Silver Screen & Siren

“Living in a small town, living a life that never changes. Every day after buying groceries, I like to go for a walk on the city wall. It’s already become a long-standing habit with me. As I walk along the city wall, I feel like I have left this world behind. My eyes see nothing. My mind is blank. If it weren’t for the basket of vegetables in my hand and the medicine I bought for my sick husband, I might spend the whole day away from home.”

~ “Spring in a Small Town” (1948), the opening monologue by actress Wei Wei

Written by Li Tianji and directed by the Shanghainese director Fei Mu, the movie is often named as the best classic masterpiece in Chinese filming history. It features a minimalist plot, casting only five characters whose short narratives and deep frailties we hold still to this day.

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Dear Alex,

You wrote a psalm for Christmas, not a stroke too late to prepare us for Cradle and Cross. You must have sung in your bones and loin this ballad of jubilee and sorrow without knowing the words for a half lifetime.

The world feels too noisy to take notice. We’ve been trained to see nothing. If there is anything to observe, record it on cell phone. Something that deserves attention would long be tested for relevance and sensitized to diversity.

The “100 Best Asian Films” you’ve called out last week irritates me because they confirm I’ve seen nothing other than what I want to see in my hubris (your word). Of the top ten Asian movies enshrined in that list, many of which debuted in black and white, I’ve only watched and adored one: “In the Mood for Love.” Even the award-studded “Parasite” falls short of the top ten chart.

If surely ’tis the season to be jolly, to see the evening candles and crunch the sweets between our molars, then at last! at least! alas! I need to envision what I’ve been blind to in my white vs. black over-simplistic world. “Spring in a Small Town” becomes my very first black-and-white Asian film viewed via online streaming for a tender, inflation-adjusted fee of $ 1.99. Its title is plain and subdued, bundled in poetry, a frosted windowpane that hints of moaning from throats thirsting for something grander than what is visible, invincible, irresistible to our grasshopper eyes.

After my 93 cinematic minutes of prodding through post-war ruins from a broken city wall to a broken home through broken relationships, I wonder if Christmas could come ever to those whose “eyes see nothing” and “mind is blank”. How long might our burning, flooding and eloping last before we see who Christmas is surely made for?

Last Friday evening while driving to the fabric store, I started listening and humming to Christmas carols. From my SUV dashboard, street lamps looked soft, headlights dotted the horizon and Mariah Carey was singing “All I Want for Christmas”. I waited by the stoplights at a major crossroad, my mind emptied of a long work week, slipping into auto-pilot languor. All I want for Christmas…

In a twist of tune, an ambulance slashed through oncoming traffic, its sirens dismissed by a whirr of cars spilling into the intersection. Then a van swerved headlong into a truck, which veered towards me before ramming into a curb a few feet away from my front wheels. I was granted front-row seating to witness the theatrical crash in real time. Resuming its path of rescue, the ambulance looped around metal and glass fragments, its red lights punching darkness.

You’ve warned us before: don’t miss Christmas. In the crack of windshields and wintry gales, we’d be more ready for Christmas.

Yours, Kate