Heaven & Earth (1993) Synopsis

Le Ly is a girl growing up in a Vietnamese village. She recalls her early 1950's childhood, spending time in the rice paddies with her young mother; the two show a very loving, devoted relationship. Le Ly is the baby of the family, the youngest child, and is often accused by her siblings of being spoiled.Her life changes when communist insurgents show up in the village to first fight the forces of France and then the United States. Le Ly's father is forever changed when his family home is destroyed. The death toll for civilians rises, and the once bright green scenery of Le Ly's village turns brown, muddy and crumbled as infrastructure and agriculture are ravaged by fire, bombs and military conflict. Le Ly's beloved brothers are both sent away to fight for the communist side, an event that drives her mother to be much more demanding, callous and critical. The once gentle and kind woman slaps Le Ly during a heated dinnertime discussion and accuses her of being spoiled and useless for work. Meanwhile Le Ly's sister is sent to Saigon to find work; it is not yet made clear what she will do for a career, if anything. Le Ly has a nightmare of her family members each being pushed out of a helicopter in the sky by communist soldiers one by one, as she is made to watch. She fears that her brothers have been killed.During the American involvement in the conflict, Le Ly is captured and tortured by South Vietnamese troops. She is beaten severely, electrocuted with a crudely-made device, and later has honey poured on her legs, as she and two other captured girls are bitten by fire ants that swarm to eat the honey. The soldiers torturing them quickly find it amusing, and decide that it would be fun to drop live snakes down the shirts of each of the girls. Le Ly's parents use her dowry money to bribe the soldiers to set her free, but she is quickly recaptured again, set to be executed for having escaped. Rather than killing her, the capturing soldiers point a gun to her head, knock her to the ground in the pouring rain and proceed to rape her, leaving her behind afterwards.Le Ly's rape quickly becomes discovered, and without a dowry, she and her family are ostracized by their own village. She and her mother are able to find work as maids for a snooty Vietnamese couple in a wealthier part of the area; meanwhile Le Ly discovers that her sister's work is as a prostitute, complete with low-cut dresses and red heart-shaped sunglasses from Stanley Kubrick's Lolita film. Her sister services American soldiers primarily, living in a raunchy brothel. Work as a maid is difficult for Le Ly and her mother, but the man of the house treats her with a bizarre amount of kindness. It quickly becomes apparent after he strokes her face and kisses her that he is interested in her. Le Ly, genuinely believing that he loves her, sleeps with him and finds herself pregnant, much to her mother's horror. The lady of the house quickly discovers the pregnancy and her husband's infidelity after coming across Le Ly burning incense to rid herself of the pregnancy (which doesn't work). Le Ly and her mother are promised a regular sum of money in exchange for discretion, but the money never comes. Out on the street, a very pregnant Le Ly has to move in with her sister at the brothel. Rather than being a prostitute, Le Ly earns money by peddling cartons of cigarettes and marijuana joints to American soldiers. Often she is caught by the police, and has to bribe them with her earnings just to avoid arrest. Le Ly's father comes looking for her, but she is too ashamed to face him, despite his words that he will still always love her. Frustrated by what her sister perceives as favoritism, her sister kicks her out of the brothel. While sifting through discarded garbage in a Saigon landfill, Le Ly finds the dismembered torso of a blood-covered girl, revealed to be one of the prostitutes from the brothel. She knows then that it is an unsafe life.Saigon develops a reputation as a place where foreign soldiers can get cheap sex, and so Le Ly finds it nearly impossible to get legitimate work without men coming onto her. One man offers her a job as a secretary. Le Ly is disgusted when he then locks his office door and attempts to rape her; luckily she is able to escape, and the man is arrested. Le Ly, needing to support her infant son, decides to sleep with two American soldiers for money after a great deal of coaxing by a man who she sells the cigarettes for; the experience puts her off of ever having any sort of relationship with another man ever again. Hearing that her father is dying, Le Ly returns home to her village, finding it in ruins with injured and homeless people all over the place. Her mother, showing signs of severe tooth decay and fatigue, tells of how her father was beaten almost to death after being falsely blamed for the death of two