If I had to choose a favorite among Chinese directors, it would be Ang Lee.
If I had to pick one of Ang Lee's films that I liked the most, it would be "The Wedding Banquet".
More than 30 years after its release, the Douban score of this movie is still as high as 90 points, which shows the public's love for it.
"You're seeing the results of five thousand years of repression. ”
What kind of wedding is it? What kind of movie is it, exactly? Will Ang Lee, who has always been low-key, not hesitate to appear in the movie with his real body, and say such a sentence that is quite explosive even today?
What kind of story does "The Wedding Banquet" tell? What exactly is the director trying to express?
It all starts with a man named Simon and a traditional Chinese wedding.
The protagonist of the film is a Chinese living in the United States, named Simon, male in gender, and male in love.
Simon has a survivable job, has a lover who has lived together for five years and has a good relationship, and lives a hard but peaceful and happy life.
But suddenly, one day, he heard that his father almost died of illness, but he was forced to survive because he had not yet held his grandson.
In addition, Wei's mother sent tapes twice in three days to urge marriage and found various agencies to find him a girlfriend, which made Wei Tong feel both guilty and deeply stressed.
Seeing that his lover was depressed, Simon proposed that Wei Tong and their tenant Wei Wei fake a marriage.
This can not only satisfy the wishes of Weitong's parents, but also allow Weiwei to get a green card and settle in the United States.
What they didn't expect was that when Wei Tong told his parents about the marriage plan he had made up with Wei Wei, Wei Wei's parents, who were looking forward to Sun Xin, immediately said that they would come over to preside over the wedding and stay for two weeks.
Then everything started to get out of control.
First of all, Wei Tong, who originally did not plan to hold a big wedding, met his father's old subordinates at dinner in a Chinese restaurant, and then was forced to agree to make up a Chinese wedding banquet.
This made the contact between Wei Tong and Wei Wei more common, and the atmosphere between the two began to become strange.
When the two were landlords and tenants, even if Weiwei didn't wear underwear when he saw Wei Tong, pretending to be weak, pretending to be pitiful, taking the initiative to confess, and taking the initiative to tease, Wei Tong firmly refused.
In the kissing session between the two church marriages, Wei Tong only kissed his face perfunctorily.
If Wei Tong was really not interested in Wei Wei at the beginning, then when he saw Wei Wei wearing a wedding dress for her and being so beautiful, his momentary amazement was the beginning of his heartbeat.
At least he was interested in her body.
Taking wedding photos and various intimate games at the wedding banquet made Wei Tong and Wei Wei more intimate, which was directly manifested in Wei Tong kissing Wei Wei's mouth this time, and it was a deep kiss.
Later, the two were married by relatives and friends, and the direct physical contact was more and very hot, and in the end, they even confessed to each other.
When Weiwei found out that Weitong had feelings for her, she took the initiative to hug Weitong, and the two had a spring breeze.
Don't say that Wei Tong was forced, a deep kiss is not completely unavoidable, and Wei Tong's physiological reaction is not something that Wei Wei can control.
Even if Wei Wei took the initiative, Wei Tong didn't have the strength to push her away, but he didn't do that, he didn't want to do that.
Later, Weiwei became pregnant, and Weitong and Simon's affair**.
Wei Tong's parents were forced to accept such a thing, and recognized Simon's status, and the parents got their wish to hold their grandson.
The ending seems to be a happy reunion, but this consummation is a balance that is achieved after the compromise of all walks of life, Simon endures the betrayal of his lover and the child, Weiwei endures the husband who does not love her the most, and Weitong's parents endure the orientation of their son and accept Simon's existence.
Probably Wei Tong is happy, and all of everyone's forbearance is all fulfilled by him, but he is also forced to start a 2+1 life, and is forced to accept a woman and a child.
In fact, I feel very sorry for Simon in the film.
He has a stable personality and is gentle and careful, can remember all the preferences and emotional changes of his lover, takes special care of Wei Tong, and always puts Wei Tong first.
He is handsome, well-off, has a good education and work, and there is never a shortage of men and women who like him.
After all, such an excellent lover still couldn't withstand the pressure of the traditional view of marriage and love, and the expedient measures he advocated because he felt sorry for his lover finally became the deepest thorn in him, which really hurt.
And there are a lot of life clips of Simon and Weitong in the film, which the director handles very well.
You will find that there is actually no difference between two people of the same gender in love and heterosexuality, both are family life, work, ** quarrels, dating, etc.
Perhaps we let go of our prejudices and find that there are no limits to love, whether it is money, status, age or gender.
Maybe this is what the director wants to tell the audience through their daily relationship!
The above content is all the plots explained in the film on the bright line.
If you think that's all there is to this movie, then you're underestimating Ang Lee.
The highlight of this movie is actually Wei Tong's father.
And the secrets hidden in him are scattered by Ang Lee into scattered shots, and you need to pay extra attention to find out the unusually rich meanings hidden under each shot.
