Director Viet Linh 'eats the pain'

The anthology "Lest the Ashes Fly Away" by director Viet Linh consists of three parts: Short Writings , Five Minutes with a Side Station , and Sitting Amidst the World - Photo: Tre Publishing House.

Each of Viet Linh's articles may be a sketch, a detailed description, or a quick shot... but together they all form a comprehensive picture of art and contemporary issues.

Professor Huynh Nhu Phuong

Closing the book, my mind kept wandering to the short story "Eating the Pain ."

Director Viet Linh drew inspiration from a true story published in Le Monde about the mother of a murderer who committed a crime that shocked public opinion, and who came to apologize to the victim's family.

Due to her limited French, she told the journalists: "I want to eat their pain" (je veux manger leur douleur).

To others, it might have been a minor detail; but to Viet Linh, that mother had uttered a word "appropriate for the pained state of mind."

She wrote, "Life is still beautiful when we still have the desire to feed on the pain of others."

In *Lest the Ashes Blow Away *, there are many small, delicate, sometimes seemingly insignificant moments that no one else notices, yet the author wants to cherish them to the fullest.

As stated in the introduction, Viet Linh writes words that "certainly do not have the power to change the course of human life," but they will "quietly accompany the reader."

Sometimes it's the story of two strange shirts in an old man's life; or the story of an old woman selling fruit yelling at rats, "Run away, you little rats!" when someone pours boiling water down the drain.

Sometimes it's the story of a girl who left her homeland and died after only 24 days as a bride in a foreign land...

Viet Linh is the director of many famous films such as "The Traveling Circus ," " The Apartment , " and "Me Thao in its heyday" - Photo: Provided by the director.

The author draws material from everyday life and from what he reads in newspapers—stories from here and there, from year to year—but all are poignant stories of life and people. Viet Linh's writing is concise, but his emotions are warm and heartfelt.

Viet Linh also dedicates many pages to the "side station" of cinema that she reveres. Along with that are comments and reflections, expressing her sharp and open-minded perspective on the "laugh-out-loud" and "words that sometimes sound like lament" phenomena in life.

Lest the ashes fly away , this book is over 300 pages long, with each article containing only a few hundred words, or even less. Some of the content previously appeared in the book Five Minutes with the Side Station (2014), and is now being re-selected.

The narrative tone is relaxed and natural, sometimes intimate, sometimes objective and detached.

However, when you set aside the words, you discover a profound, calm self that views life like a clear drop of water. There, small, fragmented stories possess immense power.

Viet Linh loves to observe, to think, and to record things so she can remember them, to record them before they turn to ashes and blow away.

But unlike in films or theater, she doesn't intentionally "peek" into life, but lets life "imprint" itself in her mind. From there, she writes down her most compelling emotions, confiding in others and in herself. At times, the author herself feels... tortured by her sensitivity.

Speaking to Tuoi Tre newspaper , Viet Linh had to admit that she is "quite naive in her writing, not planning on genre, cause and effect...".

When writing, she lets herself be carried away by her emotions, and the words flow from there, especially the title. The power of the writing, if any, comes later, sometimes surprising even the author herself. For Viet Linh, writing is simply about recounting what she feels inside...

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/dao-dien-viet-linh-an-noi-dau-20240312093615006.htm