The Scent of Green Papaya feels like one long meditation guided by the hands of director Trần Anh Hùng. Set in Vietnam in 1951, a young girl, Mùi, shows up to work as a servant for a family. She witnesses many things. The grandma who stays upstairs to pray every day. The father who takes the family’s money and leaves in the night. The mother who tries to take care of everyone. The younger brothers in the house, alternating between cold and hot, distant and destructive.
Through the years in this house, she learned many things. The elder servant tells her what to do and what not to do, serving as a mentor to Mùi by providing amulets of knowledge. The neighbor, an elderly man named Thuan, tells her the grandma hasn’t been downstairs since her granddaughter died. The father, who appears aloof plucking his đàn nguyệt in the beginning of the film, blames himself for the passing of his daughter. The mom, despite all the family's struggles which force her to sell their beloved vases to provide what they can, feels grateful to have Mùi around. Mùi becomes, in her eyes, the daughter that she’d lost. Finally, the boys, growing from children into teenagers as Mùi does, are quite aware of what’s going on and experience just as much, if not more, pain as their elders.
After 10 years, Mùi moves to a new home and continues being a servant, this time for a man named Khuyen and his wife. While Khuyen’s wife is away, Mùi can’t contain the feelings she has for Khuyen and Khuyen develops feelings for her as well. One day the wife returns, cheerful and radiant as ever, only to find their Mùi is wearing her dress and her lipstick, occupying her role and space while she has been gone. She leaves, removing her wedding ring and placing it on the table in one final act of separation. Older now, Mùi is even more deeply in love with Khuyen. The story began with a young servant distanced from her family to her blossoming into a young woman coming into her own.
What struck me about the film was how Trần Anh Hùng guided viewers meditatively through Mùi's observations of moments in time. The dripping papaya sap. The marching ants. The sizzling stir fry. The fire’s crackling coals. The ribbiting frog. The chirping grasshopper. No matter what was going on around her, Mùi retained a childlike wonder toward her surroundings. Of all she observed, it was the ants that stuck in my mind. Her attentiveness to the ants, both in her younger years and later on, reminded me of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden.
In the chapter, Brute Neighbors, Thoreau observes all of the animals that pay him a visit in his two year sojourn away from society. The drumming wood pecker. The foraging pig foraging. The darting fish. The scampering squirrels. The scurrying mice. And the ants—the ants!—wrestling, struggling, tumbling, raging on in battle—the red ant and the black ant at war with one another. Thoreau likened what he witnessed to different battles throughout history, how could there be any difference? Through observing nature up close, the ants were symbolic of the fact that nature contains struggle, always and forever. No matter what period you are born, what family you are born into, what role you serve for others, struggle is inescapable. To deny this is to be at war with oneself. In Mùi's case, both when she is a servant for the first family and for Khuyen and his wife, she quietly observes the ants marching on. Perhaps this is symbolic of Mùi’s character, no matter what year it is, no matter which house she is in, no matter where she serves others, one must keep marching on, one must win the war within oneself, one must never lose their childlike wonder at their surroundings.
In contrast to Mùi, one of the family’s sons also slows down to observe the ants marching on. However, instead of marveling at the ant’s ability to keep going, to stay on the path, to keep putting one foot in front of the other, he turns destructive. He lights a candle and drips wax on the ants. After he does, he observes the ants struggle to free themselves. Now doused in wax, they are in a battle of the elements. Later on, similar to how Mùi never loses her wonder of observing the ants, the boy never loses his hunger of destroying the ants. He sees the ants still stuck in the wax fighting for life, he leans over and squishes them with his finger. Perhaps like Mùi, this is also symbolic of his character, no matter what is going on around him, he doesn’t choose to continue marching on, he loses the war within himself, the one of him dealing with the grievances of his sister passing, his dad leaving, his grandmother hiding, and his mom struggling. It’s all too much for him to bear. As a result, he holds on to his childlike hunger for destructiveness.
“All living things are destructive,” wrote Yi-Fi Tuan, author of Escapism, “if only because to live they assimilate other bodies to themselves. Humans, however, show an almost wanton capacity to smash and crush that which is tied to their imagination and their ability to make.” Unlike other animals, what is the nature of human’s appeal towards destructiveness? Tuan says its power—destruction is evidence of one’s ability to change the world and therefore proof of one’s existence and worth. That may be true, but I would argue choosing observation over destruction is equal evidence of existence. One’s ability to sit and observe rather than smash and destroy has just as much power to change the world.
Of the many possible lessons to draw from Trần Anh Hùng’s The Scent of Green Papaya, perhaps this is the most noteworthy. Humans have the capacity to destroy all that has been created. We also have the power to sit still and observe. Mùi shows us that not only is observation just as powerful as destructiveness, it is also proof of one’s existence. After all, whether it's observing the dripping papaya sap or the marching ants, holding on to our childlike sense of wonder no matter what may be the most powerful way to exist.
