After the "Banquet", what else can a gay film do? This involves what kind of existence a "comrade" is placed under the monocultural context of the Chinese. Ang Lee has already finished talking about the biggest things, the various ideologies under the Chinese patriarchal structure, marriage is not because two people love each other, maybe there is, but more for others. It is a matter of two families, a matter of entertaining relatives and friends, a matter of the elders and young classes, and a matter of sacrificing oneself to meet the blessings of all.” happy event. If even such a big thing as marriage can be faked, it means that the fact that the two are combined is "too big to fail", not only gathering all the things that this structure attaches great importance to, but also pressing the two people at once on this occasion. on the newcomer.
When I re-watched "The Banquet", I realized that the "events in life" such as marriage turned out to be such a huge event. It must also be placed in the background of comrades and foreign countries, in order to see that "sex repression for five thousand years" is such a phenomenon that no matter how it can be shaken, it is powerless, and the unspoken cultural rule that falsehood must come true.
Simon has been isolated from the other characters several times. For example, when Wei Tong was talking on the phone with his family, he went through the corridor alone to go to the toilet. Or the father-in-law and mother-in-law went to New York and eagerly surrounded Wei Tong and Wei Wei, leaving him alone as an outsider. On the surface, he must be a bystander and witness, but in fact he is the most injured party. The whole marriage is a big lie, but in order to meet the expectations of the elders, relatives and friends, the whole society and the patriarchal structure, the lie must be maintained, and the sacrifice must be maintained until the fire cannot be covered by paper. Simon sincerely wanted to enter the Gao family's world, but there were fakes all around him, so it's no wonder that his true feelings were hurting all the time. Perhaps he did not understand the significance of the entire wedding in Chinese culture, but he cared and supported others with the purest attitude.
And don't those fake things pack those implicit and unspeakable true feelings?
The taciturn father is the biggest driving force behind the whole drama. Even when the stroke was in danger, he still wanted to hold his grandson, which made it increasingly urgent for Wei Tong to start a family. The role of the mother is that of the patriarch, putting pressure on her son in a soft way. When will you be married? Why don't you talk about having kids? Even Zai Weitong couldn't help coming out of the closet. She still said with tears in her eyes, "Don't tell your dad", trying her best to maintain the dignity of patriarchy. Women of the old era and women of the new era, Gu Weiwei, played by Gao Jinsumei, dares to love and hate her. Knowing that Weitong doesn't love her, she still pursues and beats her, and eventually she becomes the daughter-in-law of the Gao family. On the other hand, Gao Weitong of Zhao Wenxuan has the color of Chinese immigrants. He pays attention to the baht and budgets carefully. He often talks about "the next time you make me lose money, I will deduct your salary". Loving money and treating it like a life (just because I can get tax deductions and being persuaded to get married), in my opinion, this is also a powerful ambition to make a fortune in a foreign land.
As for the comrade code, Li An's textual research is also very careful. Ru Weitong goes to the gym every once in a while, following the trend of fitness and body sculpting among gay men. Also, Simon's booth in the park after the wedding, its "Silence=Death" and the pink triangle represent the period of the AIDS outbreak. LGBT organizations encourage everyone to break their silence, face up to the fact of oppression of gays and the loss of life, and stand up for the government and the government. society's attention. The "unsafe sex" mentioned by Simon, no matter from which point of view, will "kill people". It is not only rooted in the far-reaching fear of AIDS at the time, but also a reminder and mockery of sexual intercourse between men and women.
Twenty years have passed, and similar things are going on, but the subject matter has become so overwhelming that people don't want to watch it, and it can't do the comprehensiveness and delicacy of "The Banquet". Father's final understanding is to be inclusive with the Chinese's subtlety. It may also imply that today, "Chinese marriage" and gay discourse are not forever mutually exclusive.
