IONCINEMA.com presents: Beautiful Country, The (2005)

CAST AND CREW

Director

Hans Petter Moland

Cast (alphabetical order):

John Hussey

Bai Ling

Temuera Morrison

Arthur Nascarella

Damien Nguyen

Nick Nolte

Tim Roth

The Beautiful Country

Release Date: Jul 8, 2005 - Wide Release
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
Film Genre: Drama
Country: Norway

» Official Website

Based on the original idea by Terrence Malick, Hans Petter Moland’s The Beautiful Country is the heartfelt story of a young Amerasian’s search for his birth parents – features a great cast that includes Nick Nolte, Tim Roth and Bai Ling, as well as newcomer Damien Nguyen, a Vietnamese refugee who fled to America as a boy. It’s estimated that up to 18,000 Amerasian children were conceived by American troops and Vietnamese women, and then were left behind when the Vietnam War ended in 1975. Now it’s 1990, and Binh (Nguyen) is a young man known as “bui doi”(“less than dust”), a slur aimed at these mixed-race offspring. His height is too tall for the country’s architecture, and his somewhat Caucasian features are deemed the “face of the enemy.” Binh lives in a village with a foster family who relegate him to servant status. One day Binh sets out for Saigon, where he tracks down his mother and a half-sibling. It’s just the start of a harrowing voyage that will take him to a refugee camp in Malaysia, where a young Chinese prostitute (Ling) helps him escape, to Chinatown in New York City, where his work is as menial as it was back home, to a ranch in Texas, where his father (Nolte) is thought to be. The world’s obsession with America is evident. When Binh refuses the idea of going elsewhere, the ship’s captain (Roth) says, “I offer you a new life, and you choose an old dream.” The ship’s refugees play an American “pop culture” game, offering up words like “Clint Eastwood” and “Beach Boy.”

TRIVIA

Moland directed the film Aberdeen (2000).

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