When the Tenth Month Comes

A beautiful, heart touching movie, everyone should watch to know about Vietnamese culture. And Dang Nhat Minh is really a great director, check out his other films.

Beautifully shot, although I wish the copy on YT was in better quality, good plot, stunning lead actress, generally good performances. Duyen's plight feels real, her decision makes sense to her from what we see, Khang's predicament is believable and his decision realistic and heartfelt, and even Duyen's deceased husband is very genuine in the scenes he appears. Her little boy is also very natural.

However it suffers from a few scenes that overdramatize emotions, because they are glaring in the context of everything else that feels very authentic and even subtle.

I liked the singing part and I was surprised that Duyen could sing that well all of a sudden. That song was very emotionally charged and Khang watching her sing was a well thought-out scene. Also, the scenes at the ghost temple are very interesting, and I understand the censorship didn't like them very much so a lot had to be cut out. What remains is still interesting though. Communist China also censors stories about ghosts I think, I don't understand what they believe the danger is there.

Anyway, I believe the movie could have been much better without the excessive melodrama of a few scenes so I just couldn't rate it higher, but it is a powerful story told well so I understand the historical and cultural relevance of the movie, I just cannot love it as much as others do. The cinematography is beautiful and if it could have been restored the movie would look absolutely gorgeous.

"When the Tenth Month Comes" will probably appeal to a very small segment of the movie-watching public. Even foreign film buffs may find this movie simplistic and uninteresting. The strength of the movie lies in it's characterization of traditional pre-Communist values in Vietnam. The protagonist Zuyen who hides her husband's death from the rest of his family, provokes the question: who rightfully owns the memory of the fallen soldier. The film's answer is that it is the family, but not the state that has the right to the memory of the fallen soldier. Zuyen is wrong for hiding her husband's death from her father-in-law, but the rest of the society has no right to his memory, because they did not love him as she and his family did. The film is markedly pro-Confucian and anti-Communist. The English-subtitles for the movie were spotty at best. Non-Vietnamese may miss some of the dialogue, but the message of the movie comes across strongly. Recommended for die-hards and academics.

As simple it could be, the movie took my tears in the last scenes. Somehow I could feel the bitterness and the extreme heartbroken feeling when the father touched the soldier's gun whom he believed his son. To understand that faith has extreme power to heal, though illusive it had to be. Dang Nhat Minh described war with a sensible point of view. Father, mother, wife and kids are the most vulnerable when it comes to war. They suffer the pain, a kid became brave and a wife said white liar. The painting of the countryside of Vietnam was well described, with sincere farmers. Just listen to their conversations, they are REAL. I believe every Vietnamese have lived those dialogs, simple but nothing more than caring and faithful.

The legacy of the Vietnam war is described vividly from the real sufferers, not from Hollywood. The theme of this movie is somehow similar to the famous movies " Cranes are Flying" and " Ballad of Soldier" from the former Soviet Unions. Highly recommended.