Changrae Lee Coming Home Again Answer Key

Jackie Chung is devastating as a Korean matriarch battling cancer in this patient, Ozu-esque written report of loss.

Chiseled equally a haiku, director Wayne Wang'due south "Coming Domicile Again" opens a window onto dying days in all their ugliness, just likewise onto their possibility of redemption for a mother and son. Formally impeccable and observant, the "Joy Luck Club" filmmaker's latest wastes none of its 85 minutes in unpeeling the relationship between Chang-rae (Justin Chon) and his ailing mom (Jackie Chung). At the middle of this Ozu-esque drama is Chung, who supplies a heartbreaking performance as a woman trying to make upwards for lost time, while also trying to explain to her son why time slipped from nether her in the starting time place, leaving behind some stiff maxims and Korean recipes in the process.

"Coming Abode Again" is co-written by Wang and the real Chang-rae Lee from his moving 1995 New Yorker essay. The movie transplants that slice's late-1980s catamenia to present-24-hour interval San Francisco, the now-gentrified hub to the Bay Area tech bubble that has all but engulfed the city's multicultural foundation. Chang-rae has abased his life as a writer in New York to care for his mother, now bedridden with cancer and unable to so much equally lift herself out of bed while her married man works equally a psychiatrist. Chang-rae is bitter about leaving behind his East Coast life — ane far more westernized and remote from his South Korean immigrant heritage — but more angry at himself for his squandered potential.

His new, makeshift life as a caregiver in San Francisco is a carefully mapped-out routine, beginning and ending in a lonely key. But a constant in his regimen is recreating his mother's beloved Korean recipes, including kalbi, a piquant, gingery dish of marinated brusk rib, that kicks the picture show off on a mouthwatering level. Which is curious, given that this is ultimately a grief drama, merely there'due south pleasance to exist had in the culinary imagery, and information technology fits the context: About of their lives, Chang-rae and his female parent have communicated through food, and tradition.

But at present, equally communicated through elliptical flashback, all that was cached under the rug is coming out, with resentments and regret surfacing all around. His mother has a lot of questions for the dissipated Chang-rae, who left San Francisco at a young age for boarding school in New York. ("Why didn't nosotros meet your friends?" "You never talk most your girlfriend.") Getting those questions answered is another story, considering these ii are running out of fourth dimension. Some of the back-and-forths between mother and son take on a question-and-answer-session quality that tells more than than information technology shows, even if information technology'southward ever in service of catching us up on decades of a life shared in under an hour and a half.

"Coming Home Once more"

Outsider Pictures

Wang and editors Ashley Pagan and Deirdre Slevin flip back and along between past and not-so distant nowadays, as Chang-rae first learns of the news of his female parent's metastasizing cancer, and his family wrestles to control it. Other jealousies chimera up. Chang-rae's panicked sister accuses him of being "the favorite." Hushes that his father may accept cheated on his wife also boil over. Meanwhile, their mother is in agony. This is not a happy home, but Wang doesn't dwell in the atrocious particulars. Instead, with cinematographer Richard Wong, he waits coolly for tacit truths to reveal themselves. "Coming Dwelling house Once again" is at its most agonized and existent when watching routine play out from afar, or normalcy try to recalibrate itself inside the firm, whether when Chang-rae's mother, very sick and frustrated, tries to paint her toenails, or he attempts to make kalbi but tin't get the recipe or method exactly correct.

During a New year'southward Eve dinner, everything falls apart, and information technology's Chung'southward moment. Her plow as a woman getting lost to time and disease is a devastating tower of art on its own. Especially in moments where she reveals truths about her immigrant by to Chang-rae, similar abandoning her life in Korea for America, Chung conveys an ocean of feeling even when nix'south being said. But the screenplay affords her plenty of gutting maxims that will probable haunt Chang-rae for eternity. "You can fall out of beloved and become back," she tells her son. "Merely it's never the aforementioned."

Chung's understated performance is a plumbing fixtures heart for a movie almost ever operating at whisper-level. "She knew that the flavor of a skilful dish adult non at once but in stages," Chang-rae Lee wrote of his mother in the New Yorker essay. Wang seems to accept applied that strategy to his latest picture show, with a complex slow burn down that sneaks upwardly on you lot.

Class: B+

"Coming Home Again" opens in virtual cinemas on Friday, Oct 23. Head to Outsider Pictures' website for a complete list of participating theaters.

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Source: https://www.indiewire.com/2020/10/coming-home-again-review-wayne-wang-1234594423/

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