The Ang Lee Project: Pushing Hands

Ang Lee’s debut film Pushing Hands opens with an old man serenely practicing T’ai Chi in a living room. As he goes through the motions of the ritual synth music plays and a general feeling of tranquility sets in. This is a self-contained moment of peace. We then cut to a close up of a computer screen and hear the clacking of a keyboard as another person types the beginning of a story. The tension and the contrast between these two elements: an old man practicing a centuries old form of meditation and someone working on a modern machine is the heart of the story told in the film. It is a story that confronts the gulf between cultures and generations. The old man is Mr. Chu, who has recently immigrated to the United States from China to live with his son’s family. The person working on the computer is Martha, a writer and the wife of Mr. Chu’s son, Alex.

While the story primarily focuses on Mr. Chu and his struggle to integrate into his new home, the film also gives time to Martha as she attempts to reconcile living with her father-in-law and Alex, who tries to keep the peace between the two. This demonstrated most concisely in a wonderful dinner scene where Mr. Chu and Martha battle over what Alex should have on his plate: meat or fish. Mr. Chu criticizes how the parents raise their young child, and Martha chastises Mr. Chu for not making more of an effort to learn English.  The beauty of nuance is found in this tricky balance. Lee could have very easily made Martha a shrew or nag who wanted to purge her family of its cultural background. Instead, she earnestly tries to embrace her husband’s heritage while still being frustrated by the reactionary and intrusive nature of Mr. Chu. Lee asks us to both sympathize with Mr. Chu and to be critical of his stubbornness, while rooting for him to find meaning in his new home.

Mr. Chu finds solace in a Chinese Cultural center, where people learn T’ai Chi from him and honor him as a master of the art. There, he receives dignity sorely lacking at him. He forms a friendship with Ms. Chen, an elderly woman who teaches a cooking class. The understated affection between the two of them fits their mature, weather worn outlook on life. The danger of aging into irrelevance is always present at home, illustrated by scenes of Mr. Chu spending his days in front of a television, wounding Martha’s injured hand with misguided healing techniques, and bemoaning about his place in the world.

What’s perhaps most surprising about Pushing Hands is it’s insertion of action beats at certain points of the story. Early in the film Mr. Chu and Martha are struggling for space in the kitchen and Mr. Chu dodges her as her grabs some dishes. It’s a herald for what’s to come: Mr. Chu demonstrates his abilities at the cultural center by knocking one of his overweight students a comically long distance, reminiscent of a three Stooges Bit. You can practically hear Curly’s “Whoop whoop whoop!” as the student tumbles into a few tables. Later Mr. Chu squares off against a street gang and an abusive restaurant owner. While this insertion of action might have come from a desire to diversify the story, it’s unnecessary.

Pushing Hands works best when it sticks to being a tight family drama while also tackling the difficulties of aging and integrating into a completely new culture. The moments when it dips into pseudo-action don’t detract much from this, but a closer examination of the family dynamics would have perhaps yielded more of what the movie does so well. As it is, it’s a fine first film and leaves me excited for the journey this director’s career is about to take.