The Joy Luck Club
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Movie Reviews of The Joy Luck Club
Movie Review: A Movie Remembered After 13 Years
Summary: 5 Stars
The Joy Luck Club had stayed with me all these years even when I examine my own personal life in the current time. I had read the book when I was in the seventh grade and had a remarkable teacher. She was Mrs. Lattimer (and yes, she was white), a Harvard graduate teaching at an impoverished neighborhood from where I used to grow up. Sometimes, I wondered why she never taught at one of the more prestige middle schools even right now. Still, it was a book that we middle school students had to read and analyze. The class was actually an advance seminar class. Even to this day, I am surprised that we middle school students got a chance to watch a rated "R" movie. It was a "never" to watch a rated "R" movie. The only movies that I can remember watching that were rated "R" were movies in my former AP english literature class-Othello (which actually contained nudity). It's funny because from what I recall, I had couple of friends from the regular classes and they have never seen a rated "R" movie shown in an educational setting. Perhaps being in a gifted class really did come with all the special privileges(even though I was never identified as "gifted"; I was recommended). It just seemed that every book my classmates and I read in AP english could never resist incorporating some kind of sexual element. Indeed, the literary works were very great. And of course, sex is also shown in this movie.
Besides the entertainment value of this movie as well as the complex relationships between the mothers and the daughters, it was certainly a movie about survival. Presently, as I sit in my comfortable room, I could only relate to the need to survive and live a fulfilling life, a life that is so wonderful and full of bliss. Life is about survival. The word "survival" will always vibrate and echoe inside my ears and in my mind. It is a word that summarizes the very essence of life. When you're child or an adolescent, it is about surviving through school. Once you graduate from high school, a new level of survival comes into play; and that is to make a living. Let's face it. Life really does center around making a living. We all need and want to live a life free from having to live a low standard of living like poverty and shortages of healthy food and crapy material possessions. Virtually everyone desires to have a career and be financially stable. In times where the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer, insecure feelings arise and stays in tact somewhere in our minds. The desire to be married to wonderful wife or husband, the desire to feel safe living in a dream home, the desire to not feel frieghtened when you are heavily sick, the desire to give your children and your grandchildren the best possible life, and the list can go on forever...-Indeed, let's face it, MONEY MAY NOT BE EVERYTHING, BUT IT IS CERTAINLY SOMETHING WE ALL STRIVE TO OBTAIN IN ITS VARIOUS FORMS. Money does have its value contrary to the popular belief that you hear about how money isn't everything or how money can't buy love. Like the feather of the swan-This feather may look like any other feather and seem worthless, but "it comes from a far away distance and contains all of my good intentions."
Movie Review: Joyful, Heartbreaking Film Intertwines Past and Present
Summary: 5 Stars
This film reveals the complex mother-daughter relationships of four Chinese families whose roots from the past intertwine within the present causing conflicts and misunderstandings in their lives. Once the stories from the past are told and understood within the context of ancient Chinese culture and values, the mother-daughter bonds of love become even stronger and indestructable.
The stories of the four mothers are told from the cultural viewpoint of the past as flashbacks throughout the film. The viewer learns boys are more revered than girls, a daughter is given in an arranged marriage to a boy from a wealthy family and she is expected to be obedient to her husband and servile to her mother-in-law. The mother-in-law expects a grandchild and blames the daughter-in-law for failing to produce offspring, not recognizing or accepting her son's part in the problem. This particular story was cleverly resolved and had a happy ending due to the creative efforts of the daughter-in-law who used superstition, religion, and cultural values to get out of this unhappy marriage. In another life story, a young attractive daughter is raped by a wealthy businessman, her parents disown her not believing this story. They thought she allowed herself to be seduced due to his wealth. To sustain herself, she became his fourth wife, a concubine but also produced a son, an heir ...whom the first wife took ownership of, as if he were her son. The real mother was not allowed near her own child. Eventually, she proved herself a worthy daughter by a sacrificial ceremony done for her dying mother. Later she reunitd with her first child, a daughter, whom she raised within the businessman's household where the mother enacted an even more heartbreaking sacrifice ...
All the stories from the past are connected in some way with the problems the Chinese daughter's are experiencing in their adult lives. Through flashbacks in time, each daughter recalls her own past and how she felt pushed to do things for her mother, trying to please her, yet feeling unworthy. The film blends the stories of all the characters in a very creative and unique manner helping the viewer understand how the context of Chinese culture became the foundation of love on which all their lives are based.
June one of the American-raised Chinese daughters begins telling her story and the relationhship and conflicts with her mother who had recently passed away. The roots of the misunderstandings become more clear as the viewer learns about June's mother's life in China ... June learns the expectations her mother had for her, the hopes and dreams for her American daughter were part of an unresolved loss her mother never spoke about to June. June learns about a very painful experience in her mother's life which forced her to make decisions no mother should have to make ... However, due to a letter written by Auntie Lindo to June's relatives in China, June is reunited with her mother's secret past. This is the point where everyone who views the film will need a handkerchief or tissues... Erika Borsos [pepper flower
Movie Review: A Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
Summary: "The Joy Luck Club", based on the novel by Amy Tan, is the story of four Chinese mothers and their American daughters. In particular, it is the story of their struggles for independence and self-discovery, told in lushly filmed vignettes that bind together the transcendent theme that self-esteem doesn't come cheaply.---
A feather. The feather of a swan. A feather that carries with it all the hopes and dreams of a Chinese woman who left everything behind as she fled to America. Her hopes and dreams of a daughter who would be born in America, speak "perfect American English", and implicitly, live happy and free of the horrors her mother had fled in China. So begins the "Joy Luck Club", a story of four such Chinese mothers, their struggles for self-discovery in China, and their daughters' equally powerful struggles in America. There are eight stories here, but one overarching theme unifies, reinforces, and amplifies the lesson of self-esteem and it's survival value.
