Red Rain - Memories of a War

Scene from the movie Red Rain (Photo: Galaxy Studio)

In 1964, poet Nguyen My wrote in the poem Red Separation:

I saw a girl in red

Sending off husband in the sunshine of the flower garden

Her husband is about to go away.

Go with many other comrades

In the movie Red Rain, on that train platform there must have been wives seeing off their husbands, mothers seeing off their children, and even young men who had never held a girl's hand so only their relatives saw them off.

The most touching image is a mother of an official seeing her son off to war. It is a very human and real psychological detail because the university gate still reserved a place for Cuong, but how could he go to the lecture hall when people of his generation, many of whom wrote applications in blood to go to war, as the young soldier Tu in the film is a testament to.

Writing here, I remember the mother's words in Nguyen Khai's A Hanoian . She determined that if her son went to war, the probability of him dying was very high, but she thought that her son could not stay at home when his peers were at the front.

Not only Cuong's mother, but at that time, many children and grandchildren of national leaders also volunteered to go to the front and many did not return. The only son of Prime Minister Pham Van Dong, Pham Son Duong, although his father was the Prime Minister, his mother was seriously ill and had a place to study at a university abroad, he still volunteered to go to the front; the son of Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Anh, pilot Hoang Tam Hung, sacrificed his life in the sky of Hanoi while fighting against the US air force bombing North Vietnam; the daughter of the Prime Minister of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam, Huynh Lan Khanh, sacrificed her life in the Tay Ninh battlefield by jumping out of an enemy plane when captured,...

Poet Thanh Thao wrote in Khuc Bay:

We went without regretting our lives.

(How can one not regret the twenties)

But if everyone regrets their twenties, what will happen to the Fatherland?

There was a generation of young intellectuals at that time who put down their books and went to the front and many of them did not return. Of course, on the battlefield there were also people who did not have the conditions to study like squad leader Ta from Thanh Hoa , but there were also many students who volunteered to go to the battlefield, so even in the midst of the fire of war, they did not forget their profession. That is why a soldier in the film said that the principles of construction must be like this and like that. Likewise, close to life and death, those brave soldiers still painted, still raised birds,...

Squad leader Ta was so brave, but when the soldier on the other side fell and the photo of his loved one fell to the ground, Ta suddenly faltered and could not bear to shoot. Between life and death, humanity won. Perhaps on normal days, due to the fierceness of war, Ta somewhat lessened his longing for his wife and children, but in that moment of silence, the brave soldier with the declaration "shoot whenever you see the enemy" not only did not shoot but also cried, but then the loud gunshots brought him back to the fierce reality of the battlefield. Ta, although uneducated, had a special mindset and sensitivity, perhaps that was why he "lasted" longer and left later? Ta accurately assessed where the other side would plant the flag because "no one brags about achievements in the swamp".

Red Rain will make viewers cry many times. In fact, many witnesses of Quang Tri Citadel during 81 days and nights said that the truth of the battlefield at that time was much more fierce than in the movie, because after all, a movie with limited capacity and duration cannot fully depict the fierceness. However, the details in the movie also partly depict that fierceness. That is, soldier Tan survived when 19 of his comrades sacrificed while crossing the river, those were the hungry days when he did not receive supplies, those were the mottled walls full of artillery shells, the roar of tanks, planes, enemy artillery shells, surgery without anesthesia,...

Tu and Cuong were seriously injured and were transferred to the other side for treatment, and then Tu sacrificed himself in the middle of the Thach Han River because of enemy artillery fire. Cuong was in great pain when he clearly felt Tu's sacrifice, but he himself was also motionless because of his bandaged wounds. That was the helplessness and extreme pain of soldiers at the front when witnessing their comrades sacrifice right before their eyes. When his body sank into the water, Tu called out for his mother. There are many stories from insiders that many wounded soldiers called for their mothers before sacrificing themselves. Tu's body merged into the river with many of his comrades. When squad leader Ta sacrificed himself, the soldiers also buried him at sea.

Veteran Le Ba Duong, when revisiting his old battlefield, wrote:

Boat to Thach Han, row gently

My friend is still lying there at the bottom of the river.

Twenty years old become waves

Peaceful shore, forever and ever.

The brutality of war still does not destroy the beauty in the soldier's soul: the young soldier Tu still raises a bird, love still blossoms in the trenches... Of course, the budding love of Cuong and nurse Hong was taken away by war. During the 30-year war for national independence and unification, there were countless love affairs that had to stop like the love of Cuong and Hong. Cuong's promise to take Hong to the North to visit his mother when peace came was never fulfilled, but that noble sacrifice allowed millions of couples in the future to love each other in peace.

Perhaps it is not too much to say that this is the first time the image of the soldiers on the other side has not appeared as villains but as human beings. After all, they are just soldiers and have not escaped the wheel of history. However, at least Quang - a soldier on the other side - realized the truth of the war on his side when he told his mother that the American generals and advisors had led him and many people on his side into a delusional war. Perhaps that is why, when he saw the boat carrying the wounded of the liberation army to the North bank, Quang did not order an attack and in the end he himself was killed. He was killed not by Cuong, the liberation soldier, but by a soldier on his side, people killed him and killed Cuong. The "delusion" that he spoke of had come to his own fate and he answered that question with his own death.

Although the film still has some “flaws”, they are not significant, because they are just small details. Nothing is absolute and complete, please happily ignore those “flaws” to fully experience the content of this valuable film./.

Vu Trung Kien

Source: https://baolongan.vn/mua-do-hoi-uc-ve-mot-cuoc-chien-a202343.html