Happy Chinese New Year!

Happy Chinese New Year! The Year of the Dragon begins this weekend, so here are some Chinese movies to get you in the mood.


The Year of the Dragon

Of course I have to start off with this filmed 1975 play that was broadcast on the Great Performances series on PBS, about the life of a Chinese-American family. Sissy (Tina Chen), newly married to a Caucasian man, brings her husband home during Chinese New Year (the Dragon is the most auspicious year in the zodiac) to meet the family. Her talkative mom (Pat Suzuki) is happy and proud but doesn't explain the mysterious old lady who is visiting.

Brother Freddy (George Takei) is a Chinatown tour guide who glad-hands the tourists while contemptuously calling them names behind their backs. He pretends to speak Chinglish to play up the stereotypes but thinks it is beneath him. He will soon quit to write a cookbook. As first generation Americans, neither he nor his sister speak fluent Chinese.

Dad (Conrad Yama) is prejudiced toward Sissy's new husband, and pretends not to understand him when it suits him. Dad tells them all the mystery woman is Freddy's "China mama," his birth mother, the woman dad left behind when he came to America. But Freddy ignores the situation, wanting to believe the mother he has known all his life is his real mother. Dad tries to force them all to accept the situation.

Several of the characters (some played by Japanese actors) speak pretty bad Chinese. Everyone is speaking too loudly as if they are trying to emote loud enough to reach the back row and this style of acting could have been more quietly dramatic. The show has some situations that I can relate to as a Chinese-American myself, as well as I'm sure other immigrant families, as well as the more serious storyline about the birth mother and immigration, but the non-stop chatter and loudness, and some of the stereotype acting turned me a little off.


Sparrow

This film is directed by Johnnie To, is about a pickpocket team who is coerced into helping a beauty escape from under the thumb of her sugar daddy. It is a less

Simon Yam plays the de facto head, Kei, of a team of four pickpockets. He also has a liking for photography. One morning a sparrow flies into his Hong Kong apartment, and later he encounters a beautiful woman, Chun Lei, who seems to be on the run, so he takes a few photos. The sparrow may be an omen of bad luck, a symbol for Chun Lei and her plight.

Each of the pickpocket team has their own encounters with her, and each are enchanted enough to want to help her escape the confinement of her elderly but rich benefactor, Mr. Fu.

Fu holds her passport in a safe of which the key he wears around his neck constantly. At first Kei thinks his men are romantic fools but soon is convinced to help Chun Lei, and they form a little heist plot to remove the key. But, they are thwarted by Fu and punished. Kei challenges Fu, a former pickpocket himself, and Fu agrees that if Kei can remove the passport from Fu's bodily person, Chun Lei is free to go.

Johnnie To movies are almost always about a (usually petty) criminal who goes through some kind of crisis, whether big or small, that forces him to face up to the fact that he can be a better man than he currently is, even if only for a brief time. Also, To often uses quiet scenes and slow camera work in juxtaposition to gangster shootouts. In this film the shootout is replace by a menacing pickpocket duel in the rain.

There also moments of broad humor that is more wit than slapstick, where the dips get out of sticky situations in a humorous way. Overall the film less violent than other To films, but just as classically filmed.


Take Out

A documentary style film about hardships of a Chinese immigrant in America.

It focuses on Ming Ding (Charles Jang), a Chinese restaurant delivery boy. Although he came illegally to make money, he is having difficulty saving due to his desire to pay back his family for paying his way over, and thus he has borrowed from a loan shark. But the loan has high interest, leaving him weary and depressed. Since he's fallen behind, the shark has given him until end of day to find the money, or suffer the consequences of two bruisers sent to find him.

A coworker (who provides some humor to the film) sympathizes and has no money to give, but helps in his way by letting Ming take all the deliveries for the day and coaching him on being more personable so he can get better tips. A mistake in an order brings out Ming's frustrations. But we worry along with Ming if the amount of deliveries today can pay back the hundreds of dollars he still needs, especially when he has a bike mishap.

There's nothing flashy about Ming's job nor his life (or the film). His interactions with customers are dull and pretty much faceless. The film is made as is, if it rains, it rains. If an ambulance passes by causing a disturbance to the sound in the film, so be it. The restaurant is also authentic in look and activity. I wonder if the deliveries made were also real, a variety of New York citizens.

You can see Ming and his coworkers are average but real people. The plot is very simple, and most of the film is just following Ming on deliveries and showing cheap customers getting really complainy about getting a discount on a $5 order, but the situations are very real to me. It takes a long time for Ming to become demoralized, but his homesickness and sadness is authentically portrayed. He is buoyed by a photo of his wife and the son he has never seen in person.

At the end of the film, you can see that although Ming's story is personal to him, it is not a new story, and will be repeated time and again in this melting pot of ours.