Graham Greene’s novel The Quiet American has long had an air of “I told you so” about it. Published in 1955, it warned of America’s ill-advised dive into the morass that came to be known as the Vietnam War, and the years since have made it seem prescient on that matter.
Given geopolitical currency by events of the last few months, Phillip Noyce’s new film based on that novel is less “I told you so” and more a world weary “Here we go again.”
A tale of espionage, love, betrayal, of Old World cynicism and New World naivete, The Quiet American plays as the anti-Casablanca movie where “the problems of three little people” do amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
It’s 1952, and Thomas Fowler is a jaded British journalist stationed in Saigon, half-heartedly covering the revolt that will eventually banish the phrase “French Indochina” from the world’s maps. Michael Caine plays Fowler, who narrates this story and who fairly drips cynicism in every line.
“I take no action,” he tells the newcomer who wants to understand the French Imperialists vs. Red Menace nature of the war. “I don’t get involved.”
The newcomer is an American, supposedly a foreign aid specialist. Brendan Fraser’s gee-whiz rep serves him well as Alden Pyle — on the surface, a naive do-gooder but with a sinister hint of “We know what’s best for these people” never far from the surface.
Fowler develops suspicions about Pyle. And Pyle develops an instant crush on Fowler’s very young paramour, Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen). Fowler’s married to a woman back in England, but he needs a local girl to fill his opium pipe and make him young again. Pyle, in laughably direct ways, sets out to “save” her.
“Saving the country and saving a girl were the same thing to Pyle,” Fowler sighs.
The book’s subtle contrasts between the decadent, seen-it-all-Brit and the self-righteous, ever-judging, ever-meddling Yank are a trifle too obvious in the film. Director Noyce (Rabbit-Proof Fence, Clear and Present Danger) and his screenwriters make the big metaphor a stand-out feature about what the Road to Hell is paved with.
The love story is treated as a clinical convenience, with Phuong merely a pawn, willing to cast her lot with the man who can provide her with the best future. But Caine, in an understated performance that harks back to his subtle 1960s spy, Harry Palmer (in The Ipcress File), makes Fowler’s need for her palpable and desperate.
“Believe me when I tell you that if I were to lose her, for me it would be the beginning of death.”
Thanks to the film’s timing, it’s hard to hear Pyle’s sweeping “We know best” pronouncements about the worldwide struggle for influence and not picture Donald Rumsfeld barking them at nay-saying journalists. However, Fraser is better at the gee-whiz stuff than at its sinister underpinnings.
The Quiet American was filmed in Vietnam and does a wonderful job of conveying a sense of place and time. This was Vietnam before war had reached into its every corner, so early in America’s involvement as to seem a game to Pyle and his fellow “aid workers.” The scheming warlords and cunning politicians — the hapless French, trying to be detectives in a war zone, the well-guarded cities and guerrilla-infested rice paddies come vividly to life.
And in Fowler, we have the perfect travel guide. If the movie is the anti-Casablanca, Fowler is the anti-Rick. When he says “I’m not brave,” he’s not just echoing the Bogart character’s “I stick my neck out for no one,” he means it as the literal truth. He’s a small, petty man who only realizes just how small and petty when he meets the virile young American. Caine could have played this guy at any time over the last 25 years. But now, his face conveys the perfect level of fatigue and fear. Fowler is tired of the work and tired of the world. But threaten to take away something that matters to him, and see where it gets you.
Caine’s Oscar-nominated performance is flawless, not just of the character but of the metaphor he represents. The exhausted Old World clings to its outposts even as the bungling New World tries to wrest them away, though — just for what — we don’t seem to have figured out yet.
