Coming Home Again Chang Rae Lee Analysis
Wayne Wang'south Coming Dwelling Over again is a heartfelt story of a first generation Korean-American grieving as he takes care of his mother as she dies of cancer. The picture show is at present screening in virtual cinemas in the US, and tickets can be purchased here.
Food is the language of love and care in Wayne Wang's Coming Home Again. Change-rae (Justin Chon), a first generation Korean-American, leaves his Wall Street job to render habitation to San Francisco to care for his female parent (Jackie Chung), who is dying of cancer. Set mostly over the course of New Year's Eve, the film follows Chang-rae as he advisedly and meticulously prepares an impressive traditional Korean New year's Eve dinner, using his mother's recipes. In flashbacks, nosotros see his female parent didactics him to cook, and the memories of her warmth and affection that he associates with food.
Based on an autobiographical story in The New Yorker past Chang-rae Lee, Coming Dwelling house Again is a quiet, slow burn of a picture; I often wondered whether the source material was also sparse to fill a feature runtime. Merely the more fourth dimension you spend inside the gorgeous but white and barren Nob Hill dwelling house of Chang-rae's parents, the more you feel the altitude between everyone in the family, and the burden of expectations. There's something to be said for watching only how much time, care, and effort Chang-rae puts into cooking a dinner for his female parent, to evidence her his love, even when she's past the signal of existence able to swallow it — her stage iv stomach cancer has meant she hasn't eaten for weeks.
The emptiness of the walls, which other flush families would have filled with fine art and family photos, hints at the disconnect between the family members. Was this so-called abode ever really a dwelling house for any of them? Nosotros learn that Chang-rae spent much of his childhood away from hither, as he was sent off to Exeter, a prestigious boarding school. Meanwhile, his sister (Christina July Kim), who arrives like a storm with strong opinions about her mother's treatment, we learn, hasn't fifty-fifty been abode to visit in 15 years. Throughout, you lot sense the family that could accept been that wasn't, and Chang-rae's conclusion to drop his chore and girlfriend for his mother seems very much in pursuit of those 'what-if's, the chance to get to know his mother in a way that was denied him as a kid.
Wang's focus on the business firm that Chang-rae and his sis left behind as presently as they could, and that has entrapped his mother, is almost gothic, except that everything about is pale: white walls, white light, pastel-coloured curtains. The firm is Chang-rae'south mother's domain, though she never got to make it truly her ain with decorations. Nosotros sense that the claustrophobia of the constantly closed curtains is indicative of most of her life experience. Sometimes, though, this can be overwrought, similar the way Wang returns to the crumbling paint — the imperfections on the surface of a beautiful home — that Chang-rae tries and fails to fully fix.
The film's most heartbreaking scene takes place at dinner on New year's Eve, where the family unit has gathered, dressed to the nines, to gloat. Chang-rae's mother is unable to swallow the food, which causes him to throw a temper tantrum, passive aggressively suggesting that she'south faking her approving of his cooking. The scene plays out in medium shots, first on Chang-rae's mother, who doesn't know how to show how much she appreciates her son's labours even if she can't enjoy them herself, and so on Chang-rae. Chang-rae'south father and sis are both at the table but they aren't seen, physically boxed out of the lives of mother and son.
It reminded me of Carol Nguyen'south No Crying at the Dinner Table, which used similar techniques — including showing each member of a family solitary in unlike parts of the house — to show the emotional distance betwixt them. Indeed, I establish myself thinking nigh both No Crying at the Dinner Tabular array and Mina Shum's Meditation Park a lot during Coming Home Over again, as all three films deal with familial distance, the difficulty of the clearing experience for immigrant mothers, and what that means for their relationship to their children.
Both Chinese-Canadian immigrant Maria in Meditation Park and Chang-rae's mom feel displaced in a country where they aren't comfortable in the language; they've also both spent their lives caring for an indifferent husband who may be cheating on them. Meditation Park is a joyful film because Maria has the hazard to find herself and separate from her husband's emotional needs; Chang-rae's mother'southward illness denies her that opportunity. Whereas Meditation Park and No Crying at the Dinner Tabular array offered the possibility for intergenerational healing, the beginning of the story rather than the end, Coming Home Again deals with the murkier ground of what happens if you lot don't get a second chance.
And so Coming Home Again leaves us with an unresolved catastrophe, fifty-fifty as nosotros learn more near the often unspoken bond betwixt mother and son, forged somewhat in retaliation against the begetter. The empty spaces in Coming Home Over again are purposeful, but I longed for the more complex worlds of Meditation Park and No Crying at the Dinner Table, where the characters get the opportunity to come into themselves, and we get to know them, too. As well often, Wang keeps usa at the same remove from his characters as they feel from each other.
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Source: https://seventh-row.com/2020/10/23/review-coming-home-again-wayne-wang/
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