Coming Home
I have, yet again, almost ten movies in my backlog, but I just had to write about this film first. My impression of it won’t change much, the film is just that simple and unpretentious, so I am not afraid that further contemplation will muddle this first impression.
Gorp likes to describe movies as the crossing between two others, and I think “The Road Home” and “Dolls” work pretty well for it. It’s the focus on a single, simple love story of Zhang Yimou’s own “Road Home” coupled with the Asian fatalistic tragedy from Kitano’s “Dolls”. As for “Coming Home”, even though Zhang showed it at Cannes, I think it’s pretty clear that he has the Chinese audience in mind here. The tragedy of denied love until the end, the tiny signs of love, the concept of family guilt, all these things probably only work well on you when you are emotionally educated into it. Honestly I don’t think Zhang Yimou even intended for this film to be successful outside of China. Just like “The Road Home”, its love story is just so incredibly Chinese. This is a typical case of a film that displays perhaps unexpected cultural differences between cultures. Did you watch the Honest Trailer to “The Notebook”, where it’s described as “the movie that will give you unrealistic expectations about your own love relationships”. This is more or less the Chinese version of it, except “Coming Home” is thankfully not a chick flick. With “The Notebook”, I am perfectly aware how ridiculous it is. With “Coming Home”, I am just struck by the tragedy of loving like that, being perfectly aware that this love is also a cultural product. It’s just… so… damn… sad! I spent almost every minute of the film glued to the screen, gasping “oh my God he/she is […]” every once in awhile. I cried at the scene in the beginning, and I cried at the piano scene, and I almost cried at the end.
Nevertheless, I can’t believe some idiots on imdb call this film “melodrama” or “soap opera”. Hello, this is not a k-drama. There are no loudly crying people, no hospital visits, no sudden deaths, no sudden break-ups, no jealousy scenes or extra-marital affairs, not even another love interest – none of that. This is really just a love story between two people, and history got into their way while they both clutched onto that love unfazed. Heck it’s not even a story about young people, they are middle-aged and almost retirement age. (But they are also not dying.) Nothing really happens in this movie, which is pretty much the exact opposite of a melodrama.
There is one small thing that irks me about this story. Why are the best love stories in this world always based on fairly traditional clichés? (“The Painted Veil” is a lovely exception, by the way.) Does it really have to be like that? In this film, the daughter is obedient to her parents and spends 90% of the film caring for them, the mother is obedient to her husband, the father is forgiving and spends all his energy caring for his family. Oh well.
In the end, if it was me, I think I would be happy spending 29 days of the month waiting happily for my husband’s arrival while reading his letters (and one day in sadness because he didn’t arrive); and I would be happy knowing that my wife is waiting for me while having maintained her love for me all these years. There is comfort in the sheer tragedy of this story, much more than real life somehow, and it’s all because in real life, people don’t love that deeply. Just for that, this is probably my favorite film of the year so far, even before “The Painted Veil” and “Boyhood”, and that is why I am jumping over the rest of my movie backlog over there.