Monday, March 11, 2013

Sweet Land & A Simple Life

Sweet Land (Ali Selim, 2005)
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Rating: Q=6, P=5 / Average OJ
Scale 1=3, Scale 2=3, Scale 3=3, Scale 4=2

Family, Heritage, Romance, Immigrant, Farming

A lovely, free-spirited piece about finding your own path and standing up for yourself. Life is beautiful and it is a challenge. "There are many kinds of happy," as Inge says. Interesting plot devices shift between present day and the early 20th century, which at first was jarring, but grows on you and creates wonderful parallels and meaning.


A Simple Life (Ann Hui, 2011)
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Rating: Q=5, P=5 / Average OJ
Scale 1=2, Scale 2=3, Scale 3=3, Scale 4=2

Foreign, Aging, Grieving, Family, Complex Relationships, Docu-Drama  

Films about old age are hard to get right but A Simple Life manages to capture the ambiguity of emotions that the reality of the aging population today stirs up within us. Having just recently lost my grandmother who lived her last few years of life with severe dementia, this film touched a nerve with me. A Simple Life is about age and grief but it is more about helping, accepting, and giving back. Roger may be Ah Tao's master and Ah Tao may be his maid but the history and circumstances blur their roles.
 
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