Film

Last night, Nomadland won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress. It was directed by the Chloé Zhao and stars Frances McDormand. I watched the film earlier this year and thought it was a fine piece of art. It does not surprise me at all that Nomadland won this many accolades. There are already numerous reviews praising the film. So, I will just mention a problem I have with the it. As a film which tries to be a realistic depiction of Americans nomads, i.e., those who are house-less and live in a van while travelling around the country, it has failed to be provocative. It makes you sympathetic for all the predicaments which nomads have to face everyday, while avoiding criticizing anyone for making their life so hard. For example, in one scene, Fern, the nomad played by McDormand, is invited by her sister, who lives in a middle-class suburb, to move in and settle down. Fern says no, and her sister thinks that it is because Fern finds a life on the road is much interesting. For me, that seems to tell the audience “Van-life is really hard but these people choose it themselves. So it is totally fine that we pretend that these people do not exist. Let them suffer.” ...

A Sun/阳光普照 (2019) tells the story a Taiwanese family with two late-teenage sons who are very different but equally troubling for their parents. The film is gut-wrenching. (Tissues are advised for softhearted viewers.) It shows how difficult situations can be for parents whose beloved children did something horrible. In the film, the mom and dad face such problems quite differently. The mom offers carrots – she is forgiving, patient, tolerable and supportive, however bad things are. For her, whatever the boys have done, they are always just her little boys. The dad, on the other hand, give sticks. The motto he tried to drill into heads of his children is “Seize the time and take the direction.” When they failed doing so, he was burnt with rage. Yet, he also made great sacrifice for the boys. These two characters fell way to authentic. You must have must a few parents in real life. ...

Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway (2019) is perhaps one of the absurdest films which I have ever watched. Yet it is also one of funniest films I have watched. The film is absurd for several reasons. First, it looks very much like a low-budget film from the 1970s. So the set and the ascetics looks ridiculously rough. Second, the actors are far from what we are used to see on screens. Third, the acting are horrible by normal standard. Actors play their part with seriousness as if they do not know that they are in a very “bad” bad film. And they either speak English with ludicrous accent, or with an monotonicity as if the film was poorly dubbed. Fourth, the plot does not make any sense and mixes tropes from James Bond, cold-war thriller, Science fiction, romance and Kong-Fu films. I can go on for a while, but you get the idea. ...