American-born Chinese cabdriver Jo (Wood Moy) is searching for more than just two grand in CHAN IS MISSING
CHAN IS MISSING (Wayne Wang, 1982)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
September 9-11
212-660-0312
metrograph.com
Wayne Wang’s debut feature, the 1982 indie landmark Chan Is Missing, opens with a Chinese version of Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock,” but subtitles reveal the Chinese lyrics are all about the bleak economic situation. “Red beans, barbeque sauce, tea leaves, all the prices rise / Encumber the whole family, low salaries are just not enough / Till there is not one drop left in the soy sauce bottle / That’s enough, this price increase has to stop.” That sets the stage for the culture clash at the center of the black-and-white film as Wang focuses on Chinese immigrants and ABCs (American-born Chinese) attempting to establish their own identities in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Jo (Wood Moy) and his nephew, Steve (Marc Hayashi), have pooled together $4,000 to buy their own taxi medallion, but after they give someone cash to process the paperwork, the man, named Chan Hung, disappears, along with their hard-earned money. So uncle and nephew turn into detectives, searching for Chan by tracking down his friends, relatives, and acquaintances, but it seems that no one knows where Chan is — or who he is, as each person shares stories of a very different man. Along the way, there are discussions of Mandarin and Cantonese food, the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan, Communism and new Chinese money, immigration and assimilation, and local politics and “the legal implications of cross-cultural misunderstandings.” A cook in a Samurai Night Fever T-shirt laments having to make another order of sweet and sour pork instead of pursuing aeronautical engineering, which he studied in school back in China with Chan. A man who knows Chan from a cultural center finds newspaper articles in Chan’s jacket about a murder. A distinguished gentleman in a three-piece suit thinks Chan returned to Mainland China, explaining to Jo, who was born in the United States, “Here in America, people treat you like a foreigner. You don’t belong here.” And a teacher at a newcomers language center talks about how immigrants should become Chinese-American, pulling out that most American of desserts, an apple pie, that has been made using Chinese techniques. “This is all too confusing,” Jo says.
It’s no coincidence that the man Jo and Steve are trying to track down is named Chan, a direct reference to Charlie Chan, the Honolulu detective, usually portrayed by non-Asian actors, who was a controversial stereotype in numerous Hollywood movies. The missing character of Chan also represents the Chinese experience in America as a whole, emblematic of the entire community as it sets down roots in San Francisco, having to work menial jobs to get started. “This mystery is appropriately Chinese; what’s not there seems to have just as much meaning as what is there,” Jo says. When we first see Jo, immediately after the opening credits, while the rock-and-roll song is still playing, he is initially obscured by glare on the windshield of the cab he is driving through the streets of Chinatown, the buildings reflected in the glass. He eventually comes into focus, leading viewers on a journey for identity that is still relevant today. Wang, who was born and raised in Hong Kong and was named after John Wayne, made Chan Is Missing for a mere $22,000. He has gone on to make such Chinese-American films as Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart, Eat a Bowl of Tea, and The Joy Luck Club as well as such non-Chinese fare as Smoke, Because of Winn-Dixie, and The Center of the World, his oeuvre echoing how Chinese immigrants try to balance their heritage and the old ways with assimilation. Chan Is Missing is screening September 9-11 at Metrograph in a new 35mm print.
In his first starring role in more than twenty years, Jerry Lewis is superb in the otherwise clichéd and maudlin melodrama Max Rose. Lewis plays the title character, an eighty-seven-year-old former jazz pianist whose just lost his beloved wife of sixty-five years, Eva (Claire Bloom). While dealing with his sudden loneliness, Max finds a small compact that a man named Ben gave to Eva on November 5, 1959, with an inscription declaring his secret love. Max becomes obsessed with finding out who the man is and determining whether his marriage was a fraud. Meanwhile, his granddaughter, Annie (Kerry Bishé), is helping Max through this difficult time, even though her own marriage might be in trouble, and Annie’s father, Max’s son, Christopher (Kevin Pollak), is experiencing his own family dilemmas. Christopher tries to reestablish a relationship with Max, but the father keeps pushing the son away. Writer-director Daniel Noah’s feature-film debut has all the hallmarks of, well, a Hallmark movie of the week, laden with genre clichés that the talented cast fights to rise above. Bishé (Argo, Halt and Catch Fire) is absolutely lovely as Max’s dedicated granddaughter, but Pollak isn’t given enough to do as Max’s beat-upon son. A scene in which Max cavorts with a group of new elderly friends has a bittersweet joy to it, at least partially because all four actors — Lewis, Rance Howard, Lee Weaver, and Mort Sahl — were in their eighties when it was filmed. Dean Stockwell, who recently turned eighty, makes a strange appearance near the end, and Bloom is an octogenarian as well.
