Movie Review: The Journey 一路有你

Few of my friends had been dissing “The Journey”, a local production that a lot of civilians took part in (as supporting players or cameo appearances) as an artistic / high-art movie, a yawning fest. That was even before they watched the movie. Just because it is a non-slapstick comedy showing in Chinese New Year doesn’t mean it is an artistic movie. I’ll tell you what is artistic / high-art: movies directed by Wong Kar Wai and Tsai Ming Liang. Tell me honestly you sit through one whole movie of theirs and understand what it is about. And those movies win awards… lots of it. I don’t know why, go ask the juries of those movie festivals what is it that they like about those movies.

“The Journey”, on the other hand, has a simple storyline. It is a tale about culture, about love and respect, about friendship, about life. Now before you start dissing it again, all those elements were told in a touching little story. It can be divided into three parts (spoiler ahead, stop here if you have not watched the movie thus wanting to keep the movie plot as secretive as possible):

Part 1: The return of the prodigal daughter… along with her Caucasian boyfriend Benji. He is an “ang-moh”, or a “kuai-lou” a.k.a. “ghost” in common Cantonese. He doesn’t understand or appreciate the traditional Chinese culture. He thinks his soon-to-be father-in-law is conservative and backward thinking. It doesn’t help that his girlfriend seems to give in to whatever her father wants, no matter how ridiculous it sounds. Tension arises between the two men, and between the two lovers as well. When the girlfriend tells him she’s pregnant, he falls into a dilemma: is he ready to be a father?

There is a scene in this first part where Benji gave a chicken head to the old man and resulted in a fight between the father and the daughter. I admit I didn’t know about this taboo, despite growing up in a traditional Chinese family. The auntie sitting beside me, however, let out a disbelief “oh no” when she saw that. This demonstrates the generation gaps that is growing wider and wider with the younger generation starting to ignore those old traditions. The daughter speaks in a broken Cantonese and very often mixes English in her conversation. Is this not what happens to so many of us now? Many of us can’t utter a complete Chinese phrase without mixing in some foreign languages. This part may be the one closest to you and me as it depicts the daily life of a typical Chinese during CNY.

Part 2: The journey of two men. In this second part of the story, Benji agrees to take his soon-to-be father-in-law on a journey to deliver wedding invitation to his old buddies from his school days. They embark on a road trip with Benji’s bike and find themselves in places like Penang and Johor. The friends, including the father-in-law, formed a band of 12 animals in Chinese Zodiac. One of the friends dreams of building a balloon using plastic bags he collected over the years. Another friend is a Malay woman who refused to be the “snake” when they were children and insisted to be a “cat” which is not one of the 12 zodiacs. As they meet more and more friends, and Benji learns more and more about Chinese culture, he closes the gap between him and his father-in-law.

In this part, which is the main story of the film (thus the movie title), we get to see some of the festivity celebration in Penang and Johor (though the movie gets one critical part wrong: the Penang prayer celebration 拜天公 happens on the eighth night of CNY, one day after 人日 a.k.a. the birthday; in the movie the birthday happened after the prayer). Also, we see that Benji started to accept and embrace the fact that he’s about to be a father, and starts to respect the old man of his fiancé even showing him kindness in a few situations though the two men practically don’t understand each other. Sure, it is not everyday we have a journey that mirrors this story but the underlying moral and culture teaching is still something we as movie audience can appreciate.

Part 3: The happy ending. When the old man learns that the friend which aspires to build the balloon had passed away, he decides to finish the task himself in honor of his friend. Soon many of his friends join in, and the task is led by Benji. They successfully build the balloon, which the father-in-law intends to ride up to the sky with the ashes of his friend to scatter it from the balloon. The movie then ends with a wedding banquet, where all of the friends attend (except for the dearly departed balloon visionary, of course) and even Benji’s parents make an appearance.

In this part, the balloon storyline is of course the plot line to build a dramatic impact. When the balloon is being released to the air, you can feel the hair behind your neck stands (in a good way, not in the context of a horror movie) by the grand looking of the balloon and the dramatic music playing behind it (was it MayDay’s OAOA?). The wedding banquet scene, where everyone knows the movie is coming to an end plays like a fairy tale “happily ever after” vibe. When the end credit rolls with the song written and sang by Benji playing behind, we get to see a series of behind-the-scene footage where Benji learned some Chinese and Cantonese words then put them into his song, we are left with the feeling of satisfaction. Satisfied that we finally watch a CNY movie worth watching, albeit a non-conventional one.

So, if you have not watched this movie (I realize I asked you to stop reading a while back if you have not watched the movie, but I’m pretty sure many of you kept reading anyway), go catch it in cinema while it is still playing. Come on, if you can spend money on watching some craps like Ah Beng, Hello Babies or From Vegas to Macau, you definitely can churn out more money to support a local production that is entertaining and touching at the same time.

And no, it is not an artistic / high-art movie.