Fortunately, this year's Queer Film Festival has many Taiwanese short films that are eye-catching. "Helen's Mom" uses common family parent-child themes to create a relaxed and interesting atmosphere. "囍" expresses the absurdity of fake marriages in a very short space, and pays tribute to "Two Weddings and One Funeral" directed by Jin Zhao Guangshou. Director Chen Hao of "Qingqin" has taken a different approach to the subject of gay massage, and the emotion is strong and moving. "Apple Boy" inherits Taiwan's usual small and fresh, but unexpectedly focuses on the issue of youth eroticism, which is extremely exciting. "Wandering the Body" is quite a different kind of wandering on the boundary of experiment/record, just like the fluidity of gender/gender of the recorded person in the film, perhaps gender/gender itself should not be subject to rigid definitions, and there are many infinite possible.
In the Chinese-speaking circles of the three places on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, Guan Jinpeng's "Blue Yu", Wong Kar-wai's "Boom in the Spring" and Chen Kaige's "Farewell My Concubine" are still fresh in the memory of the audience. Taiwan has reached its peak from "Niezi" in 1986 to "Youth Nezha" and "Banquet". After 2000, there are Chen Junzhi's "Beautiful Boy", Chen Zhengdao's "Midsummer Light Years", and the commercial comedy "Seventeen Years Old Sky". With Zhou Meiling's "Bright Light Song and Dance Troupe", "Tattoo", "Wandering Youth" and so on. Where are new cuts, new conflicts, new discourses? Are there any gay stories that no one else has done before? I think for the creators of the new age, this is a way to go out.
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Ang Lee once said, "Father's majesty puts pressure on you and gives you a sense of security. That's my fundamental standpoint. I don't want him to float." The father trilogy has one thing in common. The central concept is based on In order to start from my father, in-depth research is "ethics". Chinese people generally follow the Confucian thought inherited from "the Tao of Confucius and Mencius", and the so-called ethics is "benevolence". All can have support; disrespect, why not?", respecting parents is very important, Taiwan was still too conservative in the 1990s, the word "homosexual" should not be harsh to the ears of elders, if you know your own son He is a comrade, and begging for a child to "marry a family" is even more ironic and sad. Such a controversial subject was unexpectedly highly admired in the film market at that time. The box office in Taiwan exceeded 100 million Taiwan dollars, and it was the highest rate of return on investment in the world that year. Ang Lee’s film (the production cost was $1 million, and the global box office excluding the U.S. sold a total of $30 million), Ang Lee began to connect with the international world, recording the intergenerational interaction between modernity and tradition through the lens, making him work hard in silence The hard work has gradually revealed the light...
The male protagonist "Gao Weitong" is a real estate agent in New York. He has been living with his "boyfriend" friend Simon for five years. Because of the constant urging of his parents to force marriage, he agrees with the tenant, a mainland girl. The painter Wei Wei (played by Jin Sumei, she was really beautiful when she was young, she even showed some performance in the play~~OMG!!!) fake marriage to play a play to deceive his parents, and also allow her to get the US green card smoothly, At this time, Wei Tong's parents temporarily decided to fly to the United States to attend their wedding, but the so-called "wedding" turned out to be just a notarization in the court. For the male protagonist's father, who is a prominent military commander in Taiwan, getting married is a matter of The important events in life are so sloppy and very dissatisfied, and Wei Tong's mother also cried because she felt that she had treated her daughter-in-law badly. It happened that on the night of the notarization, Simon invited the whole family to dine at the most exclusive Chinese restaurant in New York's Chinatown, the owner of the restaurant " "Old Chen" was also the subordinate of Wei Tong's father in the army, so he insisted on holding a formal wedding banquet for the Gao family... The outline of this story is like this, but the metaphors that can be studied are not only that, Li An said It is both a story and a life, open to the audience to freely interpret...
