Coming Home Again Why Is He Taking Care of His Mother

April 23, 2022 Post a Comment

Wayne Wang's Coming Home Again is a heartfelt story of a first generation Korean-American grieving as he takes care of his female parent as she dies of cancer. The film is now screening in virtual cinemas in the U.s., and tickets tin can exist purchased here.

Still from Wayne Wang's Coming Home Again in which Chang-rae approaches his despondent mother as she stares out the window of their San Francisco house. — Nevertheless from Wayne Wang's Coming Home Again

Food is the language of honey and care in Wayne Wang's Coming Home Again. Modify-rae (Justin Chon), a first generation Korean-American, leaves his Wall Street job to return home to San Francisco to care for his mother (Jackie Chung), who is dying of cancer. Set mostly over the course of New Year's Eve, the film follows Chang-rae as he carefully and meticulously prepares an impressive traditional Korean New Year's Eve dinner, using his mother's recipes. In flashbacks, nosotros see his mother teaching him to cook, and the memories of her warmth and amore that he associates with food.

Based on an autobiographical story in The New Yorker by Chang-rae Lee, Coming Home Once again is a quiet, dull burn down of a motion picture; I ofttimes wondered whether the source cloth was as well sparse to fill a feature runtime. But the more fourth dimension you spend inside the gorgeous simply white and barren Nob Hill domicile of Chang-rae'southward parents, the more than y'all feel the distance between everyone in the family, and the burden of expectations. There's something to exist said for watching just how much fourth dimension, care, and effort Chang-rae puts into cooking a dinner for his mother, to prove her his love, even when she's past the point of existence able to eat it — her stage four breadbasket cancer has meant she hasn't eaten for weeks.

The emptiness of the walls, which other affluent families would take filled with art and family unit photos, hints at the disconnect between the family members. Was this and then-chosen dwelling house e'er really a dwelling for any of them? We learn that Chang-rae spent much of his childhood away from hither, as he was sent off to Exeter, a prestigious boarding school. Meanwhile, his sis (Christina July Kim), who arrives like a tempest with stiff opinions about her mother's treatment, nosotros learn, hasn't fifty-fifty been home to visit in 15 years. Throughout, you lot sense the family unit that could accept been that wasn't, and Chang-rae'south decision to drop his task and girlfriend for his mother seems very much in pursuit of those 'what-if's, the take a chance to get to know his mother in a manner that was denied him as a kid.

Justin Chon stars as Chang-rae in Wayne Wang's Coming Home Again. Chang-rae is looking out the window at the back of the frame in his mother's bedroom, back turned to camera, seen through a window. — Justin Chon stars as Chang-rae in Wayne Wang'south Coming Domicile Again.

Wang'southward focus on the house that Chang-rae and his sis left behind as before long equally they could, and that has entrapped his mother, is almost gothic, except that everything nigh is pale: white walls, white calorie-free, pastel-coloured defunction. The house is Chang-rae'due south mother'due south domain, though she never got to make it truly her own with decorations. We sense that the claustrophobia of the constantly closed defunction is indicative of most of her life experience. Sometimes, though, this can exist overwrought, like the way Wang returns to the crumbling paint — the imperfections on the surface of a beautiful dwelling — that Chang-rae tries and fails to fully fix.

The film's near heartbreaking scene takes identify at dinner on New year's day's Eve, where the family has gathered, dressed to the nines, to celebrate. Chang-rae'south mother is unable to eat the nutrient, which causes him to throw a temper tantrum, passive aggressively suggesting that she's faking her approval of his cooking. The scene plays out in medium shots, kickoff on Chang-rae's mother, who doesn't know how to show how much she appreciates her son's labours even if she can't savour them herself, then on Chang-rae. Chang-rae's father and sister are both at the table but they aren't seen, physically boxed out of the lives of female parent and son.

Justin Chon stars as Chang-rae wearing an apron in the kitchen, looking out the window in despair, in Wayne Wang's Coming Home Again. — *Justin Chon stars every bit Chang-rae in Wayne Wang's Coming Home Again.*

Information technology reminded me of Carol Nguyen'south No Crying at the Dinner Table, which used similar techniques — including showing each fellow member of a family lone in dissimilar parts of the house — to show the emotional altitude between them. Indeed, I found myself thinking about both No Crying at the Dinner Table and Mina Shum's Meditation Park a lot during Coming Dwelling Again, as all iii films bargain with familial altitude, the difficulty of the clearing feel for immigrant mothers, and what that ways for their human relationship to their children.

Both Chinese-Canadian immigrant Maria in Meditation Park and Chang-rae's mom experience displaced in a country where they aren't comfy in the language; they've too both spent their lives caring for an indifferent husband who may exist adulterous on them. Meditation Park is a joyful film because Maria has the run a risk to detect herself and separate from her husband'south emotional needs; Chang-rae's mother's affliction denies her that opportunity. Whereas Meditation Park and No Crying at the Dinner Table offered the possibility for intergenerational healing, the showtime of the story rather than the end, Coming Home Again deals with the murkier ground of what happens if yous don't become a 2d chance.

And so Coming Habitation Again leaves us with an unresolved ending, even every bit we learn more about the often unspoken bail betwixt mother and son, forged somewhat in retaliation against the father. The empty spaces in Coming Home Over again are purposeful, only I longed for the more complex worlds of Meditation Park and No Crying at the Dinner Table, where the characters go the opportunity to come into themselves, and we get to know them, also. Too often, Wang keeps us at the aforementioned remove from his characters equally they experience from each other.