Lindo (Tsai Chin) was sold as a young girl in China. The sale was cemented when she was four or so. She was delivered at age fifteen, to a pre-pubescent husband who likes to play with lizards and a mother-in-law who sees her as nothing more than a grandson factory. Her brilliant escape from this nightmare grips with the same force as her daughter Waverly's escape from a different sort of prison.
An Mei (Lisa Lu) was the daughter of a lowly Fourth Wife, a mere concubine in a patriarchal home. Dealing with her mother's death, and learning the importance of knowing one's worth, sets the stage for her daughter Rose's story. Played brilliantly by Rosalind Chao, Rose finds her voice, and discovers her worth, when coming to grips with a marriage gone sour.
Ying-Ying (France Nuyen) wasn't sold. She wasn't born into a hopeless situation. Hers is a story of self-betrayal, and its price. A self-betrayal so horrifying that it left her soul fractured, sometimes paralyzing her into a catatonic state, unconscious of everything in the world except for one unspeakable regret. In her daughter Lina she sees the same weakness of spirit, the same tragic humility, and, most gratifyingly, a way to recapture what she had previously surrendered. In the defining scene of their story, she tells Lina: "Do you know what you want, I mean from him? Then tell him now. Do not come back until he gives you those things. Losing him does not matter. It is you who will be found." In nurturing her daughter's self-affirmation, she makes huge strides in healing herself.
The feather is Suyuan's (Kieu Chinh). In her escape from China, she carries nothing but her dreams, and the memory of what she left behind in China. It is that story that closes the film, as her daughter June returns to China to discover her mother's past and to find her own fulfillment of her mother's hopes.
Movie Review: ...
Summary: 5 Stars
that mother , i forgot her name, [who's story is where she got sent away by her own mom to marry to young fat-assed kid] reminds me a lot of my own mom. we're chinese and that's exactly how chinese moms nag their kids. i swear i really saw my mother there. and, then the stories where men have concubines was 'kind of' the story of my great grandmother back in china before she moved here. except that she wasn't raped. i don't know how true is the men part though. i know that in china, men have greater importance than women do but the stories portrayed in that film were probably just examples of the worse scenario that could happen to anyone in the world. It is also true how most [not all] whities cannot accept asians in their families. My sister has an American boyfriend and his family are a bunch of idiots who treat us [chinese] like we're bimbos. Like we are less educated and "uncivilised". Back to the topic. I've read people writing in saying that the movie was not well adapted from the book. I've never read the book before but I believe what they say is true because a number of people have wrote in about the same thing. But i don't care if the movie wasn't 100% accurate because it did not fail to grip the hearts of many viewers making it an emotionally superb film! Some people write in and say that they couldn't catch up with the whole 8 stories because they were either too many, or too short. What is wrong with you people? Just because you're mentality disabled in memorizing certain things, don't mean the movie is bad! I mean, the majority of people could follow up, [the majority!!] so i don't see why just because your brain is failing you, you've got to blame it on the movie. Also, you don't have to get all sensitive about "stereotyping". I don't see it being "sterotyping" in the first place. Those stories are at least 50% true about how Asian women are treated back in those days and also the modern days [but the modern day part about their daughters, i think applies to any women of any race at any part of the world]. Besides, people should watch it with a more open mind and see that they were merely stories of "certain" Chinese/Asians. Those stories were possible and i think were most likely to have occured in someone's life. However, it could have been anyone from any race. The only person viewing it as "stereotyping" are those stereotyping it themselves. This FILM overall, is one of the best films I have ever seen. IGNORE THOSE WHO SAY THIS FILM IS BAD. Shut up and go watch it and judge it for yourself.Movie Review: One of my all time favorite movies
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Joy Luck Club," in my opinion is about as close to a perfect movie as I have ever seen. I would not hesitate to give it ten stars out of a possible ten. The mostly Chinese American cast is absolutely superb in their performances. My favorite character is June, the daughter of Suyuan. At the beginning of the movie, her friends and family have gathered together before she is about to go to China to meet two sisters she did not realize she had until after her mother died.
The movie centers around four Chinese women and their daughters. The experiences of the women in China, apparently between the two world wars, were often filled with sorrow and suffering. Their stories are told in Chinese with English subtitles. The experiences of the women in China as young girls and young women strongly influenced how each of them raised their daughters in the United States.
I have only a couple quibbles with this otherwise outstanding movie. One is that the women, as young females in China during the 1930's, are occasionally unusually bold in asserting themselves with men who oppress them. While, as a feminist and a very strong believer in completely equal rights based on gender, I generally applaud most of their actions, it does not seem historically realistic given the unfortunate pervasive second class citizenship of Chinese women during that time period.
"The Joy Luck" is a great film in all respects, the peformances by the actresses, the general storyline, the cinematography and the music. This is a movie I can watch over and again, enjoying very much on each occasion.
The ending to this movie when June meets her two sisters, apparently in Shanghai, is a great scene and very moving, one of the best endings to any movie I have ever seen.