As a young man prepares a meal for his ailing mother, unresolved family
issues bubble to the surface.
Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Wayne Wang
Starring: Justin Chon, Jackie Chung, John Lie, Christina July
Kim
One of the most memorable sequences from Bob Fosse's Lenny Bruce biopic
Lenny sees Dustin Hoffman recreate a routine in which the
comic railed against how the media portrayed Jackie Kennedy's immediate
reaction to her husband taking a bullet to the head in Dallas. Footage of
the event shows the First Lady leaning over JFK, and the media chose to
portray this action as Jackie shielding her stricken husband from further
shots. Maybe that's the case, but as Bruce argues, it's far more likely she
was simply ducking for cover to avoid being shot herself. And that's a
perfectly fine, instinctual reaction. By framing the First Lady as hero,
Bruce contended, the media was setting impossible standards for the public
to live up to.
Movies tend to do this too, especially American movies, whether products of
Hollywood or the indie sphere. Protagonists are too often aspirational
rather than relatable, heroic rather than human. Life isn't that simple. In
reality we rarely act in the moment how we'd like to on reflection.
Wayne Wang understands this. In his new film,
Coming Home Again - co-written with novelist
Chang-rae Lee and based on the latter's 1995 New Yorker essay - a
twentysomething Korean-American man struggles to find a way to say goodbye
to his cancer-stricken mother. Where most American movies would see such a
protagonist combat his demons and find the strength to open up to his Mom
before her passing, most likely in a teary "Oscar moment" speech", Wang
recognises that life simply doesn't play out that way.
"She's got cancer!" is the matter of fact answer Changrae (Justin Chon) gives to an old childhood acquaintance he bumps into on the street
following a throwaway enquiry about the state of his mother. Changrae
immediately apologises for making his old friend uncomfortable, but as he
says himself, there's really no sugar-coating such a fact. Mom (Jackie Chung) has stage four stomach cancer, a specifically cruel affliction as she can
no longer enjoy food, the preparation of which was her one great
hobby.
Quitting his job in New York, Changrae has returned to his San Francisco
home to help look after his mother in her final weeks. As it's New Years
Eve, Changrae decides the greatest gesture he can make to his mother is to
prepare the meal she often gifted him as a child - 'kalbi', beef cut in thin
slices while remaining attached to the bone, "to absorb its goodness." The
irony of preparing food for a woman who can no longer swallow solids
seemingly escapes Changrae as he loses himself in the meal-making while his
sister (Christina July Kim) and father (John Lie) bicker over
his mother's wishes to come off Chemo treatment.
As the day plays out and the beef slowly crispens, Wang employs a flashback
structure that sees the adult Changrae taking the place of his naive
childhood self in moments he originally wasn't paying attention to, but
which now clearly signal how unhappy his mother was in her marriage, which
may have been dogged by his father's affair with a younger woman. There are
recalled moments of minor cruelty, like Changrae calling his mother lazy for
asking him to call the bank, paranoid that they won't understand her Korean
accent. These regrets clearly play out in Changrae's mind, but he can't find
the courage to bring them up in the present.
Conversely, his mother, now with nothing left to lose, is happy to raise
her own regrets, particularly about sending her son to a boarding school as
a boy. When asked why she did so if it went against her wishes, she replies
bluntly "I didn't know I was going to die then."
The halls of the San Francisco home Wang's film plays out in are filled
with the must of years of passive aggression. Rooms are exited at the point
when an argument is just about to break out. Conversations are held out of
earshot of other family members. Old wounds are left to fester, peeling like
the paint on the apartment's walls. Can a well-prepared meal fix all this?
Unlikely, but it's all Chang-rae can muster (and to be fair, if any meal has
such powers, it's this one - prepared by acclaimed chef Corey Lee, it will
have you rushing to your nearest Korean restaurant).
Essentially a chamber piece, Wang confines most of his inaction to the
interiors of the family home. More intimate moments - such as Changrae
cleaning up his mother's vomit or refilling the bags of slop that now
constitute her food intake - are filmed at a distance. The effect on the
viewer is of being in the shoes of a door to door salesman invited into an
uncomfortable scenario and left to hover awkwardly in doorways and on
couches. In the climactic scenario, Wang and editors Ashley Pagan and
Deidre Slevin refuse to cut to wide angles, holding on the faces of
Changrae and his mother as the latter attempts to convince her son that
despite her inability to enjoy the food he's lovingly prepared, she's proud
of him nonetheless. You may find yourself shuffling uncomfortably in your
own seat, such is the tension.
Despite the specificity of its Korean-American setting,
Coming Home Again should connect with global audiences,
particularly in Northern Europe, where we similarly struggle to tell our
loved ones how important they are to us, and like Changrae here, we need the
social lubrication of alcohol to open up. Audiences in more extroverted
cultures may view Wang's film as a tragedy, and I guess it is in its own
way. But it's an honest examination of how families cope with impending
loss, one that astutely avoids proselytising or a lecturing tone. It's all
the more comforting for it.
Coming Home Again is in US
cinemas and virtual cinemas now. A UK/ROI release has yet to be
announced.