American soldiers. Le Ly's father tells her that he knows she will love and be loved again, and that no matter what, they will always be a family. This is the last time Le Ly ever sees him; he dies shortly after her return to Saigon.Le Ly aids her friend in ripping off an American soldier, but the soldier, a Gunnery Sergeant in the Marine Corps. named Steve Butler, follows her home. Much to Le Ly's shock, he is a kind man who likes joking around and telling stories; never once does he try to force himself on her, although the two have consensual sex that night. Le Ly insists that she wants no boyfriend, and that he should leave after he moves into her rented room, but the two form a friendship, regardless. Steve shows signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, with nightmares and paranoia, nearly stabbing Le Ly in his sleep, but when he wakes up, realizing that it was all a dream, he becomes more devoted to her romantically. He buys a larger house in Vietnam for Le Ly, her mother and her sons (one now fathered by Steve himself), and then proposes marriage. Her mother greatly disapproves, believing that Americans only come into other countries to exploit the people, but Le Ly has already fallen in love. Steve tries to bring her to America, but his fellow soldiers betray his wishes by dumping her in a remote area of Vietnam while Steve is sent into combat to fight the Viet Cong. Le Ly is unable to find help at the American Embassy, and finds herself on a roving bus of displaced Vietnamese civilians and refugees from other parts of Southeast Asia. There, she pretends to be vomiting so that the two soldiers who are trolling the bus for women won't take her; she has to watch though as two underage girls are dragged away and sexually assaulted, returning covered in dirt and bits of grass.Steve is finally able to locate Le Ly, embracing her, and her takes her and the two sons back home with him to California. Le Ly is astounded by the quaint 1970's suburb she finds herself in, but she is confused to learn that she will not be living in Steve's house. Steve lives with his elderly mother and morbidly obese sister, not yet having any house of his own, his plan being to move out when he gets a better job. Le Ly and the sons must live with Steve in his old childhood bedroom, with a couple of cots brought in for each child to sleep on, and a larger bed for Steve and Le Ly. Le Ly finds America to be an unpleasant culture shock. Her new mother-in-law keeps eight yappy dogs in the house; all the dogs eat directly from people's serving utensils and run around beneath the table at dinner. The house is very modern, her new family members are noisy and fry all the food in butter, and they are quite vulgar, talking critically about Le Ly right in front of her and shouting at the dinner table. Le Ly has a particularly unpleasant experience at the supermarket as a racist cashier gives her a dirty look, and another on Thanksgiving, when her new sister-in-law tells her that she should be grateful for her new American life. Steve defends Le Ly, saying that the average American has no idea how bad things are in Vietnam, and that his sister's trivial hang-ups are petty. Le Ly is unsure of how to join in a Christian prayer that day, and finds it obnoxious when Steve's uncle compares Le Ly to a hooker who he had a one-night stand with in a war decades earlier. Still, she is unable to bring herself to speak out against any of it.Le Ly and Steve begin to argue and fight quite a lot, especially over cultural differences (the sons sleeping in the same bed as them, Le Ly's acquisition of a Buddhist shrine), and Le Ly is horrified to learn that Steve's new promised civilian job that will pay loads of money is in fact selling guns for use in combat. They finally get their own house and move out, although Le Ly becomes a bit closer to her sister-in-law despite their differences, and sometimes invites her over to babysit the kids. Bored as a housewife with no earnings of her own at the height of the women's lib movement, Le Ly finds work at a circuit board factory with other immigrant women, and while there, she and the other women take out loans and try to start up their own oriental deli. She keeps it a secret from Steve, but has to tell him the truth after her plan fails and she goes into debt. Steve loses trust in her, and becomes increasingly violent. He spends money that they don't have to buy handguns for himself and Le Ly, and also insists on taking the sons hunting deer up in the mountains, both of which Le Ly objects to. An angry Steve slaps her and holds a gun to the back of her head. He is unable to actually bring himself to shoot her, and instead breaks down crying, revealing that he didn't actually get his promised civilian job selling guns because his past in Vietnam is starting to come out. He may be dishonorably discharged, or