A Life Cut Short

Trac Minh Vu’s first, remarkably accomplished and poignant documentary, “Letters to Thien”--about Thien Minh Ly, the victim of a racially motivated killing in Orange County on Super Bowl Sunday two years ago--does not tell the story you might expect.

The grisly details of the brutal murder are mentioned but not extensively reported. Vu apparently wants to avoid sensationalism and the prospect of giving any satisfaction to the pair of remorseless killers--both white supremacists, both convicted--one of whom smugly enjoyed his notoriety during a trial in which he was sentenced to death.

The 55-minute documentary, to be shown Saturday at UC Irvine as part of the Asian Pacific American Awareness Conference (2:20 p.m.), begins in blackness with the voice of Dao Huynh speaking in Vietnamese. Her anguished words, translated in captions, appear at the bottom of the screen.

“My dear son Thien,” she says. “It has been a year since you had to leave us, your parents and siblings, because of the cruel and discriminatory hands of two wicked people who destroyed our family . . . leaving us painfully, leaving us in an immense sadness.”

Images come up gently of a crowd of people, mainly Vietnamese, standing in darkness and holding lighted candles. Her voice continues.

“After you [were] murdered, our family has changed a lot. Although most activities still go on as before--your father and I still go to work as before, your siblings still go to school--without you, we have been living in hell. Day in day out, every hour, every minute, we really miss you, love you.”

The camera pans the faces in the crowd, slowly revealing a memorial service in progress. A small bell rings, and the haunting melody of a flute lends an even moodier texture

to the scene, which fades to black again. The lonely tune plays on as the credits come up and the imagery shifts.

We see a cyclone fence that encloses a desolate-looking high school tennis court. It is the killing ground where Ly was attacked and stabbed repeatedly, but we are not told that. The memory of the court’s cracked asphalt lingers, though, brought back by a narrative interview with Ly’s younger sister, Thu, and still later by a brief display of crime-scene photographs.

When the imagery shifts again, this time to huge close-ups of handwritten pages, the camera scans them. No sentence can be read whole, but key words and phrases seem to float like bottled messages on a sea of white paper.

They are followed by newspaper headlines and news clippings. A sentence, startling for its nonchalance and braggadocio, now catches the eye: “Oh, I killed a jap a while ago.”

Only then does the actual story begin, painting its subject not so much as a 24-year-old victim of a hate crime--though that is frequently mentioned--but as someone whose rare and admirable qualities had touched, even inspired, many people in his life.

“Letters to Thien” personalizes Thien Minh Ly with warmth and intimacy, drawing from his senseless death a tragic meaning. We learn about him from his sister and brother, his parents and college classmates.

Ly, who graduated eighth in his class from Tustin High School, went on to UCLA, where he received his bachelor’s degree, then got his master’s from Georgetown University.

He had a love of poetry, Shakespeare and writing. He kept a daily journal and had an insatiable curiosity about Vietnam and Vietnamese culture. Moreover, Ly had been a community activist at UCLA, president of the Vietnamese Students Assn., but was too modest to tell his parents about that. They discovered it when they attended an evening of cultural events he helped organize and, to their surprise, gave the keynote speech.

We learn that Ly also was a model of excellence for his younger sister and brother, both of whom describe his devotion to them and the hope they took from him.

Notwithstanding all the testimonials, especially a moving interview in which Ly’s brother, Thai, is overcome by emotion, the film manages to avoid strict hagiography. It preserves a certain candor about the main conflict in Ly’s life, one not limited to immigrant Vietnamese families striving for assimilation and upward mobility.

Ly wanted to fulfill his parents’ expectations and yet remain true to himself. They pressured him to pursue a career in medicine, which, according to his friends, conflicted with his own ambitions. Before his fatal chance encounter with his killers, he was preparing to go to law school in hopes of returning to Vietnam one day and perhaps working in its justice system.

While painting its loving portrait, however, the documentary does glance over many tantalizing details. Why was his father imprisoned in Vietnam for six years before the family’s escape to the United States? We can only assume it’s because he’d been an officer in the South Vietnamese army, which is mentioned in passing.

But was he a political prisoner? Was he convicted for other reasons? Did his father’s imprisonment spur Ly’s interest in becoming a lawyer? Leaving out such details, especially when Ly’s parents’ animosity toward the Vietnamese Communists is a crucial part of their embittered history, raised many unanswered questions.

The ordeal of their escape from Vietnam in 1983 is also passed over briefly. It’s a missed opportunity to give more depth to the story. And despite repeated mentions of how hard Ly’s parents work in their family business, we never learn what business they’re in.

