(Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles)
For some time now, I’ve entertained the notion of moving to Japan to teach English for a year. Numerous factors have quashed this venture to date: finance, procrastination, my bubble-like comfort zone. People tell me that students prefer “gaijin” to teach them the language; that being Chinese won’t be to my advantage; that China and Japan don’t exactly get along. None of which are a deterrent, but all this forewarning does beg the question: is all this bad blood for real? Not so long ago, anti-Japanese protests erupted in China, some escalating into riots over a textbook that apparently whitewashes Japan’s WWII atrocities. More recently, Chinese actresses slipped into Kimonos in the film adaptation of Memoirs of a Geisha, an atrocity all of its own that disgruntled those on either side of the ditch. According to news reports I google, diplomacy is at a three-decade low. Now I’m having second thoughts.

With this in mind, it comes somewhat reassuringly to learn that Zhang Yimou is doing his part to mend trans-Asian relations. Zhang, perhaps the most Chinese of directors, turns his attention from boyhood dream fulfilment (Hero and House of Flying Daggers his last two epics) to the soft, poignant surfaces of contemporary drama. In Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, Zhang crosses territories to the metropolis of Tokyo, initially far removed from the earthy milieu of his best-known Mandarin films. Unable to overcome a deep-seated estrangement, an elderly Takada-san travels to mainland China in the hope that, by completing his dying son’s documentary on a Chinese opera, he’ll somehow salvage their relationship before terminal illness ensues. A stoic brood, Takada is cut from the same strong-silent mould of bygone screen legends like Gary Cooper; played by Ken Takakura (a legend in his own right), there’s more than a hint of Richard Farnsworth in his forthright performance.

And yet this is more than just an Asian convert of The Straight Story – a father-son reconciliation that’s an allegory for the rift between two nations. Takada doesn’t speak a word of Mandarin; his initial attempts to track down a famed opera performer are frustratingly inept, with dialogue lost in translation not only though misunderstanding, but prejudice. Slowly though, Takada’s emotional plight forges a bond with locals: his tour guides return the money he offers, an entire village rallies around him, bureaucracy makes an unprecedented exception for his visit to prison (where said opera singer now resides), while the warden accommodates his every need (but only before learning that Takada’s footage will benefit China as positive propaganda, and not as a blight on its human rights record!). Takada’s son’s fascination with Chinese opera also suggests that a renewed cultural exchange between countries isn’t out of the question.

Zhang, I think, makes this kind of film better than most; he certainly does sentiment and blubbering melancholy well without reverting to outright manipulation (Korean melodramas are the biggest culprits). His last three non-martial arts films – Not One Less, The Road Home and Happy Times – took some serious restraint in preventing my tear ducts from a deluge; his latest, admittedly, was no different. The amount of audible sniffles and coughs at Saturday’s screening said as much.

By in large, this is a film about male bonding, and our propensity for bottling it all in. In the real world, expunging years’ worth of resentment can’t always be as conclusive. In theatres, that father and son make amends is a given; that the Chinese open their arms to a Japanese man is the stuff of movies. Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles won’t thaw the ice between China and Japan, but it does make the deluded idealist in me wonder if it’s really as bad as they say, and why two countries won’t just get the hell over it if it is. Maybe I’ll take that trip and find out.—Tim Wong