worse. Le Ly insists that he tell her everything. He admits that he was basically used to torture and slaughter many Viet Cong men beyond the typical casualties of war. He tells her about disemboweling a still-living man, removing his liver and taking a bite out of it. He also tells her about castrating a man, sewing a man's mouth shut, and leaving them out in the road to die. Le Ly is visibly disturbed by this, but admits to him that she did many things during the war that she isn't proud of, either. The two appear to reconcile.The domestic abuse unfortunately escalates despite Steve's cathartic confession, and divorce proceedings begin, with Steve moving out while Le Ly and her sister-in-law watch. Now with five children, including Le Ly's first child from another father, and no way to support them, Steve becomes increasingly unhinged, kidnapping the children, all except one. The police begin looking for Steve. He shacks up with an old flame, a prostitute he knew from his time in Vietnam prior to meeting Le Ly, and Le Ly begs him over the telephone to come back home so they can sort things out. A tearful Steve hangs up. Le Ly drives over to where he is, and finds out from police and Steve's old friend that Steve has committed suicide. He has climbed into his van with no clothes on, shooting himself in the head. Le Ly embraces her children and cries.Many years later, Vietnam is slowly recovering, and Le Ly's children are all teenagers. She brings them to Vietnam, introducing them to their family. She is grateful to find that her brothers sent away to fight with the communist rebels survived the conflict, and also to find that her mother is still alive. Her mother embraces the children, glad to finally meet them, but a tense dinner reveals that Le Ly is looked down on by some of her siblings. One of her brothers reveals that while she was in America, her mother and sister lived abandoned in their ruined village with no food, under threat of the wild dogs that took over the area to scrounge for scraps, a striking contrast to the abundance of prepared supermarket food and domestic pet dogs begging under the table that Le Ly's American family has. Despite the bitter feelings of the siblings, Le Ly's mother declares that she is very proud of her daughter for making a life for herself. Le Ly considers in closing that she will always be from two different worlds whether she likes it or not, but that this is fate.

Le Ly is a girl growing up in a Vietnamese village. She recalls her early 1950's childhood, spending time in the rice paddies with her young mother; the two show a very loving, devoted relationship. Le Ly is the baby of the family, the youngest child, and is often accused by her siblings of being spoiled.Her life changes when communist insurgents show up in the village to first fight the forces of France and then the United States. Le Ly's father is forever changed when his family home is destroyed. The death toll for civilians rises, and the once bright green scenery of Le Ly's village turns brown, muddy and crumbled as infrastructure and agriculture are ravaged by fire, bombs and military conflict. Le Ly's beloved brothers are both sent away to fight for the communist side, an event that drives her mother to be much more demanding, callous and critical. The once gentle and kind woman slaps Le Ly during a heated dinnertime discussion and accuses her of being spoiled and useless for work. Meanwhile Le Ly's sister is sent to Saigon to find work; it is not yet made clear what she will do for a career, if anything. Le Ly has a nightmare of her family members each being pushed out of a helicopter in the sky by communist soldiers one by one, as she is made to watch. She fears that her brothers have been killed.During the American involvement in the conflict, Le Ly is captured and tortured by South Vietnamese troops. She is beaten severely, electrocuted with a crudely-made device, and later has honey poured on her legs, as she and two other captured girls are bitten by fire ants that swarm to eat the honey. The soldiers torturing them quickly find it amusing, and decide that it would be fun to drop live snakes down the shirts of each of the girls. Le Ly's parents use her dowry money to bribe the soldiers to set her free, but she is quickly recaptured again, set to be executed for having escaped. Rather than killing her, the capturing soldiers point a gun to her head, knock her to the ground in the pouring rain and proceed to rape her, leaving her behind afterwards.Le Ly's rape quickly becomes discovered, and without a dowry, she and her family are ostracized by their own village. She and her mother are able to find work as maids for a snooty Vietnamese couple in a wealthier part of the area; meanwhile Le Ly discovers that her sister's work is as a prostitute, complete with low-cut dresses and red heart-shaped sunglasses