Old and New
I have never considered the relevance of a theatre's
architecture to a film's plot until I experienced
Shower, Chinese director Zhang Yang's second
feature. I went to see Shower at Vancouver's
Tinseltown Theatre Complex, which is on the third
floor of a new shopping centre, still partially under
construction. The tacky shopping mall is decorated
with neon lights and painted with various pastel
colors, making it quite hideous. This, of course, is
not unusual for a mall, but the shopping centre is
located in the heart of the city's historic Chinatown,
making it quite distinct in contrast to the ornate,
time-honored designs of the buildings that surround
it.
Chinatown is a small, dense area, filled with markets,
Buddhist temples, gardens, and cultural centres.
Several of the shops cater to tourists looking for
trinkets and gadgets, while others offer a huge
selection of dried goods and fresh vegetables used for
traditional medicines and dishes. The contrast between
Chinatown and the new theatre complex struck me,
because Shower directs its viewers' attention to the
conflict between technological progress in a "modern
world" and the simplicity of venerable customs, like
the Chinese bathhouse.
Shower opens with techno music pumping and a bizarre
scene set in the super-modern city, Shenzhen: Da Ming
(Pu Cun Xia) stands in front of a stall and inserts
some coins, whereupon his height and weight are
calculated by a computer. He enters the stall and
removes his business suit: soon we see that he's in a
shower, where he rotates as he is rubbed down with
whirling brushes, soaped up, sprayed by jets, and
blown dry by fans. The whole contraption seems
ridiculous but a likely coming innovation in a world
intent on becoming more efficient, and in effect, more
reliant on machines. The human shower is a replica of
the car wash (which we see later in the film, to
emphasize the comparison), suggesting that workers see
themselves as "vehicles," ever on the move in a
competitive city where time is money.
Da Ming is a successful businessman in Shenzhen, and
rarely returns home to rural Northern China, still
home to his father, Master Liu (Zhu Xu). Da Ming
receives a mysterious postcard from his younger,
mentally-challenged brother, Er Ming (Jiang Wu), which
he interprets to mean that his father is dead. Da
Ming returns to his father's bathhouse, which is
frequented by men of all ages who enjoy hot baths,
massages, fire cup treatments, pedicures, and social
interactions each day. Master Liu is actually quite
alive and his bathhouse is full of activity,
demonstrated in several humourous scenes. For
instance, two elderly men bring their crickets to
fight and the loser ends up accusing the other of
giving steroids to the champion cricket, or a chubby
teen belts out "O Sole Mio" while showering, to the
delight of Er Ming and dismay of every other patron.
Er Ming may be simple, but he is able to recognize the
needs of others, and so symbolizes innocence and
decency. Er Ming gives his aging father much pleasure
as they joyously perform their daily rituals, such as
preparing the bathhouse for customers, or racing each
other through the streets during their evening jog. Er
Ming also enjoys listening to his father reflect on
the past. In several flashbacks, Master Liu recalls
his childhood in the dry Tibetan desert. Here we see
how he has come to cherish water, for water was so
scarce that people sometimes couldn't bathe for
months. The flashbacks reveal the value of water in
his ancient culture: for Master Liu, it "not only
washes your body, but cleanses your soul." Er Ming
loves these stories, and shares his father's passion
or water. But if father and younger son are totally
compatible, Da Ming never seems at ease in this
environment where the pace of life is so slow.
To motivate Da Ming's change of heart, the film
illustrates his modern lifestyle to the point of
redundancy. For example, Da Ming buys his father a
massage machine and repeatedly uses his cell phone,
almost as if he's trying hard to hang onto his
faster-paced life. And at first he is reluctant to
take on duties in the bathhouse, but events prevent
him from retuning to Shenzhen as he planned. Then he
learns that the bathhouse and nearby homes are going
to be bulldozed and replaced by a shopping mall and
high-rise apartments. To my relief, the bathhouse
clients do not rally to save their establishment in a
cheesy, Hollywood-style scenario, but rather,
reminisce and then decide to move on and adapt to
their situation. Da Ming comes to a new appreciation
for his father, and eventually, for the
values of the bathhouse community. A crisis with his
brother demonstrates Da Ming's crucial turnabout. When
he tries to place Er Ming in a home, even though one
of the bathhouse patrons offers to care for him, Da
Ming suffers for it: watching Er Ming tackled to the
ground by three attendants. Recalling the shower at
the film's beginning, this scene shows that
institutionalization can only be degrading and
impersonal.
And yet, Shower is not didactic, insisting that the
old ways are right and progress is wrong. Instead, it
looks for a balance. Zhang Yang subtly shows the
importance of human interaction in nearly poetic
moments, as when a tray with a pot of tea floats
between Master Liu and a client in a bath, or when the
opera singer presents Er Ming with a walkman playing
"O Sole Mio," so that he can always listen to his
favorite tune and remember the times that they shared.
Shower encourages viewers to take time out of their
own busy lives to reflect on the communal customs of
the past and maintain genuine connections with others.
