Plot
Le Ly Hayslip is a girl growing up in a Vietnamese village. Her life changes when the communist insurgents show up in the village to first fight the forces of France and then the United States. During the American involvement, Le Ly is captured and tortured by South Vietnamese government troops, and later raped by the Viet Cong because they suspect that she is a traitor. After the rape, her relationship with her village is destroyed, and she and her family are forced to move.
Her family moves to Saigon and she is employed by a family there. The master of the household misleads her into believing that he genuinely cares for her, and she falls for him and gets pregnant by him. The master's wife becomes enraged and Le Ly's whole family is forced to move back to their former province. There she meets Steve Butler (Tommy Lee Jones), a Gunnery Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps. When she first meets him she is not interested in a boyfriend or marriage, having been through so much suffering. Steve falls for Le Ly and treats her very well, making a big difference in her life while in Vietnam.
The two leave Vietnam and move to the United States. Their life together begins well, but years of killing and life in the bush take their toll on Steve who becomes uncontrollably violent. The relationship falters, despite Le Ly's attempts to reconcile with Steve. After an impassioned plea by Le Ly for Steve to come back to her, Steve commits suicide. Many years following this tragic experience, Le Ly returns to Vietnam with her sons and shows them where she came from.
Read more about this topic: Heaven & Earth (1993 Film)
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“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Trade and the streets ensnare us,
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And we despoil the unborn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)