from Stanley Kubrick's Lolita film. Her sister services American soldiers primarily, living in a raunchy brothel. Work as a maid is difficult for Le Ly and her mother, but the man of the house treats her with a bizarre amount of kindness. It quickly becomes apparent after he strokes her face and kisses her that he is interested in her. Le Ly, genuinely believing that he loves her, sleeps with him and finds herself pregnant, much to her mother's horror. The lady of the house quickly discovers the pregnancy and her husband's infidelity after coming across Le Ly burning incense to rid herself of the pregnancy (which doesn't work). Le Ly and her mother are promised a regular sum of money in exchange for discretion, but the money never comes. Out on the street, a very pregnant Le Ly has to move in with her sister at the brothel. Rather than being a prostitute, Le Ly earns money by peddling cartons of cigarettes and marijuana joints to American soldiers. Often she is caught by the police, and has to bribe them with her earnings just to avoid arrest. Le Ly's father comes looking for her, but she is too ashamed to face him, despite his words that he will still always love her. Frustrated by what her sister perceives as favoritism, her sister kicks her out of the brothel. While sifting through discarded garbage in a Saigon landfill, Le Ly finds the dismembered torso of a blood-covered girl, revealed to be one of the prostitutes from the brothel. She knows then that it is an unsafe life.Saigon develops a reputation as a place where foreign soldiers can get cheap sex, and so Le Ly finds it nearly impossible to get legitimate work without men coming onto her. One man offers her a job as a secretary. Le Ly is disgusted when he then locks his office door and attempts to rape her; luckily she is able to escape, and the man is arrested. Le Ly, needing to support her infant son, decides to sleep with two American soldiers for money after a great deal of coaxing by a man who she sells the cigarettes for; the experience puts her off of ever having any sort of relationship with another man ever again. Hearing that her father is dying, Le Ly returns home to her village, finding it in ruins with injured and homeless people all over the place. Her mother, showing signs of severe tooth decay and fatigue, tells of how her father was beaten almost to death after being falsely blamed for the death of two American soldiers. Le Ly's father tells her that he knows she will love and be loved again, and that no matter what, they will always be a family. This is the last time Le Ly ever sees him; he dies shortly after her return to Saigon.Le Ly aids her friend in ripping off an American soldier, but the soldier, a Gunnery Sergeant in the Marine Corps. named Steve Butler, follows her home. Much to Le Ly's shock, he is a kind man who likes joking around and telling stories; never once does he try to force himself on her, although the two have consensual sex that night. Le Ly insists that she wants no boyfriend, and that he should leave after he moves into her rented room, but the two form a friendship, regardless. Steve shows signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, with nightmares and paranoia, nearly stabbing Le Ly in his sleep, but when he wakes up, realizing that it was all a dream, he becomes more devoted to her romantically. He buys a larger house in Vietnam for Le Ly, her mother and her sons (one now fathered by Steve himself), and then proposes marriage. Her mother greatly disapproves, believing that Americans only come into other countries to exploit the people, but Le Ly has already fallen in love. Steve tries to bring her to America, but his fellow soldiers betray his wishes by dumping her in a remote area of Vietnam while Steve is sent into combat to fight the Viet Cong. Le Ly is unable to find help at the American Embassy, and finds herself on a roving bus of displaced Vietnamese civilians and refugees from other parts of Southeast Asia. There, she pretends to be vomiting so that the two soldiers who are trolling the bus for women won't take her; she has to watch though as two underage girls are dragged away and sexually assaulted, returning covered in dirt and bits of grass.Steve is finally able to locate Le Ly, embracing her, and her takes her and the two sons back home with him to California. Le Ly is astounded by the quaint 1970's suburb she finds herself in, but she is confused to learn that she will not be living in Steve's house. Steve lives with his elderly mother and morbidly obese sister, not yet having any house of his own, his plan being to move out when he gets a better job. Le Ly and the sons must live with Steve in his old childhood bedroom, with a couple of cots brought in for each child to sleep on, and a larger bed for Steve and Le Ly. Le Ly finds America to be an unpleasant culture shock. Her new