Chinese wedding banquets are particularly ostentatious. On the surface, the extravagance of the banquet is to share the joy with relatives and friends, to connect feelings through banquets, to determine the scale of the banquet according to family background, financial background, etc. I hope to make it public and get the whole audience to like it, so the old-fashioned traditional wedding banquet is usually held for parents to see, and it is rarely something that can be decided by oneself! However, the real meaning of the banquet is "consummation". From the 180-degree change in the facial expressions of Lang Xiong (Gao's father) and Gui Yalei (Gao's mother) before and after the wedding banquet, anger and dissatisfaction turned to satisfaction, Even if it's just a wedding banquet, it can make the parents' hope that their son "marry a family" is unquestionably valued; on the other hand, Wei Tong, Simon and Wei Wei each have their own definitions of this fake show, so in the In the process of the wedding banquet, the roles played by these three people also used a simple book of photo-editing at the end of the film to describe the delicate relationship that the camera did not bring! Neither hypocritical nor restrained, everything is understood by the people who look at the photos. If you look carefully, you can understand the mystery of this movie, not only the words have something to say, but also the wonderful ending that can't be explained... Ang Lee is also there During the wedding banquet in the play, a flower arrangement entered the mirror and said: "You're witnessing the results of 5000 years of sexual repression - You are witnessing the results of sexual repression for 5000 years!", each of which is related to each other. , I'll leave this for the last to say...
Since Wei Tong's parents came to the United States, Wei Tong, Simon, Gao's father, Gao's mother, and Wei Wei have dined at home many times together, and the interaction at the dining table has become more interesting. The real "male wife" cannot be moved. On the stage, friendliness can only be conveyed through a fake "daughter-in-law". From cooking to eating picky object selection, only because the person concerned is blinded by the appearance of the eyes, it is impossible to understand the truth... The turning point of the whole film also appeared. At the dining table, Simon learned that Wei Tong and Wei Wei had sex during the wedding night of the wedding banquet and became pregnant. The whole thing was furious, and this time was the beginning of the emotional disturbance in the hearts of the five... Later it happened I won’t go into details about the movie, at least it’s a Happy Ending that I like in my heart. I will directly say what I want to express at the end of the film, “Life is always a compromise!” Compromise doesn’t mean accepting it from the heart, but Continue to suppress herself in a rational way and deceive her brain to convince herself. This process can be said to be a compromise. In Gao's mother's play, she said that Wei Tong was born through her hard work, and the doctor advised her. To be sterilized after giving birth means that this child is so rare for her. Can she really fully accept the fact that her precious son is a gay? And Father Gao has a wider space for discussion. At the end of the movie, he put it down, but why did he put it down? I'll write this in the next paragraph; there are two scenes in this movie that give me goosebumps, one scene is that Gao's father falls asleep in the garden, and Wei Tong is talking on the phone to fall asleep Take, this scene actually wants to express the relief after letting go, after the pressure is eliminated The other scene is when Father Gao and Lao Chen say goodbye and shake hands at the door of the restaurant after the wedding banquet. Father Gao is thanking Zhang Luo for being so gracious and having a successful wedding banquet, while Lao Chen is repaying Father Father's kindness in the army The old love between the kindness and the subordinates is also the virtue of the Chinese people. Rewarding with gratitude... I have written such a large article. In fact, I still miss many details that should be shared. It's better that all movie fans and friends have the opportunity to express all the flavors of this movie by themselves!
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Continuing the award-winning momentum of his first film "Pushing Hands" (1991), Ang Lee's "Banquet" (1993) became the darling of international film festivals when it came out, and soon won the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival with Xie Jin's "Fragrant Soul Girl". , even more sensational Chinese film circles. Regarding the successive affirmations, Ang Lee did not change his frank character: "Award is an honor. Of course, the more the better, the most practical thing is that the award will give me more and more space for filming." In his reply, in addition to gratification, he also expressed emotion, because if there is no << With the success of "Pushing Hands", "The Banquet", which was once voted back, may not escape the fate of "Liu Xi".
