Đầu năm 2017, nhà xuất bản Người
Việt tại Nam California đã ấn hành cuốn “Trong Đống Tro Tàn” của Trần Văn Thủy,
một nhà văn và nhà đạo diễn phim ảnh nổi tiếng ở Hà Nội. Ở đầu cuốn
Trong Đống Tro Tàn có đăng bài giới
thiệu nhan đề:
Những Gì Thấy Được
‘Trong Đống Tro Tàn’ của Trần Văn Thủy
của PHẠM PHÚ MINH
Một người Mỹ, Giáo sư Eric Henry,
bạn của nhà văn Trần Văn Thủy đã dịch bài này sang tiếng Anh vào tháng 6, 2017,
chúng tôi xin hân hạnh được đăng tải dưới đây.
Bạn đọc nào muốn đọc lại nguyên bản
tiếng Việt của bài này có thể bấm vào một trong những đường nối sau đây :
http://phamxuandai.blogspot.com/2017/05/nhung-gi-thay-uoc-trong-ong-tro-tan-cua.html
http://vanviet.info/nghien-cuu-phe-binh/nhung-g-thay-duoc-trong-dong-tro-tn-cua-tran-van-thuy-2/
https://www.nguoivietshop.com/news/những-gì-thấy-được-‘trong-đống-tro-tàn’-của-trần-văn-thủy/
https://sangtao.org/2017/02/15/nhung-gi-thay-duoc-trong-dong-tro-tan-cua-tran-van-thuy/
http://www.boxitvn.net/bai/46824
https://uyennguyen.net/2017/03/14/pham-phu-minh-nhung-gi-thay-duoc-trong-dong-tro-tan-cua-tran-van-thuy/
DĐTK
Points
That May Be Observed in
“The Heap Dusty Ashes” by Trần Văn Thủy
“The Heap Dusty Ashes” by Trần Văn Thủy
(Những Gì Thấy Được ‘Trong Đống Tro Tàn’ của Trần Văn Thủy)
Phạm Phú Minh
The writer, film
director Trần Văn Thủy and Professor Eric Henry in Hà Nội, July, 2017
To the best of my knowledge, the writer and film director Trần Văn
Thủy is the first person living in the contemporary society of Vietnam who set
forth the problem of kindness in his own productions. His documentary film On Being Kind was made in 1985, and
after being shown several years later, it created a great upheaval in the
consciences of viewers, not just in Vietnam, but in many places around the
world.
What does this mean?
What is this about kindness? Well then, what is strange about it? Is it not the
case that from the time of the creation of Heaven and Earth, human beings have
lived amid an endless struggle between Good and Evil—this reminds me of the
name of an American film, From Here to
Eternity, or as the French render the title, Tant qu’il y aura des hommes—as long as there are people—as long as
people still exist. The English and French titles of this famous film both
allow us to see that the conflict between Good and Evil will continue forever
in human society, a fact impels us to think more deeply, as we perceive that
the essence and goal of our lives is to do our best to push down that which is evil,
so that good can rise to the top.
But on reflection we
observe an odd thing, that the spiritual hierarchy according to which Good and
Evil are distinguished was determined long, long ago, and perhaps arose
directly as an instinct inherent in living things: life is good, murder and
destruction are evil; love is good, hatred is evil; freedom and ease are good,
imprisonment and limitation are evil; invention and development are good,
backwardness and lack of progress are bad; being well-fed and warmly clothed is
good, hunger and nakedness are bad. One could go on endlessly listing these
pairs of good and evil opposites—a sign that the destiny of human beings is
unstable, but the experience of living and the spiritual development that goes
along with becoming a mature person both affirm the direction that we need to
follow and, and show us what things we need to eliminate. This consciousness
has created a kind of TRUE DOCTRINE of life, common to all people east and
west, ancient and modern.
That people should live
in kindness with others and with nature is merely a principle that already lies
within the True Doctrine of life, but the reason a person like Trần
Văn Thủy had to make a film so as to set this forth as a grave problem of
conscience is because life under the system governing the Vietnamese appeared
to be lacking in Goodness, and in fact seemed to be inclining toward evil. This was not a question
of Good and Evil within an ordinary society, but was the result of the policies
of an unusual regime. Due to this, the crisis resulting from the tendency of
Evil to suppress Goodness became daily more evident: it became a crisis for the
country as a whole.
The film On Being Kind first appeared in
1985—counting back from the present year, 2016, that was thirty-one years ago.
