MovieChat Forums > Daughter from Danang (2002) Discussion > Y'all've missed the most important thing...

Y'all've missed the most important thing!

posted 12 years ago by z-21
3 replies | jump to latest

As I read a lot of the the reviews and comments here I see a lot of people talking about how Heidi's parochial upbringing left her unprepared for the culture shock of visiting rural Vietnam; how she should perhaps have done some cultural homework before going, or gotten better advice from her interpreter; about how her adoptive mother's unloving upbringing left her emotionally unable to connect with her Vietnamese relatives; or (perhaps most prominently) how the request for money (an expected and normal filial responsibility in Vietnam, we're informed) might perhaps be interpreted by a Westerner in Heidi's situation as shamelessly exploitative and offensive. I wouldn't disagree with any of that - I think all these factors probably played a role in contributing to the perfect storm that led to the emotional tsunami devastating Heidi and her family by the end of the film. But important as they are, none of these things was the root cause of what went wrong with this particular reunion: That was at heart a far more basic and universally human misunderstanding.

Consider the situation, first, from Heidi's Mother's perspective. Her adored 7-year-old daughter, the baby of the family, is separated from her, lost to who-knows-what fate, perhaps forever. Then, years later, by some miracle, she's suddenly back! If you're a parent of a 7-year-old who suddenly goes missing, how do you react when your child is suddenly returned? At the airport, Mom isn't greeting an adult woman she's hoping to get to know better... she's hugging that little 7-year old child she was forced to give up. She doesn't stop hugging her. Or saying "I love you", like to a child. She sleeps next to her, checks on her at first light... at some emotional level, for Mom and probably for the older siblings as well, baby Hiep is back and part of the family again, as if the last 22 years never happened. They know her. They love her. All they want to do now is make up for lost time! Had they been able to communicate properly, the reality of the adult person Heidi had become might've filtered through more quickly. They might've started to relate to her as she is, and not as they remember her at age 7. But I imagine it's hard to have an intimate, meaningful family discussion via an interpreter and in front of a camera crew... so fairly superficial conversation in Mom's fractured, albeit affectionate English keeps their interactions at a childlike level. Instead of discussing her life, her upbringing, culture, and her emotional needs in regard to this new family she's just rediscovered, and how she might possibly learn to be a part of it again, Mom takes her along to the market, shows her off to the neighbors, and gets her to help out with the cooking! In short, Heidi almost seems expected to pick up her role in the family as if she'd never been gone.

Now, look at all this instead from Heidi's perspective. Doubtless she's extremely eager and excited to reunite with her Vietnamese family. Adopted by a single mother who frequently beat her, and then disowned in her teen years, I'd bet she'd been desperately dreaming of just something like that happening her entire (American) life. Can you fault her for getting on (practically) the first plane over to Vietnam, for forgetting to do some kind of "acculturation" first, for not thinking about those things? Surely it's going to be one of the greatest experiences of her life, finally putting to rest all the suffering she must have gone through as an adopted child!!! But the family in those daydreams is nebulous, vague. She doesn't know them, only that in her imagination she loves them, and they love her, unconditionally. What real memories she does have would be the fleeting, fragmentary memories left behind from early childhood. Places, faces, feelings maybe. Nothing much really concrete. Certainly, she doesn't know these people that turn up at the airport to greet her. Maybe their faces are slightly familiar somehow, or at least the photos they show her. But they're still total strangers. Still, they are her family, her original family; she'll get to know them; over time those long-lost bonds will re-form, and she'll come to love them, and they her, just like she always dreamed, right? But it doesn't happen like that. They don't "greet" her at the airport: rather, her mother practically mobs her. It's uncomfortable - overly familiar coming from someone, who, despite being her mother, despite the dreams, is still in actual fact a total stranger. But the last thing she wants to do is start out by insulting the family she's waited 22 years to reunite with, or be standoffish with them! So, she swallows that discomfort, and pretends everything is just fantastic. It's no big deal, is it? The camera catches it, but Mom and family are far to preoccupied with Hiep's miraculous return to notice anything like that.

So, she goes home with them. Is "rustic" the polite word? It's dilapidated, crowded, unhygienic, noisy, and hot. There's no privacy, and probably nothing like an adequate bathroom. But the evident closeness and warmth of the family more than makes up for the material privations. And she's the center of attention, from the moment she gets up in the morning, to when she goes to bed at night, everyone wants to be around her. It's awkward, she's uncomfortable, but it's what she came here for... she's going to love these people, and be loved by them, once she gets to know them, isn't she? And there's the catch. She doesn't know them. They're treating her like the long-lost dearly beloved baby of the family, and she's playing along, because what else can she possibly do? But she's known them all of a day or three, and unable to speak Vietnamese, she's barely had a meaningful conversation with anyone. Heck, it's probably all she can do to keep the strange-sounding names of all the friends and children and extended family straight in her head! But they're acting like it's all a done deal, that she's one of them already. These people she barely knows are demanding her loyalty, affection, love, and responsibility, and it's far more than anything she can actually give them for the time being! It might be what she ultimately wants, but you can't just switch on those feelings like flipping on a light switch. It probably feels like she's stuck in a play: Her role is to act the long-lost daughter, sister, and dutiful family member... while she's actually waiting for any part of that to start feeling real. And she tries, but it's overwhelming and exhausting, and the family demands are unrelenting, and everything is foreign and unpleasant, and she's desperately lonely, and homesick, and wishing she'd never come. So she does her best to stay friendly and polite, until the time comes for her to finally leave. But then they sit her down and ask, in all seriousness, would she take Mom back home to America with her, or consider supporting them in Vietnam with a monthly stipend (just if that's OK with her, no pressure you understand). And that's the moment when she realizes her dream has become a nightmare, and she just can't take it anymore, and can no longer hold back the tears.