As early as around 1988, Ang Lee proposed to "China Film" a plan to film "The Banquet" through his friends. The production department felt that the theme was novel, but unfortunately the script was too long, the jokes were not enough, and it involved sensitive gay issues, so they were worried about the acceptance of the domestic market. After several deliberation, "China Film" asked Li An to provide proof of foreign capital before it was willing to provide reciprocal investment. Unfortunately, his popularity was limited at the time, and he couldn't raise money at all, so he could only passively give up. In the past few years, Ang Lee's "Pushing Hand" has made a big splash. "China Film" frequently urged him to strike while the iron is hot. He has a complete script of "The Banquet" in his hand, but because he has encountered soft nails before, he once lacked confidence. However, "China Film" is no longer the same for Ang Lee. Not only is it willing to invest in new films, but it also gives him complete trust and authorization, allowing him to do whatever he wants. Ang Lee reworked the script, invited gays to serve as consultants, and rewrote the slightly blunt plot, and finally achieved a new work that amazed the film critics.
"Happy Banquet" describes Gao Weitong (Zhao Wenxuan), who works in Manhattan, New York, and earns high profits by investing in real estate. He lives with his boyfriend, Mitchell Lichtenstein, who is a physical therapist, for five years. His parents (Lang Xiong, Gui Yalei), ignorant of his son's sexuality, blindly made blind dates for him. In order to settle things once and for all, Wei Tong, at Simon's suggestion, fakes marriage with Gu Weiwei (Jin Sumei), a painter and female tenant from Shanghai. Originally wanted to get what they needed (Wei Tong was no longer forced to marry, Wei Wei got a green card), but unexpectedly the parents of the Gao family went to the United States specially for this purpose. As the "hostess", Wei Wei had to live in Wei Tong's house. Simon, who was replaced, was the landlord.
Wei Wei fell in love with Wei Tong. On the wedding night, the two had a relationship after getting drunk. Wei Wei was pregnant because of this. After learning about it, Simon was furious and lost his temper in front of everyone. After the conflict, Gao's father suffered a minor stroke and was admitted to the hospital. Weitong confessed to his mother that he had a relationship with Simon and cherished this relationship. Gao's mother reluctantly accepted it, but asked her son not to tell his father. Gao’s father was discharged from the hospital, and Simon accompanied him for walks and rehab. One day, Gao’s father handed him a birthday red envelope and said in English: “I listen, I see, I understand. Wei Tong is my son, so you are also mine. Son." The two elders set out on their way home. Although they witnessed the wedding of their only son, they also learned another "fact" that could not be changed, and left with a happy and complicated mood.
The protagonists of "Pushing Hands" and "The Banquet" are both Chinese-Americans, one is a Chinese son who married an American woman, and the other is a Taiwanese son who lives with an American man. All people are burdened with the incomprehensible "son burden" in Western society, family ethics and filial piety responsibilities that cannot be abandoned. Parents are symbols of traditional culture in the film. The son of "Push Hand" suffers from the estrangement between his father and his wife; First, they comforted with patience and satisfied their expectations with white lies... until they were exhausted and unable to bear it, they left the mess and escaped alone. It is irresponsible to say, but it is also because of "responsibility" that so much hardship and trouble have arisen.
In an interview, Ang Lee said that the characters interpreted by Lang Xiong in "Pushing Hands" and "The Banquet" all have shadows of his own father, such as: getting up in the morning and walking quickly, loving watching Chinese drama videos, and writing calligraphy in the heat. In the early morning of the wedding banquet, the son brought up the memory of playing on his father's stomach when he was a child, which is also a portrayal of Ang Lee's childhood. Through the film, you can feel Ang Lee's complex emotions and profound understanding of Chinese-style families. The warm love, deep care, and full of expectations are behind the heavy pressure of "not letting your parents down". Spirit is like a shadow. As Ang Lee said: "The greatest joy of a movie is to be able to think wildly, and then implement it, and gain resonance." Reality can truly move the audience.
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