Thoughts on Boat People

Boat People is a political drama film released in 1982 about the lives of people under communist Vietnam by Hong Kong director Ann Hui. The protagonist is Shiomi Akutagawa, a Japanese journalist who travelled to Vietnam in 1975 to report the lives in post war Vietnam. Like other communist countries, he was escorted by officials to take photos that the government want him to take, in order to show the Japanese a "good" image of Vietnam. He thought Vietnam is a peaceful country until he ran into a Vietnamese girl, Cam Nuong. As he spent some time with her and her family, he started to learn the painful lives that common people faced daily in post-war Vietnam...

I do not want to spoil the movie, so I will only put my thoughts about the film and the political status of post-war Vietnam.

The film reflects a good example of a bad government: people are so used to be around with dead bodies that they do no longer feel anything when they see dead bodies, rather, they will take away the valuables from the dead; government take away young men and to "recreate" them into "revolutionists" by send them into dangerous missions, like removing land mines; government do not want foreigners to speak to the commoners, afraid that the foreigners will report the bad things from the country and tarnish their image. I have not traveled to Vietnam to see if the present Vietnam is still like this, but there are still many countries in that world that have a horrible government, for example, Burma. The Burma junta finally allows foreign aids into the country to rescue the victims, but after almost a month. I think as I live in a safer country, I should not take peace as granted, as there are still many children that are suffered in wars, poverty, and hunger.
I think Ann Hui wanted to use this film to relate the Vietnamese lives with the people that were under the rule of communist China. Because of the nature of the film, the film was banned in China. 8.5/10.