After the Darren Aronofsky film The Whale was met with standing ovations at the Venice and Toronto film festivals, Brendan Fraser finally has the reconsideration he long deserved. He was a ubiquitous presence in the 1990s, starring mostly in action films or comedies, and yet in Schools Ties or Gods and Monsters you could see the serious actor underneath the goofy façade: he could play characters that were achingly sincere, often who nursed reserves of anger. But his best film role, one that has been mostly forgotten, is a victim of circumstance. If only it was finished a few months earlier, the historical spy thriller The Quiet American could have launched Fraser into intense leading roles during the prime of his career.
On the day before the 9/11 attacks, the film was shown to test audiences who reacted positively. But after the towers fell, Miramax decided to shelve The Quiet American for a year (keep in mind this was under Harvey Weinstein’s reign), so shadows loomed over the film when it premiered a year later. Miramax feared that the film’s story, a critique of the CIA’s early involvement in the Vietnam War, would be seen as crass in a period of trauma and intense patriotism. We will never know whether the studio made the right call, and yet history tells us its point of view – weary, cynical, bitterly ironic – was unintentionally prescient about American foreign policy in the early aughts.
Our protagonist is Fowler (Michael Caine), a London reporter living in Saigon. It is 1952, and while he is aware of the unrest regarding French occupation, he practically lives in semi-retirement. He barely files stories to his editor back home, and while he is married to a catholic woman who refuses divorce, he has an imbalanced relationship with Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen) because his love may be reciprocated. In this cosmopolitan milieu of expats and fancy hotels, Fowler meets Pyle (Fraser), an American spy who lies about his exact purpose in Saigon. Pyle has the polite, open face of a true believer, not unlike neocons leading up to the Iraq War. At first, Fowler and Pyle strike a collegial friendship, only to have it sour when Pyle announces his feelings for Phuong. Now Fowler has a rival, and is acutely aware of his advanced age.
Before The Quiet American, Phillip Noyce was known for directing Tom Clancy spy thrillers like Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. Clancy’s Jack Ryan novels are practically a CIA recruitment tool (the actual CIA was involved in Amazon’s Jack Ryan series), whereas the source for this film – a Graham Greene novel – presents a fair different view of the agency. Thanks to Fraser’s complex performance, Pyle is not evil, exactly, and instead rationalizes murder and terrorism in order to advance American interests. Another complication is that the script – co-written by Christopher Hampton and Robert Schenkkan – does not wholly condemn Pyle. Instead, it views subterfuge and opportunism as a natural consequence (or rot) of colonialism.
But the most important complication, the one that impugns the motives of all the characters, is the unlikely love triangle at the film’s center. Both Fowler and Pyle have selfish motivations behind their desire for Phuong: the former sees her as his last chance to stave off mortality, while the latter practically puts her on a pedestal of American interventionism (Do’s performance is more elusive and mysterious, allowing both men to project their hang-ups on her). This mix of personal and political is at the film’s dark heart, as there are personal vendettas behind decisions and betrayals that have far-reaching consequences. The final scenes, where Fowler and Pyle both attempt to out-maneuver the others while using the locals as their pawns, is a subtly damning critique of West.
Caine received an Academy Award nomination for his work as Fowler, and rightly so. His performance is seemingly so effortless and without guile that we barely sense we watch an actor at work. Some of his showier scenes, like when he throws a tantrum as Phuong slips through his fingers, are both moving and pathetic. In terms of affect and style, Fraser could not be more different than Caine, which is why they make such interesting sparring partners. Fraser has a flat delivery, excessively demure, that shifts toward coiled hostility. When he and Fowler have their big final argument, Pyle articulates a disturbing worldview that shocks Fowler. Noyce shows an important impasse, while never letting either of his lead characters off the hook.
Like The Believer, a long-delayed 2001 film about a Jewish neo-Nazi, the self-censorship around The Quiet American may have been too hard of a course correction. History would ultimately show that both films were more right than wrong about America’s failures, and the immediate jingoism of 9/11’s aftermath would be a relative flash in the pan. For Fraser, who stepped out of the spotlight after a sexual assault in 2003, his career would be on hold until, in recent years, he started dipping his toes with character parts. There is less of the young man who turned his charms on his head in The Quiet American, and yet the skills that informed the spy thriller may be what helped his renaissance in the years ahead.
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