That's what I saw happen. I don't know if anything could have been done to make it turn out differently. And while there was a lot that obviously wasn't filmed, nothing that was on the film seems to me to cast any significant blame for what happened on either Heidi or her Vietnamese relatives. I feel terribly sorry for both Heidi, and her mother. For Heidi, obviously, because what started out as a dream reunion and a second chance at having a loving parent turned out so bitterly wrong. If there's ever going to be a reconciliation (and I very much hope that there will be), I think it must be Heidi who re-opens that door, because it seems unlikely her mother could ever afford to travel to America. And I also hope she ends up searching for and finding her father, because that would be an entirely different, and potentially far less fraught encounter.

But I feel even sorrier for the mother, because you could see that she tried to avert what she realized was about to happen at that sit-down, and then afterward, you could see that she knew - despite her desperate attempts at salvaging things, I think she knew - that she was losing her daughter for a second time. And the anguish etched on her face then was just unbearable to watch.

[–] OCOKA 12 years ago

I think you've hit the nail on just about everything that I saw -- and I pretty much agree with your analysis as well, particularly on how Heidi's upbringing in a not particularly loving adoptive household in a rather insular and culturally homogenous southern community directly spoke to her rather parochial worldview and inability to show more than a what's-in-it-for-me and what-can-I-get-out-of-it attitude in reuniting with her Vietnamese family.

That said, even if the relationship with her birth mother and family in Vietnam had been given more time -- more time for what I don't exactly know -- I'm pretty sure the outcome would've been exactly the same. It seems that the way people have been brought up and the amount of unconditional love they've been shown -- or haven't been shown -- typically informs the way we go on to expressing the same emotions, whether it be compassion and unconditional love, to others later on.

It's quite obvious that Heidi was somewhat shortchanged by her adoptive mother very early in life, and as a result, is wary -- at least subconsciously -- of like-minded people or situations, where love and acceptance are contingent upon other things. So when her birth family brings up the issue of money and financial support, which is not so much a Vietnamese thing as it is a universal thing when poorer relatives are in the company of much wealthier ones -- at least based on their perception -- we see Heidi crumble not because she doesn't want to help them, but because she fears she's reliving the whole thing again with her adoptive mother, where one's love, or lack thereof, is inextricably attached to money and other material manifestations, and that no matter what, there will always be a debt she can never repay hanging over her head as a twice-rejected daughter from overseas.

Understandably not wanting to experience another letdown, Heidi freaks out and physically -- as well as emotionally -- distances herself from her Vietnamese family. And while she says two years later that she has finally closed the door on that part of her life, she resists any suggestion of any kind of finality by indicating, "the door is closed, but not locked...", which as just another euphemistic southern colloquial nicety entirely devoid of meaning, probably would mean even less for non-plussed family back in Vietnam, whose hovels and doors lack locks of any kind.

Nevertheless, Heidi's meaningless figures of speech keeps alive the fiction that there is more to Heidi than meets the eye. Her superficiality with all her lower-class southern niceties, colliding head on with the Vietnamese expectation of an overseas rich relative, who also continues the ancient tradition of a filial daughter, directly collides with the fact that she is neither, as the limitations and constraints of her own unsophistication and provincial attitudes cannot hide her lack of compassion and lack of empathy.

I also hope she ends up searching for and finding her father, because that would be an entirely different, and potentially far less fraught encounter.

Quite honestly, not only would this be virtually impossible to do -- unless she performed paternity tests on every male serviceman who served in Vietnam around the time she was born (1968) -- I don't think she'd find much even if she had. Particularly with the vets who returned home, what happened to most of them anyways)? For those who returned stateside around that time, hometown welcome-home parades were hardly de rigueur. .

[–] z-21 12 years ago

OCOKA, are you sure you're replying to the right thread? Because what you seem to be agreeing with bears very little relation to what I actually wrote!

In case it wasn't clear from the title of my post, I am *downplaying* the list of things I mention in my first paragraph: I think other commentators have overemphasised them, and I don't think they're as important as others have made them out to be.

I would in particular disagree that Heidi had a "parochial worldview and inability to show more than a what's-in-it-for-me and what-can-I-get-out-of-it attitude". I saw *nothing* like that in evidence, and it seems to me to be a very unfair assessment of Heidi.

I think that after reading some of the reviews, many people come to this documentary with a preconceived notion that it's an "Ugly American cannot overcome assumptions of cultural superiority" type of story; I know I did. But it just isn't that at all, and in fact I don't think it portrays Heidi in an especially negative light at all. My essential point was that what went wrong between Heidi and her Vietnamese family was primarily a mismatch of expectations: Heidi went to meet a family that were strangers to her, in the hope of *starting* a relationship; but her Vietnamese family, in contrast, expected her to fit right back into the family as the little girl she was when she left. She obviously couldn't do that (nor could she be expected to), and what I'm arguing is that it was the pressure to do so (more than anything else people have been discussing) that caused her to snap.

As far as finding her father goes, I'd assume she obtained some information about who he was from her (birth) mother. I can't recall just now, but wasn't she shown photos of him or something like that? And I also can't believe you'd just write off the attempt because he's a returned vet... Are you seriously suggesting that 30+ years on, no returned Vietnam veteran is a human being worth having a relationship with? Even if they're your father!?!

[–] shadycady 11 years ago

I think she treated her birth mother like utter crap.

The Divine Genealogy Goddess