Review: [untitled] Author(s): Nicholas J. Cull Reviewed work(s): The Quiet American by Phillip Noyce ; Steffan Ahrenberg ; William Holberg ; Christopher Hampton ; Robert Schenkkan ; Source: The American Historical Review, Vol. 108, No. 3 (Jun., 2003), pp. 959-960 Published by: American Historical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3523266 Accessed: 14/05/2009 04:51

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http://www.jstor.org Film Reviews 959 was attached to the twelfth Sonderkommando, which the women in gathering and storing gunpowder for the rose up in rebellion in October 1944 and destroyed uprising. Here, Mira Sorvino and Natasha Lyonne give several of the crematoria. agonizing performances as tortured prisoners who The plans for the uprising are complicated in two must decide whether to confess or watch as the Nazis ways. First, there is an internal debate concerning the execute innocents. nature of the uprising: should it be focused on simply Nelson remains true to his story. Those who expect destroying the apparatus of mass extermination (and to exit the theater with hope or some message pro- thereby have some measure of "success"), or should it claiming the "triumph of the human spirit" over be an attempt to escape? Second, the discovery and adversity will be disappointed. The uprising, needless rescue of a young Hungarian girl who miraculously to say, is put down and the survivors executed. The survived the gas chamber injects another moral dimen- young girl-contrary to the usual conventions of a sion, offering certain members of the SK a late, Hollywood film-neither escapes nor survives. And in desperate prospect of personal redemption. the epilogue we discover why the elderly man was Viewers might infer that the "grey zone" refers to executed at the film's opening: on his first day in the Primo Levi's brilliant analysis of Nyiszli's memoir in SK, he had dragged the bodies of his wife, children, the second chapter of his last work, The Drowned and and grandchildren from the gas chambers and placed the Saved (1988). Levi refused to embrace an easy them in the ovens. He lived for some time thereafter in Manichean division of the concentration camp uni- that horrific grey zone, until his fellow prisoners verse into evil Nazis and innocent victims. Instead, he decided to grant him a merciful death. was one of the first to point out the moral contagion STANISLAOG. PUGLIESE that infected the inmates, and he focused on the Hofstra University extreme situation of the Sonderkommando at Aus- chwitz to make the argument. Levi, too, was struck by THE QUIETAMERICAN. Directed by Phillip Noyce; the moral choice made by Nyiszli and how the discov- produced by Steffan Ahrenberg and William Holberg; ery of the girl changed the moral calculations of the screenplay by Christopher Hampton and Robert SK. Although not depicted in the film, an episode Schenkkan, from the novel by Graham Greene. USA/ recounted by Nyiszli deserves mention here because it Germany/Australia.2002; color; 101 minutes. Distrib- accurately reflects the sense of moral corruption insti- uted by Miramax Films. tutionalized in the camps, even away from the cham- bers or crematoria. One evening a soccer match was Phillip Noyce's adaptation of Graham Greene's The organized between the SS and the SK. "The teams Quiet American (1955) has become famous for the lined up on the field ... They put the ball into play. wrong reason. It has become noteworthy not because Sonorous laughter filled the courtyard" (Nyiszli, A of its moving central performance by Michael Caine or Doctor's EyewitnessAccount, pp. 57-58). Levi hears in for its stunning use of authentic Vietnamese settings. this episode only satanic laughter, for the Nazis have Rather, it is now famous because Harvey Weinstein, won the game before it is even played: "it is consum- the president of its U.S. distributor, Miramax Films, mated, we have succeeded, you no longer are the other delayed the film's release in the aftermath of the race, the anti-race, the prime enemy of the millennial attacks of September 11, 2001, on the grounds that it Reich ... we have embraced you, corrupted you, might be read as "anti-American." dragged you down to the bottom with us ... dirtied Noyce is an Australian director now best known for with your own blood" (Levi, The Drowned and the his touching film about Aboriginal life, Rabbit Proof Saved, p. 55). But the grey of the grey zone is more Fence (2002). In Hollywood however, Noyce was pre- than just a morally ambiguous field. It is a literal viously for making well-crafted thrillers, particularly reference to the ash of those bodies being consumed in his adaptations of Tom Clancy novels, Patriot Games the flames of the crematoria: the ash that stings the (1992) and Clear and PresentDanger (1994). The Quiet eyes of those working the ovens, that settles into their American seems like an apology for that flag-waving hair and clothing and even into their lungs. work. How are we to judge those of the Sonderkom- In The Quiet American, Noyce returns to a terrain mando? Should we? Nelson, in his production notes, familiar to American film audiences: the has insisted that this film is neither history nor a War. But Hollywood's Vietnam bears little relation to "Holocaust film." It is, instead, an examination of how that nation's historical or geographic reality. It has far human beings might go in attempting to save their always been depicted as a tragic place for young own lives. Nelson wants the viewer to reflect on the Americans, who experience the fully formed conflict larger question of moral culpability and engage in an like some sort of demonic theme-park ride. The origins exercise of historical empathy. The film's dialogue is of the war are seldom discussed. Thailand or the disjointed, staccato, and confusing; Harvey Keitel's use Philippines or even London's Docklands have substi- of a German accent in portraying Obersturmfuhrer tuted for Vietnam itself, and actors from across East Eric Muhsfeldt (tried and executed for war crimes) is and South East Asia have played the Vietnamese a distraction from an otherwise perceptive perfor- characters,if any are actually depicted in the story. The mance. A parallel story concerns the participation of QuietAmerican, like the recent Path to War(2002) and

AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW JUNE 2003 960 Film Reviews

We WereSoldiers (2002), reflects a long overdue ma- been an American ploy. While Greene's attribution of turity of outlook on the experience, one American culpability for the atrocity stretched the that considers origins and the Vietnamese point of facts at the time his book was written, the incident now view. In the case of The QuietAmerican,Vietnam plays seems remarkablyprescient of so much of the "destroy Vietnam and, for the most part, Vietnamese actors the village in order to save it" logic that later charac- play Vietnamese characters. The film illuminates the terized U.S. intervention in Vietnam, and hence it is prehistory of the U.S. military commitment to the valid as a plot device in 2002. Similarly, while Lans- Vietnam War, a commitment that also drew young dale's Diem was a more attractive proposition for the Australians of Noyce's generation to their deaths. leadership of Vietnam than Pyle's General The The novel and this admirably faithful film adapta- (played here by Quang Hai), The has something of the tion tell a story of love and betrayal set against the air of Diem's brother Nhu (who ran the South Viet- background of the escalating U.S. role in the French namese police). By 1964, America's chosen leaders for war to retain control of Vietnam in the early 1950s. An South Vietnam had certainly fallen to the level carica- aging British journalist, James Fowler (Caine), meets a tured by Greene and depicted in the film. At its climax, young American "aid worker," Alden Pyle (Brendan Noyce's QuietAmerican departs from Greene's text. In Fraser), who falls for Fowler's Vietnamese mistress, the aftermath of the explosion, Fowler sees Pyle Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen). An unlikely friendship metamorphose from bumbling ingenue into a cold- develops between Fowler and Pyle. But Fowler discov- eyed professional with a full command of the Vietnam- ers that Pyle is a CIA agent working to create nation- ese language. In this moment, Noyce's Pyle is more alist "third force" in Vietnamese politics, one tied to capable, less likeable, and more dangerous than neither Paris nor Moscow. When Pyle plans a devas- Greene's original character. He may also be less tating bomb atrocity to smear the Vietnamese Com- believable, which arguablyweakens the film's value as munists, Fowler betrays Pyle to assassins and wins back a critique of U.S. foreign policy. his mistress. The film ends with a flash forward, as a The Quiet American reached cinema screens a year montage of newspaper reports by Fowler (beginning as after the shock of September 11. The historical mo- small columns but developing into front-page stories) ment that alarmed Weinstein had not so much passed document the U.S. entry into the Vietnam War, cul- as reached a resolution of sorts. With American for- minating with the shock of the Vietnamese Communist eign policy apparently bound to a new round of counter-attack in the Tet offensive of 1968 and Presi- intervention, The Quiet American now seems to come dent Lyndon B. Johnson's subsequent desire to sue for from a different era: it is a voice in the wilderness peace. calling for caution in overseas adventures, much like Greene's character Pyle was based on the real CIA Greene's novel in 1955. As mainstream Hollywood counter-insurgencyexpert in Saigon in the mid-1950s, nails its colors to the mast and hunkers down to feed Edward G. Lansdale. A veteran of the anticommunist the appetite for patriotic fare, one wonders whether campaign in the Philippines, Landsdale was more this film and other "mature discussions" of the Viet- capable than the bumbling innocent Pyle. He orga- nam experience will sink beneath a tide of red, white, nized propaganda campaigns to support the U.S. can- and blue. If that is the case, what will the consequences diate for Vietnamese leadership, Ngo Dinh Diem, and of an impoverished discussion of America's past be for to scare Vietnamese Catholics into migrating South. its future? The bomb explosion at the heart of Saigon really NICHOLASJ. CULL happened in 1954 but has never been proved to have Universityof Leicester

AMERICANHISTORICAL REVIEW JUNE 2003