Cinema, Colonialism, Postcolonialism by Dina Sherzer

Author:Dina Sherzer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: -
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2013-12-04T05:00:00+00:00

Contemporary Vietnam no longer resembles “the mythical Indochina of the ’30s” portrayed in Duras’s novel. The quaint French colonial city has been transformed into an overpopulated Third World Socialist city with its unattractive billboards, shantytown, and prefab council houses. Erstwhile elegant boulevards have disappeared under the concrete poured by Bulgarians. The congested city is now filled with undesirable natives (or signs of their presence—the scooters, trucks, and MiG’s left by the Soviets, the last among many unsuccessful waves of would-be conquerors). Even the countryside appears to have been contaminated by Socialist “filth.” Annaud refuses to see in these new “signs” the contemporary “reality” of Vietnam. An abyss seems to separate Ho Chi Minh City from Annaud’s idealized vision of an alluring French colonial city. For him, Ho Chi Minh City makes manifest the ill effects of unplanned urban development and the deleterious impact of Socialist progress and modernity on numerous Third World countries that have not successfully negotiated their passage to a postindustrial economy. Disappointed, he leaves the country for Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines, more appropriate parts of Asia, “where it [Vietnam] is normally filmed.” And yet something he cannot describe or articulate compels him to return:

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