Talk about your social/historical artistic blunders, the factors that consider time and place and historical events surrounding the making and the timing of a piece of art. Michael Caine plays Thomas Fowler, an English journalist posted in Vietnam during the final days of French Colonialism, which coincided of course with the rise of the American presence in the region as General The positioning himself as a populist leader while carrying out urban and rural terrorist attacks with both under and over the table American support.
I'm not talking about the social/historical blunders of American involvement in Vietnam. I'm talking about the social/historical blunders of a film regarding this subject being released within three days of a certain series of calamitous events. President B2 enjoys 60-70 approval ratings. Our bombing raid seems to be successful, and we're all supporting the troops. We're all waving the flag, Iraq will be liberated from the under the yoke of a demeaning, paralyzing dictatorship. And this movie and this review of it concern a conflict that didn't quite end so well in the distant past?
Bad timing and all -- I like this film very much. Director Philip Noyce, adapting from the great novella by Graham Greene who wrote his eerily prescient work before America's steeped '60s involvement, demonstrates a rare and beautiful bi-polar gift for bringing both action and character to life. He can cut to the essence of a tale as well as the essence of a chase. The tale here between two men does, of course, involve a woman, in this case, what would have been called a "fan" dancer (think "stripper who can do the Charleston" If you don't know what a Charleston is, you're too young to know what I'm talking about and probably have no interest in this movie anyway, so good bye)
Our English journalist is of course quite older. Our American, an equally superlative Brendan Fraser who deserved a supporting actor nod as the quiet, naive Alden Pyle who falls for -- and comes within a hair's width of proposing to -- Fowler's girl. Fowler and Pyle develop a complicated, beautiful and sometimes devious and ultimately heartbreaking friendship. The Quiet American explodes alot and carries moments of superlative tension and action. The downtown bombing scene near the end reflects Noyce's work in Clear and Present Danger with much additional complicated subtext.
The complicated subtext arrives courtesy of the bonding of friends where one friend just happens to try to come between a romance with no chance of success, but it's still a romance. And that friend, no matter who he works for really, ends up dying, mugged by suspicious hands at a faint and distant witness. And so our reporter fails to intervene. What does one do with friends who try to steal our girlfriends and accompany us in situations, such as an interview with General The that they know might lead to certain death.
We are talking friendship. We are talking respect. Yes I am being absolutely 100 percent non-ironic, just like the great actors and the director are here. Its wonderful to rediscover a director with a sure touch for clip who finds a tale where his style can also catch the soul of a piece. It's not about the girl. It's about the friends around the girl. And it's about the war, and it's about the utterly hopeless, quagmired, unresolvable jealousies, the heart of the matter if you will.
The acclaimed performances of two-time Academy Award winner Michael Caine (Best Supporting Actor, The Cider House Rules, 1999; Hannah And Her Sisters,...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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