So where has the journey of this film and the man who made it brought us by
now? The tale of the secret smuggling of this film across Vietnam’s border so
that it could be shown at the Leipzig film festival at the end of 1988 could be
the subject of a breathlessly suspenseful detective film. And when the film’s
maker slipped across the border to France on the same evening when the film was
shown and enthusiastically received at the Leipzig film festival, this was in
itself every bit as suspenseful. Only after arriving in France did the film’s
maker learn that On Being Kind had
won the Silver Dove award at the Leipzig festival. Then it was shown in
theaters and on television in France. And after that, many other countries
purchased rights to the film and showed it.
When participating in
the festival where On Being Kind was
shown, Director Trần Văn Thủy stood on a terribly thin, fragile
line; either the film would win a prize and he would become a man of
achievement who could safely return to Vietnam, or, if the film gained no
award at all, he would have no choice but to become an exile in Western Europe.
But “Kindness” smiled on
him, and today, at the age of seventy-six, Trần
Văn Thủy has consolidated his career with the book Thủy’s Craft (Chuyện Nghề Của Thủy), and the book Amid the
Heap of Dusty Ashes that you, reader, are now holding in your hands. What Thủy’s “heap of dusty ashes”
refers to depends on how the reader sees it, but as for the author, I would
guess that the name is in some sense a summing up of his personal journey
throughout the last fifty years (1966 -– 2016). It doesn’t necessarily carry a
negative meaning, as when we stand before the remains of a house consumed by
fire with nothing remaining but ashes—it is rather the summation of a period
encompassing nearly the whole of his life filled with unending vicissitudes on
a theme nearly unique: kindness. This “heap of dusty ashes” is merely a manner
of speaking, and perhaps includes a suggestion that somewhere in this
disorderly heap there may remain a few embers from which Goodness may burst
into flame again.
But one thing is for
sure; in this heap that the author refers to as “ashes” there lies a heart
stirred into a blazing passion by all the events of his life. Many of these
events are recounted in this book, and the reader, going through them, will
encounter tales of joy and sorrow, memories of past events, nearly all of which
have one theme; the elevation of the moral nature of man, a theme that all the
great religions have recognized and used to lead humanity. This is perhaps the
author’s final literary production, for it even contains a “last will and
testament” in the chapter “Some Words Left to Others,” in which the author
gives directions for everything that is to be done after his passing. These
words seem very much like the author’s Last Wishes, including as they do many
concrete instructions for the conduct of his funeral, as well as family and
clan matters. At the end of this chapter he writes:
It seems that in this life, there are few if any people who, when
they close their eyes and unclench their hands for the last time, do not feel
regret for one thing or another. As for me, I regard myself as an ordinary
person who has done his best in every situation to do his duty. But my powers
are limited; I just feel sorry for the young ones, for our grandchildren. They
will come into a meager and scattered inheritance only. It won’t be easy for
them to enjoy happy lives in the full sense of the expression, such as we of
our generation have wished for them.
But in any case, I wish to express the sincere wish that every one
of them will be able to live lives full of happiness, and live in the peace and
purity of a society that is more honest, more tolerant, than in the past.
What he regrets is that his
grandchildren’s generation will not be able to enjoy happiness in a complete
sense, such as his own generation had wished for them—in other words to live in
a society more honest and kind. The word “more” here is full of significance and
reflects the sad facts of modern Vietnamese society.
Chapter 2, “My Father,”
is the essay that I feel is the most important in the book. In recounting the
story of his father’s life, he clearly states that he is “fondly remembering
his teacher”—the man who was his biological and spiritual father—which shows
the depth of love and respect with which he regards this figure, who, it seems
to me, served as a model, a mirror, for his entire life.
There was one thing his
father said that the author, throughout his life, was unable to forget, a
sentence calmly uttered after he had witnessed the execution by shooting of a
close friend, uncle Phó Mâu, during a “struggle” session.
After the day when he returned to Cồn Market to bury uncle Phó
Mâu my father went upstairs to lie down. A moment later, he called me and Lại, my next younger
brother, upstairs. The two of us sat and waited for his instructions. He continued lying there, his arm across his forehead, without saying
a word. I don’t know why, but whenever my father was silent like that, I was
very fearful. I spoke to him very quietly:
“What do you have to say to us, father?”
Shortly afterward he uttered one short sentence:
“All — is — ruined, my sons”
I didn’t understand. At that time I understood nothing. Again I
asked, “What is it you wish to tell us?”
“Uncle Phó Mâu and I helped the Việt Minh in
all sorts of ways—and now he has suffered an unjust death! There is nothing
left for me to believe in anymore!”
Throughout my life, I have been continually aware of all that my father said to me. This is not the
place tell about all of these things, but that sentence, so full of pain and
reluctance, “All — is — ruined, my sons” I will surely be unable to forget even
as I descend to the grave.
