Part of the Picture: From a Distance

FROM A DISTANCE

NOV 29, 2008 – WAYNE WANG IS A CHINESE-AMERICAN FILMMAKER, and his A Thousand Years of Good Prayers unfolds in English, Mandarin and Persian, but his concerns – as the cliché goes, and as the festival press releases duly note – are universal. Mr. Shi (Henry O) boards the flight from Beijing to Anytown, USA, and when he lands in America, his daughter (Yilan, played by Faye Yu) isn’t quite sure how to greet him. “Pa,” she calls out from a side, as her pa ambles out to the waiting area. He doesn’t hear her. You’d think, even if she doesn’t squeal and throw herself into his frail arms, she’d at least holler louder, or wave her hand, or do something to catch his attention. But there it is again, that muted, shy, distant cry. “Pa.” It’s as if she will keep at it from the sidelines till fate or some other mechanism drives him to her vicinity.

Eventually, Mr. Shi notices the daughter he’s flown thousands of miles to see, and everything thus far – the curious passivity in the daughter’s acknowledgement of her father’s arrival, the gently undemonstrative way the father appraises his daughter – points to their lack of communicativeness, their lack of comfort, even, with one another. They appear to be separated as much by genes as by geography. And gradually, the differences between father and daughter, between East and West, between communist and capitalist, and between older generation and younger begin to occupy centrestage. Yilan is estranged from her husband, a fate Mr. Shi cannot begin to contemplate, as he was with his wife till the day she died. Mr. Shi wants to talk, to communicate, but Yilan, like most young people, is wary about opening up to someone older, someone who’s likely to care too much, and worst of all, someone who’s most certainly going to chip in with well-meaning advice.

And so they fill the silence that hangs between them with domestic rituals. He cooks for her elaborate dinners and insists that she eat more. She suggests that he use his time better by taking a tour or two. And when these rituals turn rote, Yilan stops coming home altogether. She says she’s out with a friend, but when she leaves a message for her father, on the answering machine, that she will be staying the night, the possibility arises that this is more than just a friend – and indeed, he turns out to be a Russian boyfriend (named Boris, naturally, and played by Pasha Lychnikoff; that this boyfriend is a married man is only more grist for the cross-cultural, cross-generational mill). Mr. Shi, meanwhile, strikes up a friendship with an Iranian woman (Madame, played by Vida Ghahremani) he encounters on a park bench.

Madame says she loves America and that she hates Iran. Mr. Shi doesn’t share that particular sentiment of hers, but he’s able to relate to her halting English. Without speaking much, they convey, very easily, their thoughts to one another, with much greater ease than Mr. Shi and Yilan communicate. Is it because they are both foreigners? Or is it because they are both parents from older, more traditional societies who find it strange that their offspring lead lives so different from the ones they led, opting for cold individuality over warm community? But perhaps Yilan, too, is on to something when she confesses to her father that she’s more comfortable with English than Chinese, and it isn’t therefore easy for her to open up about her emotions in her native language.

But if Yilan remains stubbornly closed to telling her father what she’s thinking and feeling – at least for a while; the latter segment of the film is all about a no-holds-barred bout of recriminations flung across the room from father to daughter, and from daughter back to father – she does remain open to granting him a sliver of space in her life. In the film’s most moving scene, Yilan comes home one evening, from a long day at work, and she frowns when she stops at her door, the hitherto white door to her apartment which is now decorated with a Chinese fan. Yilan recognises her father’s handiwork, and in a fit of pique, she removes the artifact as she walks inside. An instant later, however, her hand crawls out and reinstates the fan to its former place of pride. She’s been alone, in every sense, for far too long to calmly accept someone trying to rearrange her life, but given a second to think about it, she realises it’s just a door, and it’s just a fan.

Copyright ©2008 The New Indian Express. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Posted in: Cinema: Foreign