mother-in-law keeps eight yappy dogs in the house; all the dogs eat directly from people's serving utensils and run around beneath the table at dinner. The house is very modern, her new family members are noisy and fry all the food in butter, and they are quite vulgar, talking critically about Le Ly right in front of her and shouting at the dinner table. Le Ly has a particularly unpleasant experience at the supermarket as a racist cashier gives her a dirty look, and another on Thanksgiving, when her new sister-in-law tells her that she should be grateful for her new American life. Steve defends Le Ly, saying that the average American has no idea how bad things are in Vietnam, and that his sister's trivial hang-ups are petty. Le Ly is unsure of how to join in a Christian prayer that day, and finds it obnoxious when Steve's uncle compares Le Ly to a hooker who he had a one-night stand with in a war decades earlier. Still, she is unable to bring herself to speak out against any of it.Le Ly and Steve begin to argue and fight quite a lot, especially over cultural differences (the sons sleeping in the same bed as them, Le Ly's acquisition of a Buddhist shrine), and Le Ly is horrified to learn that Steve's new promised civilian job that will pay loads of money is in fact selling guns for use in combat. They finally get their own house and move out, although Le Ly becomes a bit closer to her sister-in-law despite their differences, and sometimes invites her over to babysit the kids. Bored as a housewife with no earnings of her own at the height of the women's lib movement, Le Ly finds work at a circuit board factory with other immigrant women, and while there, she and the other women take out loans and try to start up their own oriental deli. She keeps it a secret from Steve, but has to tell him the truth after her plan fails and she goes into debt. Steve loses trust in her, and becomes increasingly violent. He spends money that they don't have to buy handguns for himself and Le Ly, and also insists on taking the sons hunting deer up in the mountains, both of which Le Ly objects to. An angry Steve slaps her and holds a gun to the back of her head. He is unable to actually bring himself to shoot her, and instead breaks down crying, revealing that he didn't actually get his promised civilian job selling guns because his past in Vietnam is starting to come out. He may be dishonorably discharged, or worse. Le Ly insists that he tell her everything. He admits that he was basically used to torture and slaughter many Viet Cong men beyond the typical casualties of war. He tells her about disemboweling a still-living man, removing his liver and taking a bite out of it. He also tells her about castrating a man, sewing a man's mouth shut, and leaving them out in the road to die. Le Ly is visibly disturbed by this, but admits to him that she did many things during the war that she isn't proud of, either. The two appear to reconcile.The domestic abuse unfortunately escalates despite Steve's cathartic confession, and divorce proceedings begin, with Steve moving out while Le Ly and her sister-in-law watch. Now with five children, including Le Ly's first child from another father, and no way to support them, Steve becomes increasingly unhinged, kidnapping the children, all except one. The police begin looking for Steve. He shacks up with an old flame, a prostitute he knew from his time in Vietnam prior to meeting Le Ly, and Le Ly begs him over the telephone to come back home so they can sort things out. A tearful Steve hangs up. Le Ly drives over to where he is, and finds out from police and Steve's old friend that Steve has committed suicide. He has climbed into his van with no clothes on, shooting himself in the head. Le Ly embraces her children and cries.Many years later, Vietnam is slowly recovering, and Le Ly's children are all teenagers. She brings them to Vietnam, introducing them to their family. She is grateful to find that her brothers sent away to fight with the communist rebels survived the conflict, and also to find that her mother is still alive. Her mother embraces the children, glad to finally meet them, but a tense dinner reveals that Le Ly is looked down on by some of her siblings. One of her brothers reveals that while she was in America, her mother and sister lived abandoned in their ruined village with no food, under threat of the wild dogs that took over the area to scrounge for scraps, a striking contrast to the abundance of prepared supermarket food and domestic pet dogs begging under the table that Le Ly's American family has. Despite the bitter feelings of the siblings, Le Ly's mother declares that she is very proud of her daughter for making a life for herself. Le Ly considers in closing that she will always be from two different worlds whether she likes it or not, but that this is fate.

Published Time: 2020-06-24 21:31:05