!WARNING: SPOILERS!
After This Our Exile won numerous film awards, including Best Film at both the Golden Horse and Hong Kong film awards in 2006. It is a touching, often tragic film. A family falls apart when a father indulges his character flaws at the cost of his family. He gambles and borrows, losing money and failing to repay his debts.
His wife (Lin) realises he won't change his ways change and decides to leave him. Their poor young son is caught in the middle. He spots her attempt to leave the first time around, but is blamed when she gets away the next time around. Referred to as "Boy" (at least in the English translations), Lin abandons him too. Her role is simplified, no doubt as a way to focus on the father and son's relationship.
Boy misses her and experiences conflicting feelings of loyalty. However his Dad's influence prevails, and he soon adopts his dad's negative view about his mom. Only when it is too late does he realise his dad is the real bad apple of the family. His father, impulsive and unwilling to work, forces the boy to steal for money. At this point the boy gets caught and thrown into a correctional facility.
FAfter This Our Exile is therefore a cautionary morality tale. Now that China has an up and coming middle class, the film is perhaps saying don't throw away your parental responsibilities to chase your dreams.
While I found the film genuinely affecting, I lament the missed opportunity to realise the potential in the mother's role. Her character is at first wonderfully interesting, full of passionate restraint as she schemes to escape a dead end life. Sadly this is marred by the father's view of her as merely an unfaithful woman, which Boy believes and is reinforced when she exchanges parental love for a kind of naive yet inconsequential sentimentality about Boy. And so she finally transforms into yet another stereotype, of the lover turned domesticated wife. For someone so strong-willed this doesn't make a lot of sense.
Shing, the dad, is portrayed as a weak-willed character. He is all the more dangerous for having once possessed a dream of success that may have been within reach had he worked at it. He doesn't want to lose face completely and looks for easy solutions. However the interest of the tragic story is based on more than character flaws. A central part of the plot revolves around the particular way in which gender roles play out in the narrative.
The Chinese version of the title is 父子, which literally means "father son". We should therefore be under no illusion that Shing and Boy are the central characters in this story. The moral seems to be that only a father can give his son the right education in life, and when he fails to do so, tragedy will follow.
It is worth remembering that Chinese culture is largely paternalistic, so this moral injunction isn't a surprise to Chinese audiences, nor even the strong filial loyalty, as filial piety is an essential part of Confucian teaching. However to Western audiences such a paternalistic morality is more likely to meet with disapproval as they would expect a more equal, nuanced message about gender roles, such as I have expressed above. However it is precisely the strict partitioning of roles that proves instructive about the forces that drive the story.
Lin, the mother, runs away but fails (the first time) due to a premonition the boy has. In a powerful and dramatic early scene Shing apprehends her and takes her home in a fury. He treats her badly in what appears to be a domestic pattern of abuse, he also ignores her accusations about his bad habits. Instead he becomes very emotional - almost histrionic (a character trait that, in the West at least, has a long and unhappy association with women).
On the other hand Lin keeps her cool and gets to the point, even if it takes her a while to open up. It is a very powerful scene. Shing remains in denial at first, but eventually succumbs to the truth. It appears to be out of deep love, but we soon learn that he also needs Lin to help him pay his debts. She is the provider. His love has a dark side.
She, on the other hand, manages to win back his trust to win herself time. He clearly believes in his own masculinity, as they make love that same night in a scene that gives an insight to Lin's precarious position. She still finds him attractive enough to give in to their passion, but the viewer is aware that she may have something up her sleeve and probably needs to keep him on her side.
It is this 'cunning' element of her character that is juxtaposed with his more straightforward bad character. The question is hinted, if not exactly asked: is it worse to be honest and emotional, yet a hopeless case, or more capable but a bit cunning and hypocritical? Given the way things play out, it is clear that Shing's character is judged in the negative. His is a bad sort who fails his own son in the worst kind of way. But what of Lin? Could she have saved them by staying on?
I think the answer is no, she was always more ambitious, and the context is about the father-son relationship being the backbone of society. However this also shows the way in which Lin's character is problematic. She has to leave because by staying and saving her family she would be fulfilling the father's role. She would become the backbone that rises through the slackness of her husband's lack of moral fibre. And this will not do. She can't be the man, she can't be the one to wear the trousers. Instead, it is better that she disown her family in a double negative, moving from female victim to active seeker of happiness in the arms of another man who happens to be rich and successful - even if it makes her look flighty. She is not even evil, incapable of real evil - just inconsequential.
Given the film's ending it is probably safe to assume that the film doesn't directly acknowledge society's role in Lin's decision. Or to put it differently, it doesn't acknowledge that her choices are by default highly constrained. It's a lose-lose situation, morally speaking, so she might as well choose the option in which she gains something.
Although she does not want to cut herself off from Boy completely, she acts in her own interest for the new baby, and the narrative turns her parental care into distracted sentimentality. She completes a double negative leaving Shing and Boy to their circle of masculinity while she pursues a new motherhood. She is diminished by being seen as a giver of children, not a giver of souls, which is the role demanded from Shing.
It is perhaps slightly unfair to suggest that the film intentionally sets out to paint Lin as mere stereotype. After all, it was meant to be about the father and the son. But as pointed out, the film does not acknowledge the society's influence in her options. The film's limited view of gender roles has repercussions when, ultimately, the father fails to be a father - to be a man of substance - and we are left to wonder whether his excessive masculine posturing isn't partly responsible for his failure in fatherhood.
Boy, then, is the only character left to fulfil the expectation of being a man, and, being a boy, he cannot do so. It is only at the end of the film, once he has grown up, that he sets out to right those wrongs. He shows some of the backbone that both his parents lacked.
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