begins to suspect that the idealistic young doctor may not be exactly who he says he is.
These events play out in front of a backdrop drawn from history. The French, who had begun a disastrous campaign to reassert their dominance in Southeast Asia following World War II, began to withdraw from the region, while at the same time the Americans started to pour more money and armed forces into the country, setting in motion the events that would eventually lead to the Vietnam War of the late 1960’s. For the British author Greene, who wrote The Quiet American a decade before the war was begun, the political part of his narrative is frighteningly prescient; the personal drama of Fowler and Pyle, however, is just as vivid and even more entertaining.
Part of it is so vivid because the actors Caine and Fraser are a study in contrasts, but although both have their moments, Caine is clearly built up to be the movie’s hero. His performance here has a bit of the same weary indignation that won him an Oscar in The Cider House Rules, and, much as in that movie, he is a good man but certainly no saint. He has a wife in London, but frequently puts off returning home so he can stay with his mistress, the beautiful Phuong, and though he was once probably a first-rate journalist, his career has deteriorated to the point where the home office at the Times no longer sees his presence in Saigon as essential.
That the audience should thus be meant to dislike Fraser is something a contrast in itself, considering that Fraser is most famous for playing the simple, affable heroes of movies like The Mummy, George of the Jungle, and Encino Man. Here, he gives his all-American nature a new twist: as it becomes apparent that Pyle is actually in Vietnam to advance the United States’ post-World War II anti-Communist policies, Fraser’s single-minded screen persona invokes the ghosts of McCarthyism and the belief that the United States is the One True Democracy.
To be fair to Noyce’s picture, it is hardly anti-American, and in fact Americans will probably enjoy watching it, for in many ways it bears the impression of the popular Tom Clancy military/political thrillers. The secret but steady influx of American money into the French military presence, along with Pyle’s hidden purpose in Vietnam make for invigorating subplots.
The screenplay, which is written by Christopher Hampton and Robert Schenkkan, does better at selling the movie’s romance than Tom Clancy’s novels ever did (though Clancy carefully wised up as his career matured). It’s hard to see why Phuong would love Fowler, or why Pyle would love Phuong, but, accepting these truths, it’s quite easy for the audience to become emotionally involved in Fowler’s plight. From the way that Fowler reacts to Pyle’s advances on Phuong, there is the impression that this is the first time Fowler has taken a passionate stance on anything -- and to his credit, it’s exactly what gets the audience on his side.
Rather, if there’s anyone to hate in The Quiet American, it would be the white colonialists in general. Noyce, who took on similar themes in his other and more powerful period drama of 2002, Rabbit-Proof Fence, has again set out to give the audience the impression (correctly, maybe) that Westerners did little besides spoiling paradise when they took a fancy to controlling Southeast Asia. Pyle, for instance, despises Fowler’s relationship with Phuong because he sees it as symbolic of Europe’s relationship with Vietnam: an older man romancing a beauty young enough to be his granddaughter, perhaps. But Pyle is no better, for he is a harbinger of a flawed American ideal that would eventually lead to strife, division, and unrest on the home front.
It’s no accident, either, that all of these themes collide in Vietnam -- if there’s one aspect of the setting that Noyce manages to convey, it’s that the country’s history is riddled with division and bloodshed. The blood in The Quiet American is as thick as the inky black of the Vietnamese nights, and today, decades after the Americans have left, it may seem that history has once again receded into obscurity. But, as Thomas Fowler knows too well, the illusion is only surface-deep.
-- Craig Roush (crr225@nyu.edu)