‘Free Fire Zone’ Opens ‘Vietnam Film Project’

The UCLA Film Archives’ “The Vietnam Film Project” offers a unique and unprecedented opportunity to see half a dozen films from a country whose cinema is virtually unknown in the United States.

Except for the 1964 war documentary “Victory at Dien Bieh Phu,” five of the films in the series were previewed and they reveal a strong command of the visual. All are shot in in beautifully modulated black-and-white and are not merely well-made but are personal works of sophistication free from propaganda and unafraid of being critical. They also reveal what a beautiful country Vietnam is.

Opening the series at 7:30 tonight in Melnitz Theater is a pair of films notable for their lyrical qualities. The first is Nguyen Hong Sen’s “The Abandoned Field--Free Fire Zone” (1979). A young couple with a baby live in a simple hut constructed on the edge of a vast marsh land. Our first impression is that the couple are living an idyllic existence in a beautiful Garden of Eden-like setting. But this is quickly dispelled as we discover that U.S. helicopters constantly attack the area, attempting to turn it into a no-man’s land in preparation for an assault on the Mekong Delta. The couple, in turn, serve as liaisons for the Viet Cong, which allows us to see just how ingenious and implacable guerrilla warfare can be.

Dang Nhat Minh’s “When the Tenth Month Comes” (1984), which follows “The Abandoned Field,” is a film of pastoral beauty. In a rural village, a young wife conceals the news of her husband’s death in battle from her elderly, ailing father-in-law with the help of letters written in the dead man’s name by the local schoolteacher, who, in fact, falls in love with her. Their ensuing, chaste friendship, subject to gossip and criticism, gives way to the larger issue of how to honor the war dead: Shall the wife mourn her loss, even after her elderly relative’s death, or has she the right to start a new life for herself? “When the Tenth Month Comes” is a film of great sensitivity and subtlety.

Tran Vu and Nguyen Huu Luyen’s “Brothers and Relations” (1986), which screens Sunday at 3 p.m., is a powerful study of a returning veteran (Dang Viet Bao) confronted with much the same feelings and perceptions of his American counterparts. He finds himself out of place and without purpose, an inconvenience in his brother’s crowded quarters. The film gradually becomes an angry indictment of those who, in their self-preoccupation, would forget the soldiers, both living and dead, who fought for their country. It will be followed by “Victory at Dien Bien Phu.”

Le Duc Tien’s “A Quiet Little Town” (1986) and Nguyen Xuan Son’s “Fairy Tales for 17-Year-Olds” (1986) screen Sunday at 7:30 p.m. The first is the best of the series, a brilliantly sustained satire of ambition and self-importance in a heavily bureaucratized, often corrupt socialist society. An important government minister, on his way to a family wedding in a small, remote village, is seriously injured in a car accident. Almost everyone struggles to figure out how to benefit from his misfortune--even a nice young surgeon sees that if he is able to operate on the minister he may be rewarded with a job in Hanoi. At the same time, no one wants to take responsibility for approving the surgery; one of the few disinterested observers at last exclaims in exasperation: “Don’t let the man die of paper work!”

“Fairy Tales for 17-Year-Olds” suffers from such hard-to-read subtitles that it can’t be judged fairly. The gist of it seems to be that a pretty high school girl begins an epistolary romance with a soldier she apparently has never met.

Starting Tuesday, all six films will be repeated, and a symposium with Vietnamese film makers has been tentatively scheduled for April 29 at 7 p.m. in Melnitz Theater. Information: (213) 206-8013, 206-FILM.