Ang Lee's "Family Trilogy" film
review Jincheng
Ang Lee has superb storytelling skills, and the experience of studying in the United States makes his films easier to watch than Hou Hsiao-hsien, who came back from France. After reading it, I have mixed feelings.
The three films and three themes are closely related to each other, and it feels like something that I am experiencing, will experience, and that as a child of a traditional Chinese family, it is difficult to escape from my destiny. The traditional Chinese human inertia raises the concept to the height of morality, and regards it as a very high spiritual pursuit in life. Right or wrong, primary or secondary, once it is decided, it is the truth. Many Chinese "family problems", such as problems with mother-in-law or daughter-in-law, forced marriage, or excessive psychological expectations for their children's feedback, are actually caused by a preconceived and unshakable belief in "monarch, subject, father and son". A belief that is too strong can blind a person, a generation, or even hundreds of generations. If this belief cannot be fulfilled, life is misery and misery. He can't see that there are actually many other ways to live in this world, and he doesn't recognize the rationality of these other ways. This is a problem that many Chinese often make.
The great thing about Ang Lee's three films is that he not only shows conflict, but also shows tolerance and open-mindedness. He freed the protagonists from their steadfast traditional saucepans, from their historically rooted beliefs, and forgave each other. This kind of forgiveness is sometimes not even based on complete mutual understanding, but rather a partial waiver of self-belief and partial acceptance of the other person's way of life and ideas. Li An is telling the story of the Chinese people, and he is telling the story, but he always solves the problem with an American way of thinking at the end. It's also one of the few movies that gives me a strong sense of America that doesn't disgust me - one of the aspects of freedom is being confronted with situations and states that you don't understand or think is wrong , first trying to be considerate rather than correct. That is to say, freedom is not about how you can do whatever you want, but about letting others not cause unnecessary psychological or life burdens because of what you want and do. I guess this may be the American spirit that Ang Lee understands, and I see the influence and imprint of that spirit in these three films, which are mostly about China.
In addition, faithful and even biting descriptions of social phenomena can be seen everywhere in the three films. For example, the issue of cultural conflict in "Pushing Hands" is discussed throughout. Although the film was shot twenty-five years ago, the American heroine may seem more sensitive and anxious today than most Americans. However, her ignorance and indifference to Chinese culture and Chinese way of life in the film—although she is often disguised with a friendly and lively appearance—is the status quo of American traditional Chinese views that have remained largely unchanged so far. . The rest of the small details are like the sentence that the father said to the restaurant owner in the film, "I don't have a green card, you hire illegal workers!" There are also Ang Lee's cameo lines in "The Wedding Banquet", and Jin Rong in "Diet Men and Women" The mother's sentence in the United States "the alarm will go off when you fry an egg", etc., are all very true, but they are often expressed in a light-hearted way.
From my personal point of view, these are Ang Lee's three best films so far. Because of his own development path, his later films have been watched by more people, more famous, and more popular in the international mainstream (especially the American mainstream). The attention, identification and vassalism of movie audiences can no longer reach the heights of these three works in terms of sincerity and depth. To some extent, Zhang Yimou and Tan Dun have similar development curves. Today, with the rise of American entertainment supremacy, at least in my opinion, this is the deep damage it brings to the world - at least China and Taiwan - for people who desire to be "unentertained" and not superficial.
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