The Quiet American Review
by Karina Montgomery (karina AT cinerina DOT com)December 16th, 2002
The Quiet American
Matinee and Snacks
The Quiet American is a story that, if it isn't true, certainly feels so. It's about love, rescue, Vietnam, detachment, projecting agendas, and becoming involved: all of these and none of these. On one level, you have a narratively simple and overly civilized love triangle - which happens to be occurring in Vietnam in 1952 during the war with the French. Lurking below these levels is the intellectual detachment of a British journalist Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine). Swooping in from above is a genial American government worker Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser). The apex of this triangle is Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen), a whisper-thin metaphor of a girl who is neither catalyst or inhibitor of the reaction of Fowler and Pyle.
Bizarrely, these men can be concerned with their loves for Phuong even as the earth trembles about them from mortar shells and grenades. Civilization does not stop in Saigon just because of military ferocity between the French and Communists. It's surreal yet amazing to watch their levels of detachment.
As a journalist, Fowler is an observer who (despite having a Vietnamese mistress) remains ostensibly apart from the world he reports for London, which he rejects. He sips his tea, writes down what he sees, and lives the life of a London gentleman abroad. As a doctor, Pyle is everywhere, elbow deep, even places one would not expect him to be. Their levels of commitment on all fronts are tested, strained, and affirmed; it makes for a totally gripping story, despite its leisurely pace. Director Philip Noyce has achieved this before in Dead Calm.
The film is lush to watch, with saturated, vibrant colors, dark corners and shadows, and elegant detail. Long shots gradually reveal more happening than one initially began, echoing Fowler's sentiments about the inscrutable nature of Indochina. Occasionally the camera cuts to what feels like a point of view shot. I do not know enough about cinematography to name it correctly, so bear with me, because the technique was very effective. Say you have a shot where the actor is walking toward and then past the camera, a passerby. The camera would then cut to seem to be walking toward and past where "we" just "were," as if in the eyes of the character on screen in the previous shot.
This happened noticeably at several points. I interpret it as forcing the audience, by definition detached observers, to feel involved, part of the scene. The camera snakes and glides and feels like part of the environment. At a key moment in the final act, it swoops about, seeing everything at once. Before, in Fowler's leisurely world of observation over coffee and grenade pops, we had soft, passive gazes. Gorgeous.
Speaking of gorgeous, Brendan Fraser is truly perfectly cast in this film. Having already proven his acting chops in Gods and Monsters, we are ready to see him take on Michael Caine. His hulking gentility and fish out of water American gusto is sublime.
Speaking of sublime, Caine is exquisitely understated in a difficult role - one who ares but only just enough, one who acts but remains apart and one in whom so much resides. It's subtle and exciting to watch, and I can't tell much more without giving away key plot points. The balance of who is good and who is not good in each scene is so delicate I dare not reveal a whit.
The metaphors in the film may be clear cut, even handed to you on a silver platter, but as Fowler notes, it's complicated. The characters are neither good nor bad (as in life) and that is neither accidental nor purposeful. Pyle and Fowler are grey men chasing polarized and translucent if non-existent grey goals - and are either of their goals truly right? The film is supremely relevant today, showing Vietnam torn between two (or three or four) cold lovers, feeling like no country of its own. We have the benefit of hindsight watching this 1952 setting; it can make you pause even today.
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These reviews (c) 2002 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but just credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks.
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