The Wedding Banquet

                                                 The Wedding Banquet by Ang Lee

            In the Wedding Banquet Wai-Tung Gao is a gay Taiwanese man living with his partner Simon in Manhattan. His parents back in Taiwan keep trying to set up Wai-Tung with single women that fit his extremely picky preference. Eventually his partner Simon comes up with the idea to have Wai-Tung marry one of the tenants from the building he owns do his parents will stop meddling with his life. This benefits the girl as well Wei-Wei is a struggling artist from China without a green card and the idea of a fake marriage benefits her just as much as it benefits Wai-Tung and Simon.

            Wai-Tung’s parents fly to Manhattan from Taiwan to hold a wedding for their son with 30,000 dollars, which was a gift from friends and family back home. Wai-Tung’s decision to hold an impromptu courthouse wedding displeases his parents greatly and he allows them to hold a grand wedding banquet as a way to make it up to them. After the wedding banquet Wei-Wei and Wai-Tung have drunken sex and Wei-Wei becomes pregnant because of this. Later After a tense living situation with Simon, Wei-Wei and his parents all living in the same house Wai-Tung explodes in front of everyone and argues with Simon and Wei-Wei.

            After the argument he confesses to his real relationship with Simon to his mother and elsewhere Simon is learning from Wai-Tung’s father that he figured out their relationship on his own. Wai-Tung’s father gives Simon the dowry money that they originally gave Wei-Wei and tells him not to tell anyone. Wei-Wei meanwhile has decided to keep her baby after failing to go to her set appointment at the clinic for an abortion.  Simon, Wai-Tung and Wei-Wei decide to all be involved in raising the child as a seemingly unconventional parental unit.

            Although the Wedding Banquet is considered to be a comedy I believe it is often a more dramatic work at its core. It is a great study into the problems and life of a gay couple struggling to live happily, openly, trying to find tolerance and acceptance from ones own family. This tolerance is humorously obscured to the characters in the film because both the mother and the father each tell Simon and Wai-Tung to not tell the other parent how they have come to accept their son’s gay lifestyle. These scenes were exhilarating because not every family has the love and heart to accept their children over their preconceived notions about sexuality and homosexuality.

The theme of acceptance runs heavily through this movie and I understand that Ang Lee focuses heavily on this theme throughout other movies of his such as Brokeback Mountain and Taking Woodstock. I found this to be my favorite out of the three because of how family and society had not torn Simon and Wai-Tung apart but further reinforced their love and relationship even though the pregnancy of Wei-Wei does make their situation a very strange one. 

Three Colors: Blue

                                         Three Colors: Blue by Krzysztof Kieslowski

            In Blue Julie is traveling with her husband and daughter when they get into an auto accident, which is seemingly caused by a leak in the brake fluids. Both the husband and the daughter are killed in the accident and Julie struggles to go on living life without them. Her husband was a famous composer and she takes everything from their lavish life and abandons it moving from their mansion to a small apartment far away in a city. The only thing she takes from home is a blue chandelier that presumably belonged to her little daughter. She destroys her husband’s last uncompleted work as a way in which to finally sever all ties to her former like and distance herself from her work.

            Later a man named Oliver tries to finish her husband’s last uncompleted work from an extra copy someone sent him anonymously. Julie finds out about this copy of his work around the same time she finds out he had a mistress. She shows the woman compassion when she learns the woman is carrying her husband’s child. In dealing with these issues Julie slowly returns back to the life that she has been running from the whole time. Oliver convinces her to finish her husband’s work on the condition that he not reveal that she is responsible for the completion of the work. The score is played all across Europe during their celebration marking the end of the cold war and after it plays Julie finally cries allowing herself to make peace with the death of her loved ones and to also learn to live a life in which she doesn’t stop living when they died.

            I find that a major theme of Blue is the escape of ones own past. In the face of all the trauma and horror of loosing her loved ones Julie tries to commit suicide but when she could not do that she decided to try and live life in a completely emotionally sealed off manner. That was effectively an attempt to isolate herself from her other human beings, she said how getting connected to people would only lead to more pain and heartbreak. But throughout the movie she realizes that no person living can truly separate themselves completely from other people. If we are alive we are constantly interacting with others and even against our will becoming close to people since forming bonds are completely natural and unavoidable.

            I really enjoyed this film very much, I own it in the criterion collection but I haven’t seen it in years so I felt watching it in class illuminated so much about it. In the introduction where the shot under the car reveals the leaking fluids I had not originally realized that this was supposed to elude the succeeding accident. I also enjoy how the entire beginning was silent and the whole introduction to the story was told simply with images. The story overall is a powerful one and it tells a wonderful story about overcoming the horrible trauma that can destroy any person’s world so suddenly. 

Cinema Paradiso

                                  Cinema Paradiso by Giuseppe Tornatore

Cinema Paradiso tells the story of Salvatore a famous Italian director who comes to learn that Alfredo an old friend and projectionist from back home has died.  He is unsure of whether he should return home for the funeral, as he hasn’t been home in over 30 years. Over the course of the night he reminisces over his childhood and how Alfredo had shaped him from the young unruly boy into the man he is today. Salvatore returns home to attend the funeral and he realized why Alfredo swore him years ago to leave home and never return. His hometown held nothing for him there it would only hold him back from his true potential as a filmmaker.

While home Alfredo sees many people from his childhood who have spent their whole lives in town never leaving which is when he realized Alfredo wished him to avoid this fate, which was also Alfredo’s fate as well. Alfredo’s widow gives Salvatore a film reel after the funeral, which he plays when he gets back to Rome. The film reel is a collection of all the romantic scenes, which were cut out of films because of the religious censor of a local priest. Watching this film along with his visit helps him make peace with his past and hopefully makes him a better person.

After watching the film I have come to understand that the main themes of Cinema Paradiso deal with nostalgia of the past and also a celebration of film and film history. The majority of the film takes place as a dream sequence in which he reminisces on how one man had a major influence in his life.  These dreams are reflections into his past but also onto the attitude in which we view the past in a more positive light over time. Events that had been particularly painful seem to be brushed quickly by other moments of beauty and pleasure.

The second theme is about film and film history. The film also works as a celebration to the power and wonder of films. Through his yearning for watching films as a child through his time as a projectionist at Cinema Paradiso many great films are shows to audiences and the wonder and magic is shown to us through the joy and entertainment created by the audience.

I really appreciated this film because I am always a fan of movies that deal with movies and I really love how they showed Salvatore’s job as projectionist because the inner working of a movie theater have always seemed mysterious and at the same time magical. The idea of him finding a father figure was very emotional to me as I had a similar upbringing as Salvatore so I found the film to be a quite emotional experience that overall was extremely rewarding.