Иткің қолдар (Itking qoldar)

1991 comedy drama film by Ang Lee

Pushing Hands is a 1991 comedy drama film directed by Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee, his feature directorial debut. It stars Sihung Lung as a Chinese tai chi master living in New York, who struggles to find his place in the world. The film shows the contrast between traditional Chinese ideas of Confucian relationships within a family and the much more informal Western emphasis on the individual. Together with Ang Lee's two following films, The Wedding Banquet (1993) and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), it forms his "Father Knows Best" trilogy, each of which deals with conflicts between an older and more traditional generation and their children as they confront a world of change. The Taiwanese American co production was produced independently by Lee and Ted Hope, and features several of Lee's frequent collaborators, including screenwriter James Schamus and editor Tim Squyres. It was released theatrically in Taiwan, but did not see a wide release in the United States for several years, after the success of The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman. It was critically well received, and earned several accolades, including three Golden Horse Awards.

Chu is an elderly Chinese tai chi teacher who has recently emigrated from Beijing to New York City to live with his son, Alex, and his family. Chu finds life in America difficult and alienating, he doesn't speak English and his American daughter in law Martha doesn't speak Mandarin, making mutual comprehension and communication nearly impossible, with the bilingual Alex forced to act as interpreter. Martha, meanwhile, finds Chu increasingly insufferable, his noisy and obscure daily routine distracting her from writing her second novel. Every Sunday, Chu teaches tai chi classes at the local Chinese cultural center. During one such class, he meets Mrs. Chen, a cooking teacher and fellow expatriate from Beijing. The two begin to bond over their shared background and similar stations in life. Tensions between Chu and Martha escalate during an attempt by him to cure her stomach cramp using chi inadvertently causes internal bleeding and forces her to be briefly hospitalized. Martha tells her husband that she can't stand being Chu's de facto caregiver, and tries to convince them to take her mother's offer to buy them a larger house so Chu and her don't have to share a space. Alex explains that he feels obligated to take care of his father in the tradition of Confucian familial relations, where a child will take care of a parent when they grow old as they once took care of them. One night while Alex is out, Chu goes on a walk against Martha's wishes. When he doesn't return home before Alex does, the son assumes he's lost and goes looking for him. When he can't find him, he suffers a nervous breakdown, blaming Martha and trashing his kitchen before leaving. Chu eventually returns home without incident, and despite his and Martha's inability to understand each other, they manage to communicate and clean up the mess in the kitchen. Alex returns home hours later, intoxicated, and attempts to smash his head into the bathroom wall before ranting to Jeremy about how neither Chu nor Martha care about him. After Alex sobers up, he resolves to Martha to send his father to a retirement home, but when he goes to tell his father, he finds him emotionally distraught over a photograph of his wife. Chu admits that during the Cultural Revolution, a roving group of Red Guards attacked his family instead of him because he was a tai chi master and they feared challenging him. Chu protected Alex but his wife was fatally injured, and he blames himself for her death. The Chu and Chen families go on a picnic. The groups go hiking, but the elderly lag behind. Chen then has a breakdown and admits to the Chu that her daughter does not want her to be around anymore, that she overheard the two parties talking about setting their parents up together so they would leave their families. Bo Z. Wang as Alex Chu , Chu's son, he acts as an interpreter between Mr. Chu and Martha, but he deliberately mistranslates to reduce tensions between the two parties. Deb Snyder as Martha Chu , Alex's European American wife. Martha, who does not speak or understand Chinese. Lee first developed the idea of a film about an old man and old woman falling in love in front of their children, but did not start writing the script until he learned of a script competition being held by the Government Information Office of Taiwan. Lee began writing in February 1990, while practicing tai chi at a nearby community college. At the end of March, the script for Pushing Hands was submitted along with the one for The Wedding Banquet, which he had already written. On the day of the shooting, the crew set up a table and incense, and held a gong ceremony, a practice Lee would continue into his future projects. The film was shot entirely on location in New York City, making it the first Taiwanese film to be shot entirely in the United States. The Chu residence was a house located in the North Riverdale sub neighborhood of The Bronx. Ang requested that the house have very large windows in order to photograph the interior from the outside. Because the house didn't have any furniture, the crew transported furniture from Manhattan, but Ang was not satisfied. Ang moved his own furniture onto the set, which was later destroyed in the scene where Alex trashes the kitchen. Donald Lyons wrote that Lee's filming style displayed "a mastery of the visual dynamics of interior spaces and their psychic pressures."

Via the Internet Archive .