The documentary glances over other details, too. None of Ly’s many friends and acquaintances are identified. We must surmise who they are. It would have been easy (and better) to fill in their names at least once on their introduction.

But these are quibbles.

For Vu, a first-time director who graduated eight months ago from Cornell University with a bachelor’s degree in filmmaking, “Letters to Thien” looks like the promising start of a film career. The same goes for his two creative partners, also just out of college, assistant director and co-producer Kerry Seed (University of Montana) and composer-sound designer Michael Yesenofski (University of Portland).

* “Letters to Thien” screens Saturday, 2:20 p.m., at the UCI Student Center, Emerald Bay Auditorium, Rooms D and E, Pereira Drive and West Peltason Road. Free with $6 pre-registration fee for conference attendees; $8-$10 at the door.

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Asian films remain the focus of multicultural activity at UC Irvine this weekend with the continuation of “Post-Colonial Classics of Korean Cinema.” In the UCI Film and Video Center, Humanities Instructional Building, Room 100, West Peltason Road. All films $4-$6. (714) 824-7418.

On Friday at 8 p.m. the festival will screen “The Public Prosecutor and the Teacher,” a 45-minute silent made in 1948 by director Yun Tae-ryong in the style of the 1920s. It will have live narration.

On Saturday at 4:30 p.m., the festival will screen “The Houseguest and My Mother” (1961), a romantic melodrama made by Shin Sang-Ok, described as “perhaps the most celebrated Korean director.” It features two of Korea’s biggest film stars of the 1960s, Ch’oe ^Un-h^ui and Kim Chin-gyu.

After that, “The Murmuring” (1995)--about “comfort women” who were drafted as sex slaves by the Japanese military during World War II--will be screened at 7 p.m. on a double bill with “Habitual Sadness” (1997), about a former comfort woman and other women striving for independence and dignity.

Still another Asian film, this one from China, “Life on a String” (1991) will be screened Friday at 7 and 9 p.m. by the UCI Film Society. Directed by Chen Kaige, who made “Farewell My Concubine,” it centers on an old blind master musician, who wanders in the desert from village to village, and a young disciple who feels estranged from him. In the UCI Student Center, Crystal Cove Auditorium, Pereira Drive and West Peltason Road. $2.50-$4.50. (714) 824-5588.

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Elsewhere in Orange County:

* Serbo-Croatian director Emir Kusturica’s “Underground,” winner of the Palme d’Or (the top prize) at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, screens Friday to Feb. 5 at the Port Theatre, 2905 E. Coast Highway, Corona del Mar. $7. (714) 673-6260.

This violent, 167-minute allegorical epic about two friends during World War II, one of whom betrays the other at war’s end, is a bittersweet metaphor for the fate of Yugoslavia. The Palme d’Or for “Underground” was Kusturica’s second. He won his first in 1985 for “When Father Was Away on Business.”

* “The Scent of Green Papaya,” another Vietnamese film, screens Friday at Saddleback College, 28000 Marguerite Parkway, Mission Viejo, in the Science/Math Building, Room 313. Free. (714) 582-4788.

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The UCLA Film Archive’s engrossing “Contemporary Latin American Films” continues tonight at 7:30 in Melnitz Hall’s James Bridges Theater with the U.S. premiere of Beto Brant’s nifty neo-noir “Belly Up.” It is not only a worthy candidate for American distribution but also for a Hollywood remake.

Two crooks--a seen-it-all professional assassin, Alfredo (Wolney de Assis), and a young novice, Toninho (Murilo Benecio)--are stuck in a seedy dive awaiting word from their boss as to when to make a hit. Whiling away the time at the bar, Alfredo begins talking about his fearless but ill-fated ultra-macho pal Mucio (Chico Diaz), whose story unfolds in flashbacks.

The vintage woman’s picture is alive and well--in Patagonia. That’s the beautiful but desolate region to which the heroine (Assumpta Serna) of “Stolen Moments” (Saturday at 7:30 p.m.) comes--the year is 1947--with her much older husband (Jorge Rivera Lopez), doctor and a conservative, possessive type.

Serna’s ravishing, vulnerable Letty has only one escape: the movies--her stolen moments. When a mysterious handsome stranger (Francois-Eric Gendron) materializes, Letty gets carried away, projecting fantasies inspired by the silver screen. Writer-director Oscar Barney Finn dedicates his romantic saga to his mother, but his film is a homage to the formidable Serna, whose Letty is alternately foolish, gallant and adorable.

Times staff writer Kevin Thomas contributed to this report.