The Farewell (2019)
(film 100 minutes)
Directed by: Lulu Wang
Language: Mandarin, English
Rating: 6/10 | Yaser Tohidi
March 29, 2020
A Chinese-American girl Billi who moved to the US with her family when she was six year old is in the middle of crisis over missing a fellowship. Her grandmother Nai Nai is terminally ill in China. This is kept a secret from her. A wedding for Billi’s cousin is planned just as an excuse for the family to see her one last time. Billi’s uncle and his family who live in Japan bring the Japanese girlfriend of Billi’s cousin as the bride. Billi is banned from joining the family because she is unable to hide her emotions. But she travels anyways and joins the rest of the family and perfectly hides the illness though it is very hard for her to understand why her family does not tell the truth to Nai Nai and how fair that is to keep such a fact from someone.
Even though Nai Nai coughs from time to time, she is cheerful and lively and advices everybody else to have a healthy life. She insists on organizing a big bouquet for the wedding which was not of course part of the plan. She leads the tasks and arranges for a big wedding. Wedding takes place and everybody hides the illness.
The Farewell brings a fine comedy out of cultural differences between east and west. And through that, it frames a bright drama out of the dark tragedy of not letting someone know her illness and the time left for her.
The movie portrays not only the gap between different generations of immigrants but also the adaptations an immigrant do, adaptations which make her everyday more far from its origins. These are all significant sources of alienation. These are Billi’s life. During the trip, she realizes how much she missed China although she is more American now. She finds strong relations with people and space around herself in China although she left there long time ago. However, she becomes the hero of rejoining these differences and proposing a way out. This is pronounced symbolically in her run to the hospital to keep the medical result secret and in the beautiful final of the movie where Billi grunts in the streets of New York the same way Nai Nai was grunting outside her house to get rid of bad toxins when she was doing some meditation/sport.
On the down side, Billi’s aim to become an independent girl is not dramatized and thus seem a bit out of context each time it’s brought up. The Farewell also lacks creating supporting actors. Mother, father, uncle, aunt and the cousin are not built. The movie is just able to create Billi and Nai Nai. So, the feelings of others cannot be communicated with the viewer and the related scenes seem extra and useless. The Farewell’s rhythm sometimes feels lost especially in the middle where the wedding is organized.
Click here for wikipedia page
Seven Samurai (1954)
(207 minutes with intermission)
Directed by: Akira Kurosawa
Language: Japanese
Rating: 10/10 | Yaser Tohidi
March 15, 2020
To defend their village against an imminent attack by bandits, villagers decide to hire samurai. A group of seniors go to the city and luckily find a talented samurai who not only accepts the mission despite the low pay-off but also arranges further search for more samurai. A group of seven forms and enters the village. They plan the defense using also the villagers. Finally, the attack starts and the bandits are faced with strong defense by the village. Samurai and the villagers succeed to kill all the bandits although they loss some lives including four of the samurai.
This is the simple story based upon which Seven Samurai is written. But the movie goes much deeper into the relations and life of villagers and samurai. The movie starts by showing the vulnerability of farmers to the attacks from bandits. They have bad memories of brutalities also from samurai. They have no protection against these. But there might still be some noble samurai, and this forms their only hope for living. In the search for samurai and after having little success initially, they come across a strange scene; a senior samurai, Kambei, dresses up as a monk and shaves his head to save a child from the hands of a kidnapper. He shows a great talent by saving the child with bare hands but above that he proves that noble samurai still exist. Kambei might accept this difficult mission for only a handful of rice every day. Villagers go after him to talk about their problem. There are also two junior samurai amused by Kambei’s talent, one is very descent, Katsushiro, and the other, Kikuchyo, is not. Kambei accepts the mission. He is a wise leader. He starts immediately finding more samurai together with Katsushiro. Kikuchiyo shows interest in following Kambei but he has no idea what for. Therefore, he leaves. Finding one by one talented and noble samurai and looking for the last one, they face gain Kikuchiyo. He is also a good fighter but with no discipline. Even though he is not selected, he follows them. He should have another motivation. Later we find out that he is not born a samurai but in a farmer family and he lost them in an attack by bandits. This makes him enthusiastic for this mission. Because of his background, he builds a good relationship with villagers. During the attack, he shows great bravery although his careless acts sometimes add to the cost of the mission. He dies at the end but not before he kills the head of the bandits. A deeper bond between samurai and villagers, or better to say, another significant rebellion against social traditions and cast definitions happen by love of Katsushiro and the young girl of a villager. She is dressed up as a boy by his father in the fear of samurai. Katsushiro is enjoying the nature around the village when he faces her. He first thinks he is a boy and questions her why she is not practicing with other boys. This first encounter fires a forbidden love between a farmer girl and a samurai that remains till the end and even if they try to keep it hidden, it becomes known to everybody.
Seven Samurai is full of details in setting the interior and exterior locations which camera brings into the picture and the mise en scène utilizes for deepening the story and creating a great movie. Seven Samurai is a drama about teamwork and rejoining of different casts in society when it comes to protecting a good cause.
Click here for wikipedia page
