FFWD Weekly
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Film by Jaime Frederick The clash between tradition and progress is central in Shower, the new film from Chinese director Zhang Yang. A lightweight comedy for the most part, the movie also ponders what is lost in the constant rush towards modernization. Similar themes have been addressed before in classic films like Yasujiro Ozu’s Good Morning and in those as recent as Hamam: The Turkish Bath. Both of those films acknowledge the inevitability of progress, or what passes for it, but the idea is updated nicely here, even if Shower is sweetly innocuous cinema. The setting for this minor parable is a dilapidated Beijing bathhouse run by an old man (Zhu Xu) and his mentally challenged son (Jiang Wu). The facility, like the rest of the surrounding neighbourhood, is slated for imminent demolition to make way for a new urban development. As is often the case in situations like this, it’s hinted that little thought has been given to the sense of community that is shared by the bathhouse’s customers – the highrises and shopping centres will go up regardless of their effect on the quality of life of the residents. It’s possible that Zhang is merely nostalgic for a time when people had time to convene publicly in a communal setting. Stories of commercial development in contemporary China aren’t all that rare anymore, but Zhang is concerned with the effect of all this activity on society and its cultural traditions. Where, he seems to ask, will the elderly men now go to languour in an afternoon of hot baths, massages and cricket fights? It is cloying at times, but Zhang plays down the sentimentality and introduces conflict in the form of an elder son to the bathhouse proprietor – Da Ming is a successful businessman who’s returned to Beijing believing his father is already dead. The old man is surely on his last legs, but like the crickets his patrons pit against each other, he still has a lot of fight left in his hunched body. Through the course of the story, Da Ming finally begins to understand what his father values about the bathhouse is something beyond the meagre material rewards it provides him. In this sense, Shower is a cautionary tale that reminds us of the need for human interaction and social responsibility as we build more and bigger communities to contain our societies. There’s a resigned acceptance of the ever-changing world at the heart of this film, but it’s coupled with the suggestion that we must pause to understand one another. We’d be well served if more of our own city planners, and citizens in general, took the time to watch this film.

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