Avid readers of my reviews [I suspect that I have an immense number of strangely unvocal followers due to my one review to date…] may recall that I loved A Time to Live and a Time to Die and wasn’t all too wild about Dust in the Wind. A Summer at Grandpa’s, at least for now, falls decidedly between the two. While it doesn’t have nearly the effect on me that A Time to Live and a Time to Die did, it’s a minor masterpiece in its own right.
In terms of general plot, it follows much the same path as A Time to Live and a Time to Die did: a young person grows and matures due to external forces, from globalization to the simple strifes of maturity that life presents. I think that A Time to Live is the more effective film, mostly due to the fact that we see almost all of Hou’s childhood life mapped out. Here, well…it’s just a summer. I suppose it’s more a personal thing than anything else: films that chart out a life tend to be more effective than those that only do it for a small period of time. In A Time to Live, Hou lives his life and, after a number of years, an event such as the death of his father happens, and it’s absolutely devastating, because so much of his life has built up to that moment. There’s something to be said for poignancy of rabid change, but it doesn’t hit me quite as much.
But all that’s just why I prefer A Time to Live and a Time to Die. As I already said, A Summer at Grandpa’s is its own minor masterpiece. In the opening, we have what seems to be somewhat random footage: we see a high school graduate giving a speech about how heavy her heart is to be moving on. At least, it would seem to be random. What it indicates is a lack of willingness to change, to move on: we don’t want to mature, we would rather be children forever. Moreover, it represents the simple change – regardless of the feeling about that change – from childhood to maturity. We even see this in those that would seem to have already made that change: for example, the uncle that is travelling with Tung-Tung and Ting-Ting [awesome names] leaves them on the train as he goes elsewhere with his girlfriend. Not cool.
Of course, that change isn’t exactly for the better: consider one of the opening sequences where Tung-Tung arrives in Grandpa’s town. He drives his toy motorized car [what are those things called, anyways?] into and over the turtle that belongs to one of the country children. While on one hand, this could be considered to be a simple contrast between city and country [product of industry driving over thing of nature], it also serves to compare to a later scene where Ting-Ting finds a dead bird. At the beginning, while Tung-Tung is still young, he and the other children attempt to exhibit mastery over nature, and by the time that they have matured at the end, that nature is dead.
That also ties into the more minor theme of nationalization – which is more directly related to the country/city contrast. Tung-Tung and Ting-Ting’s mother is ill in the city, and when they arrive in the country, everything seems great. But it’s discovered that even in this idyllic place, there are mental illnesses, unwanted pregnancies, crimes, and so on. It all represents the qualities of the city seeping into the country. This was also excellently shown in the quick scene where the grandfather, after kicking his son in law out of the house due to the pregnancy that arose out of wedlock, attempts to bash his motorcycle with a log. Only his log breaks – a clear piece of symbolism I won’t bother going into with any more detail.
As I said, it’s not quite the masterpiece that Hou’s clearly capable of, but it’s nonetheless an excellent piece of work. As of now: #2 of 3 Hou films.
No comments:
Post a Comment