In Continuum.

Getting Home

When it comes to watching movies, I've restricted myself to Hollywood files for the majority of my movie-watching career of sorts. One reason is because they are just easier to find in rental stores. Two, they are usually more fitting to my taste in movies. Three, I didn't like the idea of reading subtitles while watching a movie - like the French or the Italian ones. Lastly, most mainstream Asian films that I have watched, never really lived up to the expectations - save for a few like Infernal Affairs and the likes.

But that changed drastically in the period of time after my army days, when I started renting art house films and movies from the European cinema. A great stash of films have been stored away due to my ignorance, and I hated myself - while watching Downfall - what an idiot I was to miss all these great movies from that side of the Atlantic. Eventually, my taste for movies branched out to different languages and different styles of film-making, in the hopes of finding something rare and worthy of repeated viewing. However, there is certain barrier that I have yet to cross until today, when I was forced to watch a movie from Mainland China, a place with films I have watched just a couple of times. And the last time it happened, it sure wasn't a very good experience to tell you the truth.

I remember as a child, there was a thirst for destruction inside of me. As a young boy, I guess it was only normal to wonder about the insides of a Rubik's Cube or a golf ball. A carefully constructed Lego model has to be torn down somehow, and everything just looked better in pieces rather than a whole. I remember the tower of Lego bricks my uncle built when he stayed with my grandmother in Taiwan, the one that took him months to build. My cousins and I were there as kids, and the tower of Lego bricks overshadowing our tiny bodies was begging for us to tear it down somehow. Besides, my cousin had a Godzilla action figure in his backpack, which acted as the perfect weapon of mass destruction.

So with the Godzilla in hand and my cousin imitating the ferocious roar of the Japanese monster, he dashed towards the tower and brought the months of work down within the matter of seconds. It came crashing down, breaking into a dozen pieces, and in the middle of the pile of bricks stood the three of us, dancing around in our field of victory and triumph. That happiness and excitement was later overwhelmed by the guilt, when my uncle crashed down from upstairs and stared at his months of hard work in momentary silence. That was soon followed by a great and sustained scream, with his infuriated eyes bearing into ours. I still have that guilt, till this day. But we couldn't be blamed, because the Godzilla monster movies were so popular at that time.

Japanese have a liking for destruction it seems. They like to see their capital being destroyed over and over again. Tokyo must have been invaded by giant radioactive monsters a dozen times, and you start to wonder why Tokyo is always the target of these monsters, and what are their motives other than blowing away buildings and killing innocent Tokyo citizens. I guess the film makers just wanted to make money out of the man in his rubber monster suit and the expensive model Tokyo. His dreams sure was worth it, and it spun off a bunch of remakes even in other countries - like China.

I saw this version of Godzilla made in China, and it was probably the worst Godzilla film I have ever seen. Somehow, the monster's eyes were humongous, like the eyes of an anime character of sorts. It was way too stiff and looked too cute, and fighting against the other monsters, it looked like a giant baby bear lost in the woods. In a scene when Godzilla charges up its power to spit fire at its enemy, one of its scales at the back could be seen dropping off the rubber costume. I remember as a child, telling my mother just how bad the film making was. It doesn't take an adult to know that it was probably a new low in the world of films, really.

Long story short, I never had a good impression of films from China. That impression is further supported by just how much pirated films come from that country. I have grown up, and my mentality matured over the years. However, the fact that I wouldn't hunt for a film from China remains, because not a lot of them actually reach the shores of Singapore in the first place. I remain oblivious to the films that they make, until tonight when I was forced to prepare notes for the project meeting tomorrow, regarding the film we are supposed to based our presentation on.

The film is called "Going Home", and it is a movie introduced by Joyce to the rest of the group. Let's face it, the cover of the CD did not look appealing at all. With the old man walking next to a giant wheel of a tractor, it looked more like a CD to promote communism or something like that. However, I was pounding my fists on my temples and cursing myself for being such a stereotypical asshole all over again. Because it wasn't just a good film, it was a great film. It had its moments of laughter and cries, of emotions and sadness, that it was just a great movie to sit through for the full hundred minutes.

