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A Thousand Years of Good Prayers


     

SYNOPSIS

 

QUOTES

 
 





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Family ties bind us together in visceral ways, but the forces of modern life often seem to drive parents and children apart. Elderly Mr. Shi (Henry O), a widower and a retired scientist, has arrived from Beijing to spend time with his divorced daughter, Yilan (Faye Yu). He hopes to help her sort out her life in this strange new country. That, after all, is his duty as a parent. Twelve years ago, Yilan came to the United States to study, and ended up staying and working at the local university in this unnamed Midwestern town.



Mr. Shi finds her daughter too quiet, living in a nondescript apartment complex and leading what seems like an empty routine existence. To learn more about her, he goes through her things while she’s at work – listening to a CD on her bureau, looking in a drawer. In the evening he cooks up multi-course dinners for her, and tries to engage her in conversation. Yilan remains cautious; she doesn’t want to share her private life with him. His prying and lecturing are becoming a nuisance.



Mr. Shi cannot understand what is happening. He comes from a generation when parents remained part and parcel of their children’s lives, as long as they lived. The only person he feels close to in this cold new universe is Madam (Vida Ghahremani) , an elderly and vivacious Iranian woman living with her son and his family. They begin to meet regularly on a local park bench. Since they can’t speak much English, they end up conversing in a mix of their own language and a smattering of English words. The miracle is that they seem to communicate easily while Mr. Shi and his own daughter find themselves at an impasse.



One evening Yilan doesn’t come home – she says she’s staying with a friend. The next day Mr. Shi takes a bus to her university to try to find her. There he can’t get beyond a security guard. Back at the apartment, he waits for her at the bus stop, but bus after bus go by without Yilan. Late at night he finally sees her – getting out of a car driven by a man. It’s clear they are having a lover’s tiff.



At home Mr. Shi forces her to explain herself. It turns out that Yilan has been having an affair with a married man – a Russian whose wife and daughter are in Russia. Tonight Yilan has told him to reconcile with them.



The divide between Mr. Shi and her daughter is generational and geographical; it is also in the language. For Yilan, expressing herself in English is far easier than in Chinese. “If you grew up in a language in which you never learned to express your feels,” she says to her father, “it would be easier to talk in a new language. It makes you a new person.”



Mr. Shi has his secrets, too. He’s doesn’t like to talk about the past, particularly the painful events of the Cultural Revolution. Although he tells everyone he was a rocket scientist – it impresses them – it turns out he was demoted when suspected of having an affair with a co-worker. In the puritanical state, a married man being friendly with an unmarried woman was a no-no. “We didn’t even touch each other,” Mr. Shi tells Yilan.



With the air cleared, they have a calmer conversation outside on a park bench. The next day Mr. Shi sets off on a train journey to see a bit of America before he returning to China.

PRODUCTION TEAM

Director Wayne Wang
Scriptwriter Yiyun Li
Based on the short story by Yiyun Li
Executive Producers Yasushi Kotani, Taizo Son, Jooick Lee
Producers Yukie Kito, Rich Cowan, Wayne Wang
Cinematographer Patrick Lindenmaier
Editor Deirdre Slevin

CAST

Yilan Faye Yu
Mr. Shi Henry O
Madame Vida Ghahremani
Boris Pasha Lychnikoff

 

"Wayne Wang has come full circle, returning to the small, intimate films like Chan Is Missing, Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart and Eat a Bowl of Tea that established the Hong Kong-born Chinese American writer-director, best known for his deft screen adaptation of The Joy Luck Club. Wang's staging of the inevitable climactic scene is inspired. Rich in revealing detail and apt in its use of everyday Spokane settings, Wang remains a master explorer of the landscape of the human heart.” - Kevin Thomas, LA Times

A gentle, pleasantly unrushed piece of moviemaking. There’s a tonic simplicity to how it gets the job done, A Thousand Years studies the subtle day-to-day tensions between Mr. Shi and Yilan before building, in its circumspect way, to a big emotional resolution. A more ambitious film might have forgone this predictable denouement; a less accomplished one would have fumbled its touching sincerity.” - Nathan Lee, NY Times

“Wang's sharply lensed A Thousand Years of Good Prayers is so buoyant and decidedly modest in tone and scale that you almost believe it might float away from the screen.” - Aaron Hillis, Village Voice
“This is familiar territory for director Wayne Wang, and it’s an absolute joy to see him return to it. More pensive and mature than his earlier works, more intimate and soulful than The Joy Luck Club, in the end it proves life-affirming and gently profound. As close to poetic realism as anything the movies have given us this year.” - Wade Major, LA City Beat
“Director Wayne Wang has made a lovely film here about the often complicated relationship between fathers and their adult daughters. Meticulously paced and beautifully shot, Cinematographer Patrick Lindenmaier has executed each moment to perfection The overall effect of the film is soothing, thoughtful, and deeply introspective. The quiet moments give you plenty of time and headspace to ponder the specifics of great filmmaking that sometimes get lost.” – Kim Voynar, Cinematical

 
Date for DVD release subject to change.