I browsed the DVD shelves at my local library (North Palm Beach) the other day, and saw Buffalo Boy next to Brokeback Mountain and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid. It is by fate that the Cowboy and the Buffalo(boy) found themselves on the same DVD shelf, just like those black and white GI’s names are alphabetically listed on the same Wall (Vietnam Memorial Wall).
It was the intention of movies like Apocalypse Now and Rambo series to move the American public forward to the next stage of grief. Yet, American are still in denial about Vietnam, thus forfeiting many valuable lessons otherwise applicable to today’s conflicts, Iraq and Afghanistan e.g. tribal loyalty, theocracy and regional politics.
Of late, emerged a new generation of Overseas Vietnamese filmmakers with bold vision and audacious voice. I saw Powder Blue directed by a Vietnamese film maker. Or Norwegian Wood, a Beatles title, yet screenplay is adapted from a Japanese novel.
I can’t wait to see it: Beatles’ song, Japanese story and Vietnamese film directing. What a collaboration!
(Just like Ang Lee directed Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi).
Cowboy or Buffalo(boy), we are all on our epistemological quest (why are we here, where are we going, and how do we get there). With one exception: we are going to get there on horseback or buffalo back, not gas-guzzling Hummer.
That’s for the Chinese upper class. Weaving their Bentley’s in dense pollution.
Buffalo Boy and Cowboy don’t cause further environmental damage: they earn their living on nature and have a certain
reverence for it. Maybe the old way can teach us a thing or two. Plain old truth (have reverence for the things that feed you), just needs a new voice and new vision. Ironically the vehicle (technology) to reach and persuade us (like I Phone and broadband) themselves consume too much energy, creating a cycle of creative destruction. I have pondered about our “disposable society” for quite sometime now. How many automobiles, electronic devices, books and clothes, shoes and ties we have trashed or given to Goodwill on our lifetime! Yet Mother Earth mysteriously heals itself, like recent appearance of an Island after Japan’s Tsunami.
New world needs new worldview and other ways to lend expressions to it.
Thang Nguyen 555 