Blog 2

Throughout the film, “the Scent of Green Papaya” one notices that there is a minimal amount of dialogue. Apart from the older servant giving directions to Mui, nobody really says much of anything to anybody. The females in the movie have many more lines than the men in this film. This is not to say that the women are chatting it up throughout the film, but that the men are dead silent. To run through the characters; Mui’s crush Khuyen barely says a word until he teaches her how to read and write at the end, the Father of the household just sits on his bed and plays his instrument all day until returns to the house and dies, the middle child doesn’t say much except tell his younger brother to shut up, and the youngest doesn’t say anything except for a couple one liners when talking to his mother. The silence in the film is not key however, it is the images portrayed in the film that are of symbolic importance. Mui is constantly displaying a true appreciation for nature. Whether she's splitting open a papaya, listening birds chirping, looking at frogs hop around, or feeding her pet cricket water from a soda cap, she shows a fascination for nature unparalleled by anybody else in the film.

Additionally, the males in this film represent recklessness and destruction. Mui works hard to keep the house clean while Tin, the youngest son, runs around urinating in vases, scaring her with lizards, and farting after each victory. Mui builds a little cage and a water bowl for her pet cricket, while the next brother, Lam, has bugs nailed to his wall. He also enjoys dripping hot wax onto ants crawling along his windowsill, watching them squirm to try and break free of the hardening substance until they give up, accepting their fate as they lay there to perish as so many surely have before on that very same sill. The father leaves the house with all the family’s money to go on what sounds like a sex spree and return when he’s finished after a few days. However, when he returns this time he is ill and soon dies, leaving the rest of the family to fend for itself. Khuyen as well, with his sudden appeal to Mui, cheats on his fiancé.

We get a look into Vietnamese society while watching this film. While it is immediately apparent that men are more highly regarded than women, everybody enjoys a simplistic lifestyle. Greenery is abundant, nobody wears any flashy clothes (with exception to the fiance at the end), and they're always pickin away at their guitar or practicing their piano skills. With the siren's occasional reminder of a curfew and sounds of planes flying overhead, we are reminded that all this takes place during a time of war and that there is something to be said about these people's steady mindedness.