Making Better Man
Better Man, SBS’s first commissioned drama in four years premieres this Thursday and tells the story of Vietnamese Australian Van Nguyen whose execution in Singapore for trafficking drugs in 2005 divided Australia. In an article that first featured in Encore, Robin Hicks visits the set.
Filming has finished for the day in a dowdy office block at the back of a church, just opposite a drug rehab centre, on Gipps Street in Richmond, Melbourne. The crew are visibly drained.
They have just wrapped the most heart-wrenching scene in a true-life tragedy. Van Nguyen, a Vietnamese Australian, is awaiting execution in Singapore’s Changi prison after being caught smuggling heroin, a crime he committed to help his debt-laden family. He is not allowed to see his loved ones before he is hanged the next day. But the authorities have made a final concession for the 25-year-old who the Australian press dubbed “the baby on death row”. They let him touch the hands of his mother and two brothers through a hole the size of a tissue box cut into the wall of the prison visiting room. “Apart from the guards, it was the first human contact Van had in the three years since his arrest in 2002,” says Remy Hii, the young Malaysian-born Australian actor who plays Nguyen. “The thought of saying goodbye to your mum is something everyone can relate to emotionally. It was a painful scene. Half of the crew were in tears.” The scene took six takes to get right.
A bit more research on the topic of Singapore’s capital punishment laws would have revealed that they have already (albeit recently) changed some of the laws. The decision was made late last year and came into effect in 1 Jan 2013. Effectively, the penalty for both murder and drug trafficking is no longer a mandatory death sentence. It is discretionary. For drug trafficking, someone who traffics drugs can now receive a life sentence, so long as certain other conditions are met (for example, cooperating with the police, and also just being a courier).
Already this year, one person has met this criteria, and been given a life sentence for drug trafficking. Another person, convicted of murder, received a life sentence.
If Van had committed his crime this year, rather than in 2002, he would have been spared the death penalty.
Ummmmm no. The part of Van’s brother Khoa was played by the very well established 21 year old Australian actor Jordan Rodrigues (The Lion King, Home & Away, Dance Academy, Camp). The whole sad story was sensitively portrayed, and marks a great return by SBS to homegrown drama.
Hi Harrison,
You’re quite right. Hien Nguyen plays Kim Nguyen, and Khoa Nguyen is played by Jordan Rodrigues. I’ve amended the article.
Cheers,
Megan