Oh Saigon Review

Oh, Saigon is a 2007 personal documentary by Vietnamese American director Doan Hoang about her family that is separated during the Fall of Saigon and her attempt to reunite her family after years of separation. Oh, Saigon was executive produced by Academy Award and Emmy winner, John Battsek. Oh, Saigon won prestigious film grants from the Sundance Institute Documentary Fund, ITVS, the Center for Asian American Media, and the Fund for Reconciliation and Development.

Airlifted out of Vietnam on April 30, 1975, Doan Hoang’s family was on the last civilian helicopter out of the country at the end of the war. Twenty-five years later, she sets out to uncover their story. The film follows her family as they return to Vietnam after decades of exile, where her father, a former South Vietnamese major, meets his brothers again to confront their political differences: one was a Communist, the other a pacifist. Meanwhile, Hoang tries to reconcile her own difficult past with her half sister, who was mistakenly separated from the family during the escape.

I went to a screening of Oh, Saigon at Berkeley the other day, and it's a layered, gorgeous film about the Vietnam War that stayed on my mind for a while. Afterwards, I found myself discussing it with my roomate and friends who I saw the film with for days. Things would occur to us later on about situations or characters in the film. The documentary shows a fairly normal family who are put in a really horrible situation during the end of the Vietnam War. The film displayed a sort of multi-tiered perspective of a family in a war where each of its members had a different set of choices and experiences that set them apart from each other.

Many years later, you see how members of this family act out or feel about these defining events in their lives, and see how they handle themselves and each other now. It made me think of what the people in war zones all around the world are going through, and how long their experiences will affect them and their children. This movie is not just about war, but there are sibling, mother/daughter, political/idealism, immigrant issues. It shows how people on the winning and losing sides feel. There's guilt, there's love. There are riveting, shocking and sad moments. There's humor and hope. It covered a lot of a film of its length, and was well-paced, well-edited, and really took me in. It's kind of unbelievable that what real people live through. Anyway, a great film, and I would highly recommend it.

I moved here with my family when I was 2 years old and so I don't recall anything from my true homeland. As much as I love America and am grateful for all of her opportunities, I have always felt like I had a missing link to my past. I think that Doan's film had everything that a movie could ask for - comedy, emotion, a beautiful in-depth story-line, and dramatic historical events.
This film was moving in that it addressed the turmoil of an internal war. A war after the war, so to speak. I was too young to remember, but I do know that wars can leave many different types of scars. I think the ones inflicted on this family are especially deep but I believe that time does heal some of the wounds. This film moved me and it brought out emotions that I also seek answer to within my family. My family really never discusses what happened as we made our way here.