What Internal Factors Was the Narrator of Coming Home Again
A knife slices through a short rib in the opening frames of "Coming Home Once more," a subdued gut-punch from director Wayne Wang ("The Joy Luck Club") that adapts a personal essay by Korean-American author Chang-rae Lee. Delicate and precise, like the flick itself, the cut doesn't separate the flesh from the os completely. The goal is for the richness of the latter to impregnate the marinated meat in a dish known as kalbi.
The culinary analogy, referencing an inextricable bond, rests at the center of this drama where a son puts his career on agree to look after his female parent, who is suffering from concluding stomach cancer. Now the primary flagman, Chang-rae (Justin Chon), a writer who had a job in New York and is back in San Francisco, quietly moves through the day disposed to his frail Mom (Jackie Chung). A drab mood coats the house, every bit if the air of pain was trapped between its walls and no window had been opened to let it flow in months.
Their female parent-son bond, fractured and mended over the years, has at present reached its final course. One in which, ideally, time serves for them to cherish each other's presence rather than reproaching past mistakes. But human as humans are, that's easier in thought than in exercise. Even as Mom'due south cocky-sufficiency decreases by the mean solar day, arguments flare between her and Chang-rae over his instinct to help her and her fight to retain some autonomy. Other times the conflict stems from her openness to religious consolation and his distaste for it.
In Wang, a key figure in the history of Asian-American movie theater par excellence, Lee'south words found the ideal interpreter. The director is deliberately austere in his choices, from the sparse spaces with muted colors to the absence of music except in instances when it'due south diegetic and tied to a plot point involving Chang-rae's male parent (John Lie). Rarely does the camera step into the room where Mom stays, instead it witnesses from outside the converted family unit room as some of the more charged conversations unfold inaudible to u.s.. Chang-rae'south narration acts as the audience's entryway.
Flashbacks to the early days of the illness and Chang-rae'due south homecoming are painted with warmer light. Undoubtedly unproblematic, Wang and cinematographer Richard Wong'south lucent distinction between a luminous recent past and the stark present still intensifies the realization that things will never exist the aforementioned. In those memories, Chang-rae and Mom grapple with the invisible barriers he put into place to continue her away from his American life. Under the strenuous circumstances, nutrient becomes Chang-rae's bonding agent. The deed of preparing labor-intensive delicacies to delight the others is likewise a tribute to her legacy, to what volition endure.
Chon, a sensitive director in his own right behind features like "Gook" and "Ms. Purple," is in optimal acting shape. Chang-rae is falling fast into a mental abyss; his emotions are in disarray. Impeccably, Chon plays him as a man trying to contain that storm that brews within. Information technology's merely in the final stages of the heartbreaking ordeal that Chang-rae's beliefs, mourning while his female parent is nevertheless alive, and the actor lose touch with picture show'southward understated grace. But fifty-fifty those small narrative diversions feel somewhat justified if not exactly subtle.
Equally great as Chon is on his own, including a moving and tonally intricate scene where Chang-rae meets an onetime friend, the movie is a two-hander. A devastating Chung dignifies a mother in concrete agony, just who withal questions herself and those around her. Hers is a double performance, i staring at the end of life and another, while still more lucid, taking stock of what she congenital in information technology and her shortcoming while doing information technology. Each confrontation with Chon's character is utterly cathartic.
"My job is to be your son," an angry Chang-rae tells her when she questions his decision to fix aside his profession to come treat her. There are also tender exchanges of a child meeting his parent as an individual who had a life before being responsible for another person'southward survival. Through all of these glimpses of a human relationship trampled and perchance accelerated by affliction, the constant is an ambiguity about every decision that brought them here and the unspoken resentment that has to be relieved now or never.
"Coming Home Again" doesn't sanctify the prototype of the mother, but instead aims to truly capture the full-bodied personhood of the woman Lee put on the page. Among the trauma that the co-leads undergo, Wang examines the rips and repairs in the connecting tissue between the states and the people who, through their action or inaction, mold united states into who we are.
Now bachelor in virtual and select cinemas
Carlos Aguilar
Originally from Mexico City, Carlos Aguilar was called as ane of 6 young flick critics to partake in the first Roger Ebert Fellowship organized by RogerEbert.com, the Sundance Institute and Indiewire in 2014.
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Coming Home Again (2020)
86 minutes
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Source: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/coming-home-again-movie-review-2020
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