The story tells of an old farmer and the friendship he has with his buddy throughout the film - or rather, his dead buddy. After spending a night drinking with one another, his friend made a comment that if the farmer were to die now, he'd carry him on his back all the way back to his home town. However, his friend actually died after making the comment that moved him. Thus, he embarks on a journey to carry the corpse of his dead friend all the way from the city to where his friend lives. Along the journey, he encounters every kind of obstacles imaginable. From bus-robbing bandits, to a run away tractor wheel with his dead friend strapped in it, to the police at the barber shop who almost found out about his dead friend, to the landslide at the very end of the movie. Despite all those, the farmer overcame every single obstacle to fulfill that promise he made to a friend, all the while trying to find different ways to transport himself and the dead body from places to places. I won't even need to go into details, and you'd be able to imagine the hilarious situations he encounters in the movie, just by trying to convince the living that his friend is merely a drunkard, paralyzed, and at one point - a scarecrow.

On the surface, it is easy to dismiss the film as a comedy. After all, it was released at the beginning of this year during the Chinese New Year holidays. However, underneath the funny situations that the farmer involves himself in, and the hilarious conversations that he has with the people that aided or went against him on the way, is a story more moving than most Hollywood films out there in the theaters today. This is a story about pure friendship, about loyalty, and about a dream or idea that we are all chasing for in life - always trying to fulfill something intangible, something always so out of reach. All of those, mingled amidst the humor and the tears to evoke a great sense of hope and warmth inside the viewers' hearts.

From the technical aspect of the film, we can clearly see the amount of heart that went into the scripting as well as the cinematography. In terms of the screenplay, the screenwriters very successfully crammed in a dozen very interesting characters to interact with the protagonist. And unlike a lot of films out there, the existence of multiple characters never compromised each other before, and always keeping the viewers interested in what they have to say or do. With every new character the protagonist meets - be it bandits or a young man riding his motorcycle to Tibet - the audience turn their attention into the next character and the director never lets you go. Every character is interesting, and all of them provides either the comic humor that is in abundance in the film, or words of inspiration for the protagonist to push on with his journey.

In terms of the cinematography, the director very successfully portrayed the distance the protagonist had to cover, by using long shots in a long of scenes, with the character being the size of an ant in the seamless field of grass, or roads leading far into the horizon and beyond. The director very effectively used the camera work to give the viewers a sense of hopelessness of sorts, or vastness, and difficulty that the character has to go through in order to fulfill his promise. And I think that is - though very subtle - a breath of fresh air to the normal kind of camera work that is abundant in Asian cinema.

I shall not spoil the film for anybody, but the ending is not going to be a very happy one - at least to me, it wasn't. The film reflected more than just the friendship and loyalty of a friend to another, but also the combined hopes and dreams of the workers in China. Throughout the film, we see a lot of establishing shots with peasants working in the fields, or just sitting on the side of the road and idling away. Some of them even attempted to sell their blood for a bit of money to buy food. All of them had a single goal and dream - work as hard as possible just to make it home someday. Some of them makes it, while some of them though. The latter group of people resort to the extremes in order to earn a living, and I think that is the subplot that most people missed while watching the movie. The idea of the protagonist carrying his dead friend home sort of signified the idea of bringing you closer to your dreams, to the light at the end of the tunnel. Somehow, the farmer was not only carrying his dead friend and a promise, but also the hopes and dreams of all the workers in China - which I thought was a brilliant subplot added.

This is a film with a lot of layers, like peeling off an onion. On the surface, you get the jokes and the humor very evidently placed on screen, shown through the dialogues and the actors. On the second level, we see the friendship and the loyalty that shines through all obstacles and difficulties. On an even deeper level, we see the vision of the workers in China as a whole, materialized into a burden on the protagonist's back. Though most of their dreams may be dead, some are still carrying on that dream - that dream to go home eventually, and reunite with their loved ones.

Thanks Joyce, for a great film like this one.