Film review on The Joy Luck Club

玉儿

Film review on The Joy Luck Club

Two major themes are explored in this film: one is about the communication between American daughters and Chinese mothers;      another one is about the conflict between western and eastern culture.

The four Chinese mothers in the film are more or less the same. They all lived in feudal china and suffered a lot. At that period, China was still a country with the system of patriarchy where men dominate everything, including women. In that society, women have no mind or wish of their own. All that the women have to do is to be obedient, to obey their elders. Just like Lindo Jong, one of the mothers in the film, describes her own life experience as: “… I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people’s misery, to eat my own bitterness.” And that’s the very fate of women in the feudal society.
After watching the film, I think the most impressive things are not the things the characters have told us, but the things beyond their explanation and the things behind silence. The mothers have great hopes for their daughters. Their expectations for their daughters include not just success but also freedom. They do not want their daughter’s lives to be determined by a rigid society and convention.
First, I will focus on the theme about the communication between American daughters and the Chinese mothers. I think the story between Suyuan Woo and her daughter June is the very example which can illustrate the importance of communication. In the film the mother Suyuan woo is a refugee during the Japanese invasion. She fled to America, and then she had her America-born daughter June. She has high hopes for her daughter. She wants her to be an elegant woman who can gain other people’s respect. But the daughter could not understand her mother’s good intention. They usually misunderstand each other, just like a cold war. Then gradually, they build a wall between them to defend themselves. They never communicate with each other in a real sense. They keep silent to show their dissatisfaction towards each other. Here, silence becomes a symbol which symbolizes the destructiveness of non-communication. The silence tortures both of them. To some extend, they even hate each other.

But thanks to the greatness of maternal love, the silence is broken into pieces at the end of the film. They begin to understand each other. The mother offers her piano to the daughter for her thirtieth birthday. And the offer becomes a sign of forgiveness, and also symbolizes the understanding and forgiveness for each other. The humanity which has been long disappeared has restored vitality. The harmonious and balanced relationship between the mother and daughter has been restored. Silence is destructive, but communication can conquer silence.

The second theme is about the conflict between different cultures. In the novel, the four Chinese mothers and their American-born daughters have experienced cultural conflict, cultural understanding and blending. However, cultural understanding and blending do not occur overnight. It is a long and painful process. The mothers make pain-taking efforts to tell the daughters about their past experience and the Chinese culture. But the daughters, on the other hand, often see their mothers’ attempts at guidance as a form of hypercritical meddling, or as a failure to understand American culture. The daughters thus respond by attempting to further their mothers’ assimilation. Both the mothers and the daughters struggle with issues of identity: the mothers try to reconcile their Chinese pasts with their American presents; the daughters attempt to find a balance between independence and loyalty to their heritage. The story between Lindo Jong and her daughter is the very example for the theme.

In the film, Lindo Jong, one of the four mothers，provides the reader with a summary of her difficulty in passing along the Chinese culture to her daughter: “I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these two things do not mix? I taught her how American circumstances work. If you are born poor here, it's no lasting shame . . . You do not have to sit like a Buddha under a tree letting pigeons drop their dirty business on your head . . . In America, nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you . . . but I couldn't teach her about Chinese character . . . How to know your own worth and polish it, never flashing it around like a cheap ring. Why Chinese thinking is best.” Thanks to the mothers’ great efforts, their daughters gradually understand them and the Chinese culture. Therefore, cultural understanding and blending between the mothers and daughters are achieved.

After all, both the writher and the director know well how to tell a compelling story by building up tension around conflicts. Although such themes are frequently explored in American literature, the author avoids clichés. The novel stayed on the best-selling book list of The New York Times for 9 months. A finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Award, it has been translated into about 20 languages. Both the novel and the movie are worth reading and watching.