Surely, when a youth hears
his father utter such a sentence amid a set of special circumstances in his
country, it will become something impossible for him to forget. “All — is —
ruined, my sons,” a blanket, sweeping expression of a total collapse within the
spirit of the father, who conveyed to his sons a consciousness of the future of
the society in which they lived, with who nows [knows] how much hope that this regime would open up a
splendid new period for the country. “All is ruined” was the crucial mark or
scar laid down in the soul of the author when he came into adulthood, so that
throughout his life he would strive to perceive in what ways society was
ruined; and the impression made by this utterance served as a guide to his
behavior, so that he could raise a voice of warning to everyone concerning an
endlessly tragic crisis threatening an entire people.
In this book, which the
author evidently considers his last effort, we feel that the chapter “My
Father” is the place where Trần Văn Thủy states what
he most fiercely believes in this life, which is the True Doctrine transmitted to him by
his father. His father had received this True Doctrine from the age-old
traditions of the people of Vietnam, and it was in no way different from the
True Doctrine held in common by humanity for thousands of years.
Trần
Văn Thủy ponders this basic question in the various other chapters of this
book. He is in essence a documentary filmmaker, a man who throughout his career
always noted and reduced to writing the various topics that should be made into
films—but alas, not many of these intentions of his have turned into realities.
In the chapter “Scripts That Didn’t Turn Into Films,” he records the content of
those of his cinematic children who never saw the light of day, mentioning many
details, and sometimes expressing rage.
For example, as early as
1980, he had a filmscript about Trịnh Công Sơn:
Another film script
that pleased me no end was when I wrote about Trịnh Công Sơn in 1980.
Perhaps because I had just returned from Russia and had just finished making
the well-known film “Betrayal” (1979 – 1980) and was eager for more
notariety, I wrote about Trịnh Công Sơn. I wrote about
the months and days in which, as I lay in the mouldy tunnels of the southern warfront
(1966 – 1969), I would stealthily listen to the Saigon broadcasting station and
get gooseflesh as I listened to the songs of Trịnh Công Sơn,
hearing such lines as, “The cannons echoing night after night in the city, The street
sweepers suddenly stop their sweeping to stand still
and listen; the Vietnamese girl with golden skin… I was obsessed by the people
of the South, and the music of Trịnh Công Sơn. How could I have loved it to
that extent? Why was I so deeply stirred by it? The problems I laid out in the
script didn’t have to do only with the mesmerizing melodies and lyrics of
Trịnh’s music, but centered on a
question I asked myself: What was the region, what was the culture, what was
the character, that had created this pure and good soul, that had created a
person of such sincerity? If, in the words of Karl Marx, “A human individual is
a product of the fusion of many social relationships, then why did the society
of the South, permeated by the crimes and refuse of the American puppet
government—produce a Trịnh
Công Sơn?
Thirty years after
making On Being Kind to awaken
feelings of compassion in the society in which he lived, Director Trần
Văn Thủy acknowledges with bitterness that he still lives in the kind of
society that provoked him to make the film, but:
Nowadays, under a regime
that does everything in the name of excellence, people see no end of
regrettable things in the relations of people with each other—greed,
factionalism, and dishonest political deals. Virtue has declined to a fearful
extent…
Everybody knows that courts and laws serve only to resolve
situations that arise as the result of people’s actions; if you want to go
further and stop the buds of evil from maturing, to eliminate it when it is
still in embryo, that is, when it exists only in people’s thoughts, then
nothing is as good as religion. (…) Religion in the general sense, anything
that teaches truth and rectitude, urges people to think of Goodness, to perform
acts of Goodness, to avoid evil, to distance themselves from evil. In this way,
such teachings make a positive contribution to the enterprise of preserving
virtue, order, and stability in society, and makes for a stronger, healthier
nation…
Every chapter in this
book concerns a matter of interest and, one can say, has an attractive
character, but all are suffused with strong feelings that sweep the reader into
he
[his]
discourse. The writer observes the people he knows, together with the joyous
and sad things that have happened to him, with great acumen, and when he
relates them, all these things turn into lessons for the reader, lessons
concerning character, concerning an attitude of living in the world with an
unchanging concern: to focus vigorously On Being Kind and compassion.
The author has a very
broad range of relations; the topics he writes about range from the filmmaking
world of Japan to Americans active in cultural or charitable activities, from
making a film about the cathedral complex in Phát
Diệm with its unique architecture, to a doctor of rare character who cared for lepers,
Dr. Trần Hữu Ngoạn. On finishing the chapter
devoted to this last figure, the reader feels constrained to cry out, “There
was a saint or a bodhisattva! And he has a chapter on the musician Phạm
Duy, whom he revered from the time he was little.
