Blog 2

The Scent of Green Papaya is a film that depicts the lives of a privileged Vietnamese family. Rather than there being a lot dialogue, the director used well thought out scenes to capture the life of a Vietnamese family, showing their culture. Mui, a young girl becomes a maid for a well off family. Mui is a young girl and very caring for nature, she and the other women in the movie have more dialogue than the men, showing the importance of women in the household. While Mui caring for nature symbolizes the caring nature of Vietnamese women, the boys in the household counteract and defy the women. The film was created to show that the French colonization in Vietnam was not a good thing, and that a simpler time with more traditional values for members of the family, would be better for the Vietnamese. The traditional sounds of a piano and more naturalistic sounds of crickets or rain, show that when times where simple, life was good. However, when there are other sounds, which are not as natural and pure such as plans or sirens, it shows that the life of despair they were forced into.