(662) Phim tài liệu mới nhất “Những ngày cuối ở Việt Nam”

Gần 40 năm sau biến cố 1975: Nhức nhối vết thương Việt Nam đối với người Mỹ qua tài liệu mới nhất “The Last Days in Viet Nam”

05/09/2014 - Người Mỹ đã rút quân ra khỏi Iraq và và sắp làm như thế đối với chiến trường Afghanistan, nhưng có lẽ Việt Nam là ‘kinh nghiệm xương máu” mà dân Mỹ khó quên nhất. Ngày 4 tháng 9, truyền thông Mỹ giới thiệu bộ phim tài liệu mới nhất về chiến tranh VN dài trên 1 tiếng rưỡi đã cho thấy điều này.

Photo Courtesy: AP /Courtesy American Experience, Courtesy Hugh Doyle

Cali Today News - Bộ phim có tên “The Last Days in Viet Nam” dài 98 phút do nữ đạo diễn Rory Kennedy thực hiện, được xem đã phản ảnh mớ ‘hỗn loạn chính trị, đạo đức và tan nát quân sự khi Hoa Kỳ quyết định lui quân, bỏ rơi một đồng minh ở một chân trời xa xăm’.

Trong phim có những cảnh của một ‘siêu cường quân sự bị làm nhục’ và nỗi hoang mang ngút trời của quân đội VNCH khi bị đồng minh tháo chạy bỏ lại. Đồng thời những cảnh di tản hỗn loạn bằng máy bay ngoài khơi mà một quân nhân Mỹ trong bộ phim này khi chứng kiến đã thốt lên: “Giống như một kiểu Exodus vậy!”

Tác giả là người con gái út của 11 đứa con của Thượng Nghị Sĩ Robert Kennedy, Bộ Trưởng Bộ Tư Pháp, em trai cố Tổng Thống Kennedy, đã sưu tầm được những thước phim tư liệu quý giá về cuộc ra đi ‘Exodus vĩ đại’ của dân tộc Việt khi Saigon thất thủ.

Đại Úy Stuart Herrington là người tóm gọn nỗi đau lòng khiến cuộc di tản giống như ‘bãi lầy đạo đức’ như sau: “Ai có quyền ra đi? Ai phải bị ở lại?”

Đã có những câu chuyện rất cảm động khi người binh sĩ bình thường Hoa Kỳ tìm cách bất tuân thượng lệnh cố đưa các đồng minh VNCH khốn khổ của họ ra đi càng nhiều càng tốt.

Ngay cả Đại sứ Graham Martin cũng ‘nhồi nhét’ lên các máy bay trực thăng càng nhiều người Việt càng tốt, vì ông thừa hiểu khi người lính Mỹ cuối cùng được máy bay bốc đi, chiến dịch trực thăng vận chấm dứt và cuộc chiến VN thật sự khép lại cho Hoa Kỳ, nhưng lại mở ra chương mới cho kẻ ở lại.

Tiếng vọng cao cả của bộ phim của đạo diễn Kennedy hằng lên tâm trí người xem như thế này: “Ngay cả khi thất trận, người ta cũng có thể trở thành anh hùng nếu tìm cách cứu giúp kẻ khác, cứu giúp sinh mạng của kẻ khác”.

Trường Giang

Witnesses to the Collapse

‘Last Days in Vietnam’ Looks at Fall of Saigon

By A. O. SCOTTSEPT. 4, 2014

**Last Days in Vietnam** Civilians evacuating ahead of Communist troops about to enter Saigon in this documentary opening Friday. Credit Juan Valdez/American Experience Films, WGBH

Pictures, moving and still, have always been part of the American collective memory of Vietnam. The fall of Saigon conjures up the image of a helicopter on a rooftop as desperate people try to climb aboard. One thing I learned from “Last Days in Vietnam” is that it was not the roof of the embassy, as is sometimes assumed, but of the building where the C.I.A. station chief lived, in another part of the city. What happened at the embassy — and in the waters off the coast of Saigon — was desperate and dramatic and much more complicated.

The Paris Peace Accords of 1973 had provisionally maintained the partition of Vietnam into North and South. As soon as the American forces were gone, the Communist North began to unify the country by force, sweeping quickly through Da Nang and other Southern cities and closing in on Saigon by April of 1975. For tangled reasons that Ms. Kennedy and her interview sources manage to clarify impressively, plans for evacuation were delayed until the 11th hour. Thousands of Vietnamese who had loyally served the American cause and the South Vietnamese government were in imminent danger, and “Last Days in Vietnam” is largely a chronicle of efforts to get them and their families out.

