The Quiet American Review
by Jonathan F. Richards (moviecritic AT prodigy DOT net)December 5th, 2002
IN THE DARK/Jonathan Richards
THE QUIET AMERICAN
Directed by Philip Noyce
Rated R, 100 minutes
In 1952, more than a decade before Viet Nam penetrated the radar screen of the American consciousness, Graham Greene sat in Saigon and began writing a prescient novel that sketched the beginnings of what would become our tragic adventure in South-East Asia. The book was The Quiet American, and in another bit of uncanny anticipation, a film version by director Phillip Noyce ("Clear and Present Danger") is reaching theaters as America revs its military engines for another distant and troubling war.
The picture was ready to open a year ago, but September 11th changed the climate for anything that smacked of criticism of American foreign policy. So Miramax put it on the shelf, where it might have stayed if star Michael Caine hadn't done some lobbying with Harvey Weinstein. The studio eased it tentatively into the Toronto Festival, where it won critical praise and earned an Oscar-friendly release. Caine, who portrays Greene's world-weary journalist Thomas Fowler, and based his characterization in part on his acquaintance with the author, is likely to reap the dividend of a Best Actor nomination.
This is not The Quiet American's first trip to the screen. In 1957 Joseph Mankiewicz shot it with an ending that exculpated the title character (played by WWII war hero Audie Murphy) and infuriated Greene (Mankiewicz himself is said to have hated it.) The anatomy of that change is probably paralleled in a story told by Norman Jewison about a visit from the FBI when he was shooting "The Thomas Crown Affair". The agents told the director to remove all mention of the agency. "It has to be the FBI," Jewison protested. "The FBI investigates bank robberies." "But the FBI always gets its man," the agents reminded him. "And by the way, Mr. Jewison, you're a Canadian citizen, aren't you? Are your papers in order?" The FBI came out of the movie.
Greene's story is built on a pair of interlocking triangles. Fowler is the London Times's man in Saigon, a veteran of a half-dozen years in Indo-China. Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser) is a young American aid worker with theories on South-East Asia digested straight from books. In one triangle, the balancing point is Viet Nam, where France's colonial war is grinding to defeat, and Pyle's people see the opportunity of establishing a foothold of influence by backing a "third force" (not the French, not the Communists) that will be beholden to Uncle Sam. In the other triangle, the apex is Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen), the beautiful young Vietnamese girl who is Fowler's mistress, and with whom Pyle falls in love. Pyle wants to marry her, save her from her life, and bring her back to America. As the story develops, the personal and political issues bleed together, so that motivations become murky and impossible to separate. When, finally, Fowler is forced to abandon his posture of laissez-faire cynicism and take a position, it is impossible for us - or for him - to be sure whether that position is a moral one, a private one, or some unfathomable combination of the two.
Caine is powerfully subtle in his evocation of the cynical, comfortable Fowler, who has discovered in Saigon a life that makes him loath to return to London. Unlike the boyish, gung-ho Pyle, Fowler has the sophistication to know that Viet Nam is unknowable to a Westerner. "I'm not a correspondent," he says, "I'm a reporter." He eschews opinions, stays away from the fighting as much as possible, and lives in a dreamy moment flavored with opium and sex and his afternoon drink at the Continental Hotel. Fraser is suitably callow as Pyle, the earnest idealist who seems to have sprinted to Viet Nam straight from the end zone at Ohio State. But Noyce fails to establish the passions between his actors that the story so desperately needs. There is precious little chemistry binding the human triangle. We know Fowler and Pyle are friends, and that they both love Phuong, because they say so, and because the plot hinges on it. But we don't feel it.
This is a solid movie, beautifully photographed on location by Christopher Doyle, and credibly set in the languid mystery of Viet Nam. Its themes and issues are intelligent and thoughtful, and as relevant today as they were when Greene wrote the novel. That timeliness lends it a force it might not have packed if it had opened in the pre-9/11 world. Noyce seems bent on avenging Greene by correcting the whitewash of the (perhaps) CIA-influenced Mankiewicz version. But Noyce, with the perspective of hindsight, is more punishing to the American than was the novel. "I never knew anyone who did more harm out of better intentions," Greene's narrator says of Pyle. Noyce's Pyle is revealed as a sure-footed CIA operative, tough and cold-blooded. The America that made Greene uneasy was an international naïf wielding power with brash moral certainty, and confusing the personal with the political. Perhaps it is that parallel to today's situation that has caused critics to praise this good movie a little beyond its merits.
Greene might be happier with this cinematic revision, but he wouldn't be satisfied - what he did with shadow and suggestion, Noyce does with a cattle prod.
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