I have a triangular theory for classifying movie directors. At one point of the triangle, there are directors with breathtaking cinematography like Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Sergei Parajanov; at another are directors who rely on clever storytelling and patiently construct the plot like Asghar Farhadi. At the third point, there are the directors who utilize straightforward methods, and have both interesting stories and well-calculated cinematography, such as Akira Kurosawa or Steven Spielberg. Tran Anh Hung, the director of The Scent of Green Papaya, is the first type—a visual director.
This movie does not have a clear story at all. The stage is set in Vietnam under French control in 1951. In the first two-thirds of the movie, there is some explanation of the characters and setting through the young girl who comes to work as a housemaid asking, “Who is that person? What is happening?” to a middle-aged maid, but most of it is spent depicting the young boys in the family killing insects, playing with reptiles, and urinating everywhere, and on close-ups of objects. The remaining third suddenly leaps to ten years later, and the young girl has grown up and moved to work as a maid in another home; the master of the house falls in love with her, and, like a Cinderella Story, she becomes his wife, but there is hardly any dialogue. The information about the human relations within the family provided through the juvenile methods in the first half is hardly useful for understanding the second half. If I were to explain it, the intention of the first half may be to depict the difficult life of the director’s mother as a woman, depicted by the patient and kind mistress of the house where the young girl worked, while the intention of the second half may be to depict a woman in the younger generation to whom he gave happiness, by means of the young girl who grows up in the movie. The grown-up maid is performed by the director Tran’s wife. Well, since there is no story at all, nor much dialogue, I don’t know if there is anyone had the same interpretation of this movie that I did. This movie may make the audience think, “There are some pretty scenes, but what does it want to say?” or “Taking advantage of the exotic location is cheap.”
Director Tran is Vietnamese, and he escaped from the communist regime with his parents and immigrated to France when Saigon fell. Because he studied film at a prestigious French film university, the theory of La Nouvelle Vague (“the new wave”) and the cinematography methods of Andrei Tarkovsky must have been hammered into him. This movie was his first work after he graduated, and he was about 30 years old when he directed this movie. When this movie became a sensation, he declared this about his literary style in an immature manifesto: “I completely deny traditional storytelling, and want to make a movie with a new language—body language. By making use of body language instead of logical reasoning, I challenge the audience, and I want them to grasp the essence of the movie.” In other words, he is saying that story, language, thought, and information in a movie are unnecessary, and he will convey his message to the audience using only images. I am curious whether director Tran still has the same opinion 20 years later because I believe it is wrong if one thinks that one can be a great director by just supplying beautiful images. A movie is the optimum integration of thoughts, opinions, facts, imagination, feelings, information, story, acting, sounds, cinematography, and countless other components, presented to the audience. Among the various components that make up a movie, the story holds a very important position. He should use a different medium if he wants to use only images. If you are using a movie as your medium of expression, the idea of, “I have pretty pictures so it’s good enough without a story,” seems arrogant and lazy to me. Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan stuns the audience with beautiful images, but his works consistently possess awareness and thoughts on issues, and the beautiful imagery represents his inner landscapes. Director Asghar Farhadi’s images are excellently full of information and reinforce his storyline. Nobody would ever say, “Asghar Farhadi is not talented because his images are not novel.” The point is that the story and cinematography work together, and that the attitude that a movie doesn’t need a story—even if there are pretty images—is wrong. You don’t need to use movies as a medium if you are only using images.
In his early 30’s, director Tran won prestigious awards at the Cannes and Venice international film festivals. Perhaps he was given these awards as a way to identify and encourage an up-and-coming director, and also because the international film world wanted to support Vietnam in their recovery from the Vietnam War. However, it may not necessarily be good fortune for this young man who just graduated from college to acquire fame before making a masterpiece. In one sense, having won awards may be a curse because no one will criticize his works harshly and life becomes too easy. It is interesting that he only directed a few works, including Norwegian Wood, in the 20 year period following this.
It seems like this movie is praised by a male audience and hated by a female audience. What rubs women the wrong way is the mentality displayed by the mistress in the first house and the grown-up maid—being passive, putting the man first, and the only important thing being getting the approval of a man. After the mistress’s husband has an affair and suddenly takes all of the assets in the house, her mother-in-law says to her, “My son did what he did because you don’t have charm as a woman,” and the mistress just agrees and cries. The maid starts working in the house of the older man that she has yearned for since when she was little; she happily works hard, and steals this man from his fiancé. Why this rich man would go from a rich upper class fiancé to a maid—not as a lover, but as a wife—is not explained at all. Although director Tran tries to depict pretty serious events happening to women with just artistic images, the viewers get nothing from these scenes. A woman as depicted in this movie may be attractive to a man, but would irritate a woman. Even though the man broke the engagement off with his fiancé, he has her return the engagement ring to him, which he puts in his pocket with a shameless and unpleasant manner.
Another thing wrong in this movie is the performance given by director Tran’s wife as the grown-up maid. She doesn’t talk at all, and in order to express a subordinate woman, she is always hunched over with her head tilted at a 45 degree angle, always has a downward glance, wiggles slightly, and her lips constantly in a half smile. Regrettably, her performance as the maid in the movie is creepy, unnatural, and unpleasant. If I were to say my opinion, director Tran of course loves his beautiful and intelligent wife, so he wants to use her as the star in his movie. However, perhaps since she fled Vietnam when she was a child, she can understand Vietnamese, but it is not her native language. Also, even director Tran doesn’t seem to have confidence in her ability as an actress. Therefore, I suspect he gave his wife no lines so as not to have any defect seen by a Vietnamese viewer. If he thought it was okay for her to have no lines because just making her hunch over and wiggle her body would be sufficient to express a woman’s attractiveness and obedience, that is a problem. The only time the grown-up maid talks is when the master of the house is teaching her how to read and write, and she reads one short line of poetry. Until that scene, the papayas shown in the movie are green, but when she is wearing a yellow ao dai (a traditional Vietnamese dress) while she is pregnant with a child, it feels as though she has become an ideal woman for her husband—like a mature, yellow papaya. However, when she opens her mouth, her expression reverts back to modern, Westernized, cheerfulness. Although she reads only one line of poetry, I feel as if she is saying, “Yes! I faked it, got this man to marry me, and successfully became a winner. I got my happy ending.”
To say it briefly, a woman might feel the following about the movie: “I went on a date to watch this movie. After the movie, he was deeply moved and kept saying, ‘What beautiful images!’ and ‘This is what art should be—full of emotion!’ and, ‘That actress was very beautiful!’ and, ‘After all, women should be obedient. Obedience brings women happiness,’ and, ‘Sadly, that kind of woman is rare nowadays.’ Even though I thought he was an idiot, I didn’t say anything and laughed at him secretly.”