Evacuees board a helicopter. Credit Bettmann, Corbis/American Experience Films

The narrators are an assortment of American and Vietnamese men who witnessed the events firsthand, and whose accounts are deftly woven into a concise and gripping film. Some are well known, like Henry A. Kissinger, the secretary of state and national security adviser at the time, and Richard L. Armitage, who went on to serve in the State Department in the administration of George W. Bush. At the time, he was a naval officer, and he remains a natural-born storyteller with a gruff sense of humor and a vivid sense of detail. Hour-by-hour accounts of the airlifts that brought thousands of people from the embassy to American ships are provided by embassy guards, journalists and military personnel. We hear from residents of Saigon who made it out, and also from some who didn’t.

The crew members aboard the U.S.S. Kirk signal an arriving helicopter to send its passengers out, on April 29, 1975. Hugh Doyle/American Experience Films

The central figure in the drama is the American ambassador, Graham Martin, who died in 1990 and could not be interviewed for “Last Days in Vietnam.” That is unfortunate, but the portrait that emerges from archival news footage and the memories of others is fascinating in its ambiguity. As the North Vietnamese armies routed the Southern forces, he refused to plan an exit strategy, believing in the face of overwhelming evidence that South Vietnam would survive.

This almost delusional stubbornness — which Ms. Kennedy’s interviewees still marvel at 40 years later — revealed another side as the Communist capture of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) drew near. Defying prudent advice and at some risk to his own safety, Ambassador Martin delayed his own departure from the embassy for as long as he could, so that as many Vietnamese as possible could escape.

Not that this is a story with a happy ending. What followed was brutality and repression on the part of the victors, and a refugee crisis among their victims. Now that so much time has passed, and relations between the United States and Vietnam have normalized, it might have been good to hear a voice or two from the other side, to learn what was going through the minds of the soldiers entering Saigon as the Americans left. But this omission does not diminish what Ms. Kennedy has accomplished, which is fairly and compassionately to reconstruct a messy episode in history.

Last Days in Vietnam
Opens on Friday
Directed by Rory Kennedy; written by Mark Bailey and Keven McAlester; director of photography, Joan Churchill; edited by Don Kleszy; music by Gary Lionelli; produced by Ms. Kennedy and Mr. McAlester; released by American Experience Films/PBS. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. This film is not rated.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/05/movies/last-days-in-vietnam-looks-at-fall-of-saigon.html?_r=0
UPCOMING SCREENINGS AND SHOWTIMES

DATE	CITY	VENUE	TYPE
Sept 5–11, 2014	New York	Sunshine Cinema	Theatrical	tickets
Sept 5–11, 2014	New York	Lincoln Plaza	Theatrical	tickets
Sept 12–18, 2014	Washington DC	E Street Cinema	Theatrical	tickets
Sept 19–25, 2014	Boston	Kendall Square	Theatrical
Sept 19–25, 2014	Los Angeles	Nuart	Theatrical	tickets
Sept 19–25, 2014	Philadelphia	Ritz Bourse	Theatrical
Sept 26–Oct 2, 2014	San Francisco	Opera Plaza	Theatrical
Sept 26–Oct 2, 2014	Berkeley	Shattuck Cinemas	Theatrical
Sept 26–Oct 2, 2014	San Rafael	Rafael Film Center	Theatrical
Sept 26–Oct 2, 2014	San Jose	Camera 12	Theatrical
Sept 26–Oct 2, 2014	San Diego	Ken Cinema	Theatrical
Sept 26–Oct 2, 2014	Irvine, CA	University 6	Theatrical
Oct 3–9, 2014	Chicago	Music Box Theatre	Theatrical
Oct 3–9, 2014	Denver	Chez Artiste	Theatrical
Oct 3–9, 2014	Seattle	Varsity	Theatrical
Oct 3–9, 2014	Minneapolis	Edina 4	Theatrical
Oct 10–16, 2014	Phoenix	Camelview	Theatrical
Oct 17–23, 2014	Atlanta	Midtown Art	Theatrical
Oct 17–23, 2014	Houston	Sundance Cinemas	Theatrical