“Your eminence, I am not happy,” Guido (Marcello Mastroianni) tells the cardinal (Tito Masini) halfway through Federico Fellini’s self-reflexive masterpiece 8½. “Why should you be happy?” the cardinal responds. “That is not your task in life. Who said we were put on this earth to be happy?” Well, film makes people happy, and it’s because of works such as 8½. Fellini’s Oscar-winning eighth-and-a-half movie is a sensational self-examination of film and fame, a hysterically funny, surreal story of a famous Italian auteur who finds his life and career in need of a major overhaul. Mastroianni is magnificent as Guido Anselmi, a man in a personal and professional crisis who has gone to a healing spa for some much-needed relaxation, but he doesn’t get any as he is continually harassed by producers, screenwriters, would-be actresses, and various other oddball hangers-on. He also has to deal both with his mistress, Carla (Sandra Milo), who is quite a handful, as well as his wife, Luisa (Anouk Aimée), who is losing patience with his lies. Trapped in a strange world of his own creation, Guido has dreams where he flies over claustrophobic traffic and makes out with his dead mother, and his next film involves a spaceship; it doesn’t take a psychiatrist to figure out the many inner demons that are haunting him. Marvelously shot by Gianni Di Venanzo in black-and-white, scored with a vast sense of humor by Nino Rota, and featuring some of the most amazing hats ever seen on film — costume designer Piero Gherardi won an Oscar for all the great dresses and chapeaux — 8½ is an endlessly fascinating and wildly entertaining exploration of the creative process and the bizarre world of filmmaking itself. And after seeing 8½, you’ll appreciate Woody Allen’s 1980 homage, Stardust Memories, a whole lot more. “Weekend Classics” continues September 9-11 with Fellini Satyricon before concluding September 23-25 with City of Women.
I remember the first time I saw the BBC series Ways of Seeing, thoroughly entranced by the host, a curly-haired British art critic with the cutest little lisp of his “R”s who promised that, while looking at European painting in a whole new way, “we shall discover something about ourselves and the situation in which we are living.” Years later, I was distraught when I couldn’t find my paperback copy of the companion book; my wife quickly ordered it and it was soon in my hands, where I devoured every word and image again and again. So I was terrifically excited when I heard about the new documentary The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger, which opens August 31 at Film Forum. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but I came away from the four-part film feeling disappointed and let down; I selfishly wanted only Berger (pronounced with a soft “g”) but instead got too much of his friends and colleagues. And to make matters worse, the directors are too often what Berger tried so hard to avoid being throughout his long, influential career: pretentious. The film begins in winter with “Ways of Listening,” in which director Colin MacCabe focuses on Berger and his longtime friend, Oscar-nominated actress Tilda Swinton, as they talk at Berger’s farm in the small French town of Quincy, where he moved in the 1970s after becoming fed up with England. Filmed in 2010, the segment works best when Berger tells personal stories about his father and war; Swinton listens while peeling apples, the camera on her as much as on him. It occasionally feels as if she can’t decide whether to share Berger or keep him to herself; they already have a special connection, sharing the same birthday, albeit thirty-four years apart. But I wanted to make my own connection with Berger, a down-to-earth intellectual with a lust for life and a wide-ranging legacy, an artist, critic, “radical humanist,” social commentator, political activist, husband, father, farmer, and self-described “revolutionary writer” who prefers to simply be known as a storyteller.