The Beautiful Country is a hunting film. In so many ways, this story is something an effort at trying to shed light on something that needs to come out of the dark. The era of the Vietnam war bread many many demons that continue to haunt the US to this day, but of all of them, I think this one in many was is the worst. Its something that is not talked about openly, but yet everyone form that time knows about. It is left out of history when it can be because it is just too shameful to admit. The war went on so long, that people involved in it made a life for them selves in Vietnam. It happens in every war. Yes, there was also the usual trail of war baby’s from lonely men and poor women, but there was also people like the family in this story.
But something just really stings about the situation when the war is lost. People on all sides are told to just forget it all, to pretend it never happened, to just assume the parties from the other side of things are dead. But their not, and everyone knows it. Which makes things even worse for the people “forgetting”. How many of us who have fathers or grandfathers who fraught there have family there still? How many of us have family among the evacuated “orphans”? How many of our family who “never came home” are that way because of this? They can’t even tell us, and more then anything that is is what is so chilling about this film. It could be any of us who has family who “never came home” from that war. It could be those of us who’s family did. How many people will take these secrets to their grave? The whole thing is just such a mess everyone wants to just forget it, but how can anyone forget that?
Resources
The Beautiful Country. Directed by Hans Petter Moland, 2004.