Review: The Little Girl of Hanoi

The Little Girl if Hanoi is a work of North Vietnamese propaganda.

Which isn’t a judgment of the film’s quality, but rather a neutral statement of fact. While the term has developed a negative connotation in recent years, its true function is merely to describe a story’s content: if it advocates a political message (particularly one endorsed and supported by the government in question), then it is, by definition, propaganda. Whether said message is “good” or “bad” is for the viewer to decide.

Given this context, how else am I supposed to classify a movie that depicts Ho Chi Minh (via repurposed archival footage) as a benevolent, grandfatherly, almost deific figure, generously distributing cigarettes to the brave, exhausted troops defending the capital? At one point, an old nanny comforts a sobbing infant by promising to protect him from Nixon, likening the president of the United States to a sinister bogeyman lurking in the shadows (a not-entirely-inaccurate assessment, to be fair). In an especially heart-wrenching sequence, the young protagonist’s neighbors not only escort her to the front of the local food line, but also ensure that she receives the maximum ration of rice for her household despite the apparent loss of the rest of her family—an act of solidarity that serves as the thematic anthesis of Isao Takahata’s unflinchingly pessimistic Grave of the Fireflies (which, in case you were unaware, is about a pair of abandoned Japanese orphans slowly starving to death at the height of WWII).

Obviously, the tone is unabashedly melodramatic, painting in broad strokes of pathos and sentimentalism. The characters’ joy in the prewar scenes is so palpable that it borders on comedic, as though their grins are permanently chiseled onto their faces; they likewise communicate their grief by gazing tearfully into the middle distance—a technique blatantly borrowed from Hollywood. This relatively exaggerated style of performance clashes with the dissonantly naturalistic setting; much of the narrative unfolds amidst the actual rubble of the titular city, which had not yet fully recovered from the still recent bombing raids. Tran The Dan’s cinematography omits no detail of the destruction: through his lens, the ruins utterly dwarf their thoroughly traumatized inhabitants, reducing the human subjects to insignificant specks that are barely discernible within the cluttered frame; his camera, meanwhile, swoops and soars like a disembodied phantom, mournfully observing the devastation from the world beyond.

A cynic might dismissively describe this blunt presentation of such potentially inflammatory material as “emotionally manipulative.” I must concede the argument to a certain extent: the film is unapologetically transparent in its intent to evoke sympathy and rouse the country’s fighting spirit. Nevertheless, I vehemently disagree with the notion that this is some kind of damning criticism—opposing imperialism, colonialism, and expansionism should, after all, be considered an inherently noble goal. Ultimately, The Little Girl of Hanoi is a hauntingly authentic portrayal of its creators’ lived experiences, making it an essential cultural document; for any jingoistic Americans ignorant of how our nation’s foreign policies are perceived by the wider global community, this ought to be required viewing.