Buffalo Boy

Frankly, I am surprised I hung with this movie because it's pretty slow. It's not a real "entertainer," except for two things: 1 - the camera-work is nice at times; 2 - the story is quite different from anything we are accustomed to in the West. But after two-thirds of this story had elapsed, it was tough going the rest of the way. It's not an uplifting story, either. It left me feeling depressed. Yet, it IS a memorable film and I'm glad I watched it.

I mean, as one reviewer says here "Vietnamese dude leads a bunch of buffaloes in search of grass. That's it."

Yes, in one sense he's right, but obviously there is more to it than that. We get glimpses of this guy's father and mother, friends, enemies, thieves, sex, loyalty and abandonment and generally what life must be like for those in this story of people who live in this odd environment. With all the water around them, they couldn't bury their loved ones until the dry season came. They wrapped them up and put them on poles, and hopes the crows didn't peck away at the bodies.

Yes, you wouldn't want to live here, at the southern tip of Vietnam with these rainy, long flood season. Lugging a couple of Water Buffaloes through waist-deep muddy water for miles can't be a great existence, either.

I agree with another critic here who labels this story as "lyrical." For the most part, I liked watching and listening to "Kim" (The Lu Le) give his outlook on various topics and the dialog between he and his father often was humorous. Hey, how many times have you/did you sit around and smoke "weed" and play the flute with your dad?

This is a culture far removed from mine, which is one reason why I stayed with this film - to learn something while witnessing some very foreign sights and sounds to me. I would recommend this only to people who know what they are getting into (something slow, and very different) or who just plain love most Asian films.

I'm so what not a casual film watcher, meaning movie like spider-man or superman or x-man or maybe even Titanic doesn't really score much of impression to me.

This movie, is a somewhat similar to the movie "Legend of the fall" (but of course not that close, but that's the style). The technique of the movie is kind of similar to Green Papaya or "Vertical ray of sun", but it's more on the rural side, more mainstream (a favorite struggle story) rather than a contemporary city life.

And yet, this is one of the rarest Vietnamese movie that truly depict what is the society / life look like in 1930, in its fully details.

The film, Buffalo Boy, was first aired in 2004 and was produced by Jean Brehat and directed by Nguyen Vo Nghiem Minh. It was filmed in Ca Mau Province, Vietnam, and took place during the French occupation of Vietnam in the 1940s. It won the Vietnamese Golden Kite Award for Best Foreign Collaboration Feature Film and Vietnam Film Festival Award for Best Feature Film (Silver Lotus Award). It also won the director, Nguyen Vo Nghiem Minh, the Vietnam Film Festival Award for Best Director. The main character is an elderly man named Kim as he reflects on his past and tells his granddaughter his story. In his story, we follow his 15 year old self who seems very hardworking despite some questionable acts he chose to undertake in his life. We can see that he values family and believes in the importance of family through his retelling of his story to his granddaughter and the acceptance of Thieu into his makeshift family when Thieu's mother asked. As stated above, the story follows Kim, as he tells his granddaughter stories from his past after she finds her father's bones. The scene then changes to Kim's perspective as we follow 15 year old Kim as he makes the trek inland with his two buffalo to find food for and protect during the flood season. Once he returns, he starts his own business with help of his new friend Det. However, after some time he sets out on another journey to find his missing father where he discovers a hidden and dark secret about his family. Kim is forced to confront this truth and just when he thought he could move on he makes a decision that brings him to where he is now with a makeshift family of his own. The theme of family is heavy in this movie and is a good movie for anyone who wants to take a look into what Vietnamese culture was during the 1940s. Especially in the fact that this whole movie is him telling his granddaughter his story so that she can be able to understand the significance of the bones that she had found as well as understand the life that her great grandfather and grandfather had lived. I would recommend this movie to anyone interested in understanding more about the culture of Southeast Asia and Vietnam specifically.

A beautiful yet poignant narrative of mans paradoxical existence in relation to each other and the honest forces of nature, i.e., the duality of man as virtuous parasites. The themes of life and death are juxtaposed into a realization of powers greater than our own opinions or ethos. Director Nguyen Vo Nghiem Minh successfully enlightens of the psyche of fatalistic and enduring Vietnamese people. "Mua Len Trau" needs to be placed in the top 10 best Vietnamese directed full features of all times, or at least trading-places with less then average film fest winners like "Ba Mua"; where the cinematography fools the viewer into accepting an inexplicable story.

When I saw this film at the Palm Springs Film Festival I was prepared for a nice slice-of-life movie about a time and place I would never visit in any other way. This stunningly beautiful film delivers that and so much more. Set in Vietnam during the occupation by the French in the 1930's Bufalo Boy tells the story of a teenage boy who becomes a man when he leads his family's only hope for survival, two water buffalo, out of their flooded homeland to forage on higher ground. With this debut, the director combines riveting action/adventure, poignant relationships, powerful performances and excellent photography. He immerses us in a way of life that requires more courage in order to survive one day than most of us will have to summon in a life-time. Like a character with a starring role, the water is always there, always changing, always influencing the lives of those who depend on it to nurture them and fight with it to keep it from destroying them. Out soon in DVD but well worth the effort to see it on a large screen if you can.