Original subtitles

You look healthy.

You're a ghost.

I don't see you.

I don't know where you are.

How is your sister Kim?

Fine.

Fine.

Your grandsons. My boys.

Jimmy is Hung.

Tommy is Chau.

Alan.

Born in America.

What'd she say?

She says you're giant.

She can't believe your size.

You used to scratch your back...

...on the wooden post in our house.

Look at her teeth! - Stop that.

Brother.

Take one.

Be polite.

I'm sorry. I can't.

Don't spoil a good time.

My oldest son and my youngest daughter are back with me.

My two halves on either side.

We share the same mother, I agree.

I love her as a sister...

...but I cannot accept her gifts.

I had this terrible fear you would despise me...

...because I married your enemy and left while you were still fighting.

It's been so many years.

Much is forgiven.

But you don't understand how much suffering Americans caused.

Things are very hard.

We use our own excrement...

...to grow vegetables!

All we had to hold on to was the future...

...because we knew that the future would not arrive unless we won...

...so we kept dying, no matter what...

...just like ants beneath the elephant's feet.

It wasn't because we were brave.

Because we had no choice.

Our freedom was all...

...all that mattered.

When the future finally came...

...there was more war.

The Cambodians, the Chinese.

When I came to look for Mama in 1980....

You have no idea how much your mother suffered.

She was too old to work the paddies.

She had to give the land, our land, to the State after liberation.

When I found Mama and Hai...

...they were starving.

Their clothes were rags, their farm tools stolen...

...the animals slaughtered.

The house was in ruins.

Wild dogs attacked them.

Nobody in the village cared for them.

Just two old ladies scavenging...

...and growing vegetables to stay alive.

Now you come here...

...a rich, strange foreigner.

You'll turn the village against them.

And against us...

...the Phungs, who have suffered so much.

Things were bad for everyone after liberation.

Many times, heaven and earth changed places.

If you ask me, rebuilding a nation after a war...

...is like trying to start a family by getting raped!

If war produces one thing, it's many cemeteries.

And in cemeteries there are no enemies.

All I could think of for so long...

...was how I made your brother, Sau, go to war.

Your father wanted your brother to know some of the joys of married life...

...but I said no, so sure I was doing the right thing.

Can you believe it?

I gave up a grandson to gain a soldier.

And I lost both.

How wrong I was.

It was also An Sau's choice.

He was just being a good son when he obeyed me.

If I could, I'd have stopped you from going to America.

What would've happened to your sons here?

I'm so proud of you, Bay Ly.

You've grown up to see the side of things that's hidden from most people.

Tears are God's way of paying you back...

...for what He's taken.

I have no more tears.

I have cried them out to all directions of the wind.

My color's changing, Ly.

It began last year.

I have seen it before in others.

You have come back, and that's what matters.

You have completed your circle of growth.

Low tide to high tide...

...poor to rich...

...sad to happy...

...beggar to a fine lady.

Your past is now complete...

...and my destiny as your mother is now over.

I'm looking forward to joining your papa.

That night, I slept in the house my father built.

Afterward, he found no need to visit me in my dreams.

I gave my offerings to all the dead of the village.

I had come home, yes.

But home had changed...

...and I would always be in between...

...south, north...

...east, west...

...peace, war...

...Vietnam, America.

It is my fate to be in between heaven and earth.

When we resist our fate, we suffer.

When we accept it, we are happy.

We have time in abundance, an eternity...

...to repeat our mistakes.

But we need only once correct our mistake...

...and at last hear the song of enlightenment...

...with which we can break the chain of vengeance forever.

In your heart you can hear it now.

It's the song your spirit has been singing since your birth.

If the monks were right and nothing happens without cause...

...then the gift of suffering is to bring us closer to God...

...to teach us to be strong when we are weak...

...to be brave when we are afraid...

...to be wise in the midst of confusion...

...and to let go of that which we can no longer hold.

Lasting victories are won in the heart...

...not on this land or that.