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EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN

Ang Lee's third film is not directly about grief, except in a small part, but it does include a family that has lost a parent, in this case the mother. Furthermore, there is a death in the film that impacts heavily on the family in question, so there is a small sliver of grief, although it is not the grief I am looking for.

Whatever the family dynamics on display in this film, we can be sure that they were very different before the passing of the mother. There are small clues here to the sharing of maternal roles among the surviving daughters, that give us some indication of what families pass through during the grieving process. Some roles are redistributed, others fall into desuetude. These structures are built during the grieving process, and often initial expectations are challenged by attempting to put those expectations into practice.

What we see in this film is the family emerging out of a kind of entombment of its own, as everything in the aftermath of the death of the mother was locked into place, and became a self-justifying system that preserved the harmony of the family at the cost of a mounting dissatisfaction as the system no longer serves the interests of its participants. This kind of crypto-Marxist analysis is surprising from Ang Lee. The process of revolutionary transformation begins with the actions of the youngest family member, and terminates with the sweeping away of the expected order by the oldest. It is all rather neatly done.

In the end we learn that the most important element of the process of grief is leaving behind the past, allowing for personal growth to continue. To lock oneself into a repetitive post-grief cycle will preserve harmony, but the burden of mourning should be, in its very nature, consciously limited in duration.

The problem with the film in terms of an audience interested in grief is that all of this is sublimated behind the family dynamic. They are trapped in an unconsciously unlimited mourning period. There is no deeper investigation into why or how it occurred. Nonetheless, it is there to see for those who have eyes to see it.

Overall grade: B-.