Pushing hands

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Movie
German title Pushing hands
Original title Pushing hands; Tui shou
Country of production Taiwan , USA
original language Standard Chinese , English
Publishing year 1992
length 105 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Ang Lee
script Ang Lee
James Schamus
production Ted Hope
Ang Lee
James Schamus
Emily Liu
music Xiao-Song Qu
camera Jong Lin
cut Tim Squyres
occupation

Pushing hands is the first feature film of from Taiwan coming US-American Ang Lee . It is the first part of the director's so-called Father Knows Best trilogy, which Lee shot at the beginning of his career in the early 1990s.

action

The widowed Chinese Chu lives with his son Alex and his small family in the New York suburbs. The family life together turns out to be difficult. Alex's wife Martha is a writer with writer's block and she feels disturbed by old Mr. Chu's daily tai chi exercises. They cannot communicate with each other because Martha does not speak Chinese and Mr. Chu does not speak English. He can't do much with his son Alex either. Only with his grandson and Ms. Chen, a widow from Taiwan, does Mr. Chu get along well.

When Martha falls ill and tensions increase afterwards, Mr. Chu decides to move into his own apartment. This goes against his traditional notion of family. A new job as a dishwasher turned out to be a mean disaster for him, as he was often criticized by the Taiwanese owner of the restaurant. When there was an argument and even the police had to be called in, Mr. Chu was jailed and made the local news.

Alex and his wife are appalled by this. But even now there is no real unification of the family. The generations still split up on good terms: Mr. Chu is now teaching Tai Chi again, and Martha begins to write a book about a Chinese immigrant family.

Emergence

After completing his film studies in New York in 1985, Ang Lee was initially unable to realize a project. During this time he took care of his family as a househusband and wrote several scripts, among other things. It was not until 1990 that the possibility of making a first film was within reach. Lee won first and second prizes in a script competition organized by the Taiwanese Ministry of Culture for two of the scripts he wrote with James Schamus . One of them was the book for Pushing Hands , the second was the script for the subsequent film The Wedding Banquet .

The Central Motion Picture Corporation , the Taiwanese state film subsidy, insisted on the filming of the first-placed book. With $ 400,000 in prize money, Lee made the 1992 film within 24 days. The filming locations were primarily the homes of friends or family in Lee's Westchester County , New York City .

With this film, Lee's decades-long collaboration begins with the film editor Tim Squyres as well as the producer and screenwriter James Schamus and the production company Good Machine (later Focus Features ). Lee also worked with the Taiwanese actor Sihung Lung , who was adored by Lee and played the role of the disempowered patriarch, in the following films in the trilogy. In all three films, Lung takes on the role of the (disempowered) patriarch who has mastered an art to the point of mastery. With pushing hands it is the tai chi, which is also suggested in the title, which is the name of a tai chi figure.

reception

Pushing Hands was initially only published in Taiwan, where it received a lot of critical acclaim. While the film was very popular in Asia from the start, it only gained notoriety in the West with Lee's continued success.

There was criticism of the portrayals of the young couple Chu, who were accused of "lacking charisma". Generally, however, the reception was good. Isabell Gössele noted in her book on the cinema of Ang Lee summary of the film: "Even if you donating hands still observes his debut character, the film already groundbreaking and indicative of Lee's sensitive nature, the feeling and thinking and living together is to be represented by family members. "

Awards

In Taiwan, the film won three Golden Horse Awards , awards from Taiwanese film producers, including one for directing. At the Asian-Pacific Slim Festival , Lee's first film won the award for best film in Seoul in 1993, together with his second film The Wedding Banquet .

literature

  • Isabell Gössele: The Ang Lee cinema. In the breath of the hidden dragon , Marburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-8288-2046-3 , pp. 33-52.
  • Stephen Lowenstein (Ed.): My first Movie. Twenty celebrated directors talk about their first movie . Pantheon Books, New York 2000, ISBN 9780375420818 , pp. 361-381.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c cf. Qin Hu: Ang Lee's cinema. From Chinese philosophy, conception of art and culture to film aesthetic principles. Remscheid 2008. pp. 11-12.
  2. ↑ a b c Michael Pekler & Andreas Ungerböck: Ang Lee and his films. Marburg 2009. pp. 131-132.
  3. ↑ Isabell Gössele: The cinema of Ang Lee. In the breath of the hidden dragon, Marburg 2009, p. 33.
  4. ↑ a b c cf. Isabell Gössele: The Ang Lee cinema. In the breath of the hidden dragon, Marburg 2009, p. 51