Billie, a Chinese-American girl, returned to China to visit after learning that her grandmother had advanced lung cancer, and her family told her that she should hide her illness from her grandmother, and due to the particularity of the family, the whole family gathered together through a fake wedding in order not to be detected by her grandmother, and accompanied the elderly to the last journey of life. Through the choreography of such a farce, director Wang Ziyi let us see through Billy's Western perspective that "Chinese-style deception" is unreasonable.
The director has shaped the heroine into another self, and the heroine's childhood is the childhood of director Wang Ziyi - Billie left China at the age of 6 to live in the United States, grew up to be a big girl, more than twenty years of Western life, Billie has fully adapted to everything in the United States, including Western thought and life, but the childhood experience has not made her completely forget China: she misses her childhood before the age of 6, misses her family in China, she is a girl who combines East and West, has independent thoughts, and she is obedient and nostalgic on the emotional level.
It is precisely because of this contradictory personality that later the family collectively deceived her grandmother's illness, she was both suspicious and hesitant, and the education she received from childhood told her that in the United States, concealing the illness of others is an illegal and inhumane act, and people have the right to know their physical condition and make choices about the future. Relatives persuaded her to accept the difference and told her that in China, most families do it because cancer does not necessarily cause death, it is the psychology of fear that causes death. So later, when she took a family portrait, she learned that her grandmother's examination report had been taken away, and she would run to the hospital, intercept it before her grandmother saw the report, and revise the report. Apparently, the later Billie had accepted this behavior from her family.
As relatives say, unlike the sense of alienation between most families in the West, "In China, people do not live themselves, people live in groups, families and society." Although it is difficult to agree, this kind of concealment of the elderly's condition is not uncommon in Chinese families, when a person is detected with the possibility of terminal illness, the first thing that will be told is not himself, but his own family, and then the family decides whether to tell the patient. This is the logical thinking that exists in Chinese families.
The same film "Wedding Feast", which also reflects the cultural differences between China and the West, also embodies this element of deception: the son conceals his homosexual identity, the mother hides from her husband that her son is gay, and the husband hides from the family the fact that he knows that his son is gay. In either case, the purpose is "for the good of the other party." ", is a white lie. Without asking for the opinion of the other party, white lies should be accepted.
The film "Don't Tell Her" reflects many realities in Chinese families through a series of performance means, which is also the director's reflection on the "water and soil dissatisfaction" caused by the cultural differences between China and the West. Billie is not firmly opposed or agreed, and she is also digesting this kind of dissatisfaction. There are also many established impressions that reflect the director's ABC perspective, the pulling behavior at the airport gate, the gray sky in the northeast, the demolition and repair of buildings, the sentence "China is good or the United States is good?" that must be asked, and also includes the embodiment and irony in the memorial and wedding in the film.
When going to visit the grave, the camera first cuts to a woman's "weeping mourning", weeping and mourning is a custom in some parts of China, in order to let the "people at the bottom" hear, how sad it is to see their departure, to reflect the filial piety of future generations, Billie does not understand why wine can not be drunk and should be sprinkled in front of the tomb, the father wants to insert a cigarette in front of the grandfather's tomb to show nostalgia, but was stopped by the mother, because the grandfather has quit smoking, and now does not smoke.
The director expresses the "noise" in Chinese weddings through multiple lenses, such as drinking and singing k, and under the lens of director Wang Ziyi, the Chinese-style wedding has become a large party. But unlike many films that depict Chinese weddings, there are not too many Chinese symbolic shots, such as red lanterns, qipao and other elements.
The director uses auxiliary characters to show the cultural differences between China and the West, Billie's parents are Both Chinese-American, and she has adapted to the alienation of the Western family, the old gap between the mother and the grandmother makes the mother not react so strongly to Billie when she learns that the elderly are sick, as a daughter-in-law who does not have so many feelings with her grandmother, she feels very uncomfortable that everyone is watching her cry, and she does not like to show her heart.
The same is Billie's cousin, a boy who grew up in Japan, as the groom official of this fake wedding, the cousin did not have much drama, his emotional expression focused on the wedding, could not adapt to the wedding photos too intimate with the bride, could not adapt to the Chinese, obedient he cried after a play at his "wedding", fully reflecting his contradictory heart.
The flaws of the film are also obvious: for example, the director's identity background makes her lack of a deeper understanding of the Chinese family, but only blindly shows superficial characteristics, making the film not able to go deeper, appearing to be distracted, and the two events of "illness" and "wedding" that can concentrate on the complexity of Chinese family relations have not been well interpreted, and the all-Western background sound is difficult to integrate into the big family. The climax of the dramatic conflict in the film is the part where Billie's family changes the case, and when Grandma reads her case, the director uses a group portrait lens to put it on the opposite side of Grandma, and the whole family is nervous and is seen to be serious, full of this dramatic tension.
And the end of the story shows an open-ended ending, Billie and her family returned to the United States, Grandma did not really reach the last journey of life, in fact, Grandma did not know the question of her own condition, the director did not give a clear answer, but only blurred the question with some details: Grandma's dialogue with the doctor at the beginning of the film let us know that she has been in and out of the hospital frequently recently, and Grandma said "Goodbye soon" when Billie left. "This is also the cruelty of this film.