And because it is too deeply hidden, this film has been released for more than 30 years, and there has always been an unresolved question, that is, whether Wei Tong's father also loves men rather than women.
My answer is: yes.
Wei Tong's father is actually the same kind as him, and Wei Tong's father's favorite person should be Lao Zhang instead of Wei Mu.
He and Weitong not only have the same hobbies, but also have similar experiences.
The only difference is probably that he has been hiding from Wei Mu, while Wei Wei has always known about the relationship between Wei Tong and Simon.
To restore the storyline, the great father ran away from marriage to become a soldier because he loved the man, and met his lover Lao Zhang.
Originally, the two were very happy, but later all the relatives in the great father's hometown died, and he had the pressure of passing on the lineage.
In desperation, he married Wei's mother and gave birth to Weitong, and since then they have lived as a family of four, with the identities of father, mother, son, and cook.
I speculated like this:
The first reason is that although Lao Zhang did not appear in the movie, he was mentioned a lot in the film.
In my mother's letter to Wei Tong, Lao Zhang was mentioned at the dinner table where five people ate together for the first time, Lao Zhang was mentioned as a meeting gift, Lao Zhang was mentioned when I heard Lao Chen open a restaurant, and so on.
And the great mother also gave the traditional Chinese cheongsam to Weiwei, the cheongsam fits very well, and the great mother said that their mother and daughter are connected, passed down from generation to generation, and the end of the world is close at hand.
It's really a pun when you look closely.
The second reason is the photo album, after Wei Tong's parents knew that their son was gay without telling each other, they got a photo album of the wedding banquet before returning to China.
When opened, almost every page of the album appeared with three people at the same time, Simon, Wei Tong and Wei Wei, which seemed to become a strange balance and self-evident tacit understanding after the compromise of each party.
However, before that, Wei Tong's mother had shown Wei Wei the family photo album when Wei Tong was a child, and almost every page in it also had another man's face.
Although it is not explicitly stated in the film, there is a high probability that the man who appeared is the ** person "Lao Zhang" who exists in Weitong's family in Taiwan.
It can be seen that this Lao Zhang is not a simple unimportant cook who has been at home for more than 40 years, but another protagonist in another threesome.
And when looking at her son's wedding album, Wei Tong's mother changed after smiling at first, why?
Because at this time, she knew that her son was gay, so she understood why the album chose shots of three people appearing at the same time.
But don't forget, there are always three people on their own Taiwanese family albums.
Wei Tong's mother's discoloration may be that she didn't realize that her husband was also gay until this moment.
The scary thing is that she has been kept secret all her life, and she has lived in a relationship between three people for the rest of her life.
Third, in the film, Wei Tong's father said to Simon before leaving for Taiwan: "Thank you for taking care of Wei Tong." What he said to Weiwei was: "The Gao family will thank you." ”
In their family, Lao Zhang is also responsible for taking care of Wei Tong's father's daily life, and Wei Tong's mother is responsible for giving birth, I think this also represents his view of his lover and wife.
And in the car, when Wei and his father hugged his wife, his fingers were rubbing in the position of his wife's short hair, but this action was generally done to the same ** person, because both of them had short hair.
Except for a few women, they have such short hair, so when a man strokes his female partner's hair, he should slide down the hair and rub it in a circular motion at the ends.
The fourth reason is that when he was at the beach, Simon said that he didn't understand Wei Tong's father's practice of forcing him to get married and have children knowing Wei Tong's orientation, and Wei Tong's father said that he didn't understand either.
What kind of person can have the same great confusion about the same problem? The answer is the same kind.
Wei Tong's father didn't understand why he wanted to take the road of getting married and having children, but he followed the rhythm of society and moved forward.
When he got older, he also hoped that his son would follow the rhythm of the army, even at the cost of pretending to be deaf and dumb.
Finally, the clues about the relationship between Wei Tong, Wei Wei, and Simon are the reappearance of the relationship between Wei and his father, etc., others have analyzed it many times, so I will not repeat it.
One thing to add is that Wei Tong's children will be brought up by three people in the future, and Wei Tong was also brought up by his parents and Lao Zhang!
"The Wedding Banquet" is really a great movie, there can be no superfluous scenes in the film, I recommend everyone to watch it.
In the last scene of the film, Wei and his father surrendered, many people talked about it, and many people felt that it was a compromise of the relationship between Wei Tong and Simon.
I enjoyed the final surrender, but I don't think it's a compromise on the relationship with Wei Tong.
Under what circumstances do you see him raising his hand? It's when you go through security.
A gay man was followed by a female wife, followed by the back of a man carrying a bag, and then the great father raised his hands as he was examined.
What is the significance?
I think it's because of the fact that two generations of them had to suppress their orientation in order to pass the traditional culture and secular security check, marry a woman and have children, like the traditional Chinese concept and secular review surrendered....
If interpreted in this way, the ending is not the so-called reunion at all, full of helplessness and compromise.
Is there anything else you'd like to discuss and add to the content of the film? Interaction is welcome.