Father-and-Son, a Relationship Etched Through A Thousand Mile Trek

I'm usually attracted to action/thriller movie flicks when it comes to cinematic exploration. Seldom do I, or so I thought, have time or stomach for docudramas which I find to be slow moving. However, lately this notion of mine has undergone a paradigmatic shift as evidenced from some of the films in this genre that have been a revelation: Turtle Can Fly, A Bright Moon.

This altered impression has been considerably reinforced in the past week when wify's Arts teacher, Mrs. Fan, loaned us a 4-in-1 movie DVD, in the DVD-9 format (According to this source, DVD-9, also called Single Sided Dual Layered, contains 8.5 GB of disk space and is popular in Asia, as opposed to DVD-5, called Single Sided Single Layered containing 4.7 GB of disk space commonly found here. Hence, a DVD-9 is able to hold the 4 movies in one.).

Over a span of a few days and nights, we watched the movies one after the other, one at a time, non-stop. How did we decide on the order of the movies? By familiarity, either with the title or with the acting cast. And by the movie synopses, starting with the easy-going mirth and ending with the sad and the sorrowful. Here we were helped by Mrs. Fan who singled out one of them as fitting the latter category. So that was an automatic choice for the last we would tackle, I mean watch.

The first one in our list is Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, because I recall having seen the title somewhere before. At first, we did not recognize the lead Japanese actor, whose face was partially obscured by the cap he was wearing on the profile shot shown on the title image. But in the first few minutes after start, we knew we have seen him before, vividly recalling him as a middle-aged world weary cop in Japan opposite Michael Douglas, his US counterpart, on a gang bust, in Black Rain, one of our favorite movies. Then he looked younger. Hence the throw off. He is Ken Takakura, but his name in Chinese precedes him as far as I'm concerned. I also learned that he has been dubbed the Clint Eastwood of the East because of his brooding mannerism and laconic oral delivery. Also after the fact, we learned that the film was co-directed by Yimou Zhang, one of the few Chinese directors who have been recognized in Hollywood, two other notable examples being Ang Lee and John Wu.

Ken Takakura, as a father on a lone quest to rediscover his affection for his son, reazlied through his interaction with Yangyang, another son of China whose father was on the same trek, emotionally that is (the image is taken from here).

The movie depicts the throes of inter-generational relationship between a father and his son. After the passing away of the lady of the house, they drifted further apart, the father (played by Ken) relocated to a rural town and spent his time brooding by the coastline, if he was not otherwise engaged as a commercial fisherman. [From hereon I would be in my spoiler role. So be forewarned.]

One fine day, he was called to the city by his daughter-in-law, supposedly to visit his ailing son, his impending visit unbeknownst to his son. Still harboring resentment, the son refused to see his father (the son actually did not appear in the entire movie and his presence was only known through his voice.) Rejected, the father returned forlornly to the fishing town, but not before the daughter-in-law handed a videotape to him, showing his son's visit to the Yunnan area of China last year where he met up with his idol (and so his father thought) of the famed Chinese face opera.

The son had promised to return the next year to make a film of a famous episode, Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, the title namesake, from an epic Chinese literary masterpiece. [Being one who has done some Chinese translation as an amateur, I have my own take on the English title. It is, Alone on a Thousand Mile Trek, which is what the movie is all about, a personal quest by a father into uncharted territory in a far-flung nook on the earth, terrain-wise, language-wise, culture-wise, as well as those on a mental plane, the perennial inner collision of the value systems that if reconciled, will lead to the emergence of a new self, with new world view.]

Two aspects captivated me: the breath-taking and rustic landscape of the village setting, largely barren of green vegetation and yet being a geographical wonder of giant pillar-like stone columns, and the simple, down-to-earth life style rich with neighborliness and esprit de corps. On one scene, the village residents had an open air feast with tables joined end to end to stretch along the attire alley separating the two rows of house. Such congeniality, such conviviality, which is hardly seen these days, has been etched into our psyche. We really miss those spontaneous moments of celebration, not for any festival or special occasion of victory, of success; but just for the plain pleasure of living, and rejoicing.

Subsequent waves of disappointment in the form of anthropogenic barriers did not deter the single-minded purpose of Ken (from hereon I would use the screen name of Ken to refer to his character in the film, for simplicity) in fulfilling his son's dream, which he thought would help bridge the chasm separating them. Meanwhile, Li, the opera actor, was in jail and too distraught to perform the famed opera piece because of estrangement from his son, illicitly fathered.

The key episode, to me, has to be Ken's trek to another village in an attempt to unite Li and his son who have not seen each other (see the parallel, Ken's own predicament is as good as not being able to see his son, both physically and emotionally?). From total strangers, Ken and Yangyang (Li's son) developed a bond through the ordeal of living through a night in the wilderness, amongst the stone columns. That triggered a torrent of thoughts for Ken as regards his relationship with his own son. And all was forgiven and forgotten.

Ken's son, upon learning from his wife of his father's lone journey to China, penned his apologies to his Dad, at the same time revealing that his Dad had mistook his rather perfunctory response to Li to return the following year as his life-long passion, but appreciating his Dad's strange way of expressing his affection nonetheless.

Both Li and Ken's son did not see their wishes come through: the former seeing his son (the village elders respecting Yangyang's wish not to see the stranger who had fathered him, at the prodding of Ken to respect the young boy's wish. I can only imagine that Ken must have extrapolated this display from his own experience of shutting out his own son), but Li did get to watch the movie made by Ken of his son's expressive behavior, and the latter seeing his father, Ken, having departed because of lung cancer before his Dad's return.

But both fathers moved on, with clarity of the journey ahead: Li performed the opera, perhaps assured that he would get to see his son one day while Ken filmed it as a memoriam for his departed son. Both have also made the mental thousand mile trek, and have emerged the wiser, having awakened from their past misdeeds and self-imposed incarceration borne out of delusion, respectively.

The other movies, or rather my take of them, will appear in subsequent posts here. So stay tuned, if my idiosyncratic way of movie critique appeals to you.