With the sensitive,
discerning eye of a documentary film director, along with a spirit that
elevates Goodness and opposes Evil, and in addition to this the sharp
shrewdness of a person who has lived his life within restrictions, and has
always thirsted to tear down the walls surrounding him to promote principles
that did not at all accord with the paths taken by the society he lived in, Trần
Văn
Thủy is entirely worthy of an observation made by the American Larry Berman:
“... it was a war that ravaged so many, yet
left us with survivors like Tran Van Thuy, war photographer, filmmaker and
ultimately philosopher.”
[excerpted from an introduction
to the English translation of his autobiography entitled “In Whose Eyes.”]
In view of the role Trần
Văn Thủy has played, and looking at the society in which he had to live, and at
the way in which he drew observations, judgements, and analyses, so
as to tear down the fiendish ideological barbed wire fence in the era in which
we live—we can see that, quite apart from his professional role as a
filmmaker, he is truly a philosopher, a philosopher who charges into the fray
of existence with deep and courageous books and films.
For example, when we watch
the film On Being Kind, or at least
look at the film
script, which the director himself wrote, we will see
how crucial the ideas in this script are. With no script, the film would be a
silent movie; that much is obvious; but what is important are the words that Trần
Văn Thủy put into the script. Those words are the soul of the film. They are
succinct and easy to understand, but they have a wide application—whatever one
sees or hears goes to the heart of the matter, and the film has a special
ability to cause the viewer to understand things beyond what he actually sees.
Thus, inherent in the script is a philosophy of events and things that raises
them to a higher level of generality.
With great rapidity the
world caught the significance of the humane signals that Trần
Văn Thủy had implanted in the film On
Being Kind. In the late 1980s more than ten large television stations
throughout the world purchased the rights to the film, and the American John
Gianvito named the film as one of the ten best documentary films ever made.
Such a thing had never previously happened in the history of Vietnamese cinema.
More than ten years ago Trần
Văn Thủy published a book entitled If You Go to
the End of All te [the] Seas in which he posed a question both concrete and metaphysical: if
you cross all the seas, where will you arrive? Starting at the outset with the
concept of a round world, the author expressed the view that, “If you cross all
the seas, all the oceans, and cross all the continents, traveling ever onward,
ever onward, you will in the end come back to your homeland, to your own
village. But many years later, when he went to the United States, only then did
he see that the Vietnamese in distant lands had crossed all the oceans, all the
continents, going ever onward, but were in the end unable to return to their
homelands, their villages.
The newest book, Within the Heap of Dusty Ashes, gives us
the impression that the author does not pose that question to himself any
longer. The geographical road, whether on the face of the earth or the sea, is
clear—if you keep going further, you can return to the place you started from.
But for the road that passes through people’s hearts and all its entanglements
with life, one cannot lay down any simple route. The feelings and objectives of
the Vietnamese when they thrust their boats into the open sea so as to cross
oceans were not such as to make them ask themselves the romantic question about
where they could arrive if they went to the end of all the seas. They instead
aimed to arrive at some harbor where they could live a free life worthy of a
human being. But their lives grew settled in their new surroundings; then, for
sure, the road turning back to their homelands still existed in their hearts in
many different forms, political, economic, sentimental… and oftentimes only as
a dream of returning to a land finer than before, more worthy to be lived in.
But it is surely not the
case that the only such road is a concrete one with two directions, going out
and coming back, circumscribing our lives. Anyone at all can open numberless
roads in his or her heart leading to numberless places that the work Within the Heap of Dusty Ashes itself
refers to repeatedly: the road of a kind heart, the road of benevolence. The
road of human feeling is wide and vast…
When the musician Phạm Duy wrote the concluding
words to his song cycle The Mandarin Road,
he depicted the mental state of a Vietnamese who, arriving at the southern
peninsula of Cà Mâu, has completed a southward journey through the land’s
entire length:
My journey has reached its end! The hearts of people are joined!
May you halt here for a
moment in joy!
What you have dreamed of
now is here!
The road dissolves the
borders,
That people may forever
Travel in a realm of
feeling everlasting.
The roads of the world
lead far
In the hearts of people
of all lands.
Could it be that when he
wrote these words in the year 1960 Phạm
Duy had a presentiment of the roads of the world “leading far” that the
Vietnamese people would travel, and that later raised a perplexity with regard
to the journey’s end in the mind of Trần Văn Thủy? But Phạm
Duy also
saw the joy to be found in “a realm of feeling everlasting”—could it be that
this is the feeling of humanity, of kindness, of love, that Trần
Văn Thủy strove to awaken and promote throughout his life, so that it would win
out over crudity and evil?
South California, Nov.
1, 2016
Phạm
Phú Minh
