By Erin Chew
Vietnamese American director and writer Leon Le has definitely created a cinematic experience with his film Song Lang, which was one of the films featured at this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival Spring Showcase. What personally intrigued me about the film was that it revolved around a story about traditional Vietnamese folk opera (Cai Luong), something which we seldom hear about in the West. But more importantly, it gave so much more and explored life in Vietnam towards the end of the 1980s to the early 1990s, fifteen years or so after the end of the Vietnam War – a time when the country was still re-building itself up.
Leon Le himself was born in Vietnam, and left when he was thirteen years old bound for California with his family. Song Lang is his first feature film filmed entirely in Vietnam to pay homage to Cai Luong and to show audiences the beauty, culture and the intrigue which is all part of this traditional Vietnamese folk opera.
The film is centered around character Dung (Lien Binh Phat), who works as a debt collector to sustain a living. One day he is told to debt collect from a Cai Luong theater company and in the midst of reconciling his own personal issues of being hurt and abandoned he begins to reminisce on the days as a child where he would watch his parents perform Cai Luong – before his mom left and his dad passed away. It takes a young Cai Luong performer Linh Phung (Isaac) to breakaway the layers of nonchalance, anger, hurt, pain and despair from Dung and re-introduce him back into the world of Cai Luong, by forming a friendship with him.
Visually, the tapestry of colors, costumes and theatrics added so much depth to the film engaging audiences to admire and understand how important Cai Luong is to the history and culture of Vietnam. As someone who is more acquainted with Chinese traditional opera, it was interesting to contrast both the similarities and differences between the Vietnamese style and the Chinese style and to appreciate that “Asian opera” is more than just a “Chinese” thing, and I think this was something Le was aiming for, whether it was intentional or not.
Western media has brainwashed audiences in seeing Asia as a monolithic and homogeneous culture, and it is films like Song Lang which demonstrates that Asia and Asian culture is more than just China and India. To end, I will just say that this film is something which should be watched in the view of understanding the significance of traditional folk theater, and how these types of cultural lexicons are slowly disappearing and almost forgotten. If you get the chance, go and check out “Song Lang” – a film I personally enjoyed and learned so much from.
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