by Brian Hioe
語言:
English
Photo credit: Film Poster
A JOURNEY IN SPRING is a moving, understated film about an elderly Taiwanese couple, Khim-Hok and Siu-Tuan. Its focus on love, mortality, and aging proves reminiscent of Michael Haneke’s Amour—but as though it details what happens after the end of the film.
The movie begins with Khim-Hok and Siu-Tuan bickering. As Siu-Tuan goes about her daily affairs, Khim-Hok seems to have little patience for her. But as the film goes on to show, despite that the two argue often, there is a deep tenderness between the couple, who has a son that they do not see often. While they both seem to be retired, the movie also shows that they seem to be impoverished. Khim-Hok is a former construction worker and Siu-Tuan collects recyclables. An early scene shows the two balking at buying a motor to fix their apartment that would cost 4,000 NT. Another scene shows Khim-Hok studiously avoiding ordering anything in a cafe.
The film takes a turn when Siu-Tuan unexpectedly dies in her sleep. Khim-Hok is unwilling to confront the circumstances of her death, instead putting her body in a freezer and filling it with ice. Khim-Hok wanders the city, taking up a job as a dishwasher, concealing the death from his relatives.
When the couple’s son returns to the family home, it emerges that Siu-Tuan has died. The movie then follows the family through the painful process of arranging a funeral, as well as bidding their last goodbyes.
A Journey in Spring tells a simple story. It does this with the use of little music or arrangement, taking a minimalist approach to filmmaking. There are several parts of the movie told as flashbacks, or through Siu-Tuan’s perspective, but that is the most that the movie editorializes its content. Likewise, the movie has a slow, meditative pace, as reflects the rhythmic lives of its elderly protagonists. And yet the filmmaking style also proves beautiful, in evoking the contrast between the mountain home that Khim-Hok and Siu-Tuan live in and the city.
A Journey in Spring does well in capturing the lives of its elderly protagonists. Scenes of the two walking slowly through the city, or taking the bus—the preferred means of transportation for many elderly individuals—seem all too true to life.
The film mostly focuses on the relationship between Khim-Hock and Siu-Tuan. As such, some aspects of their life stories are left on the cutting room floor. There is not much elaboration of their relationship to their son and nephew, who work together in a traditional market, even if their son’s marriage is shown in flashback—a way in which the movie proves very different, say, from Tokyo Story, another movie about an elderly couple.
But in delving into the intimacy of an elderly couple, as well as how the surviving member of the couple struggles to face the death of his lifelong partner, A Journey in Spring is quietly and effortlessly moving. Though there is little way of any form of high drama in the film, it proves a powerful movie precisely by virtue of that it eschews any form of dramatization.