Message from fwiley

[Anonymous]

Shower is a movie based on two brothers and their father. The eldest brother is DaMing he is educated and very much in the corporate world "enjoying" all the benefits of modern technology (Trophy wife, cell phones, computers, etc...). DaMing misinterprets a drawing/letter from his mentally retarded brother, believing that his father has died DaMing reluctantly returns to his home to a tried part of Bejing to put family business in order.

DaMing is embarassed by his father because he runs a bathhouse and of his brother because he is mentally challenged. He feels superior to his family because he escaped the backward town that represents his father's world, and because of his own hard won material "success."

The true beauty of this movie is that DaMing begins to see his father through a different lens. His father, Mr. Liu, is not just a bathhouse owner, he is a marriage counscellor, a sage and a valuable leader in the community. The father dies at the end of the movie. DaMing, in the end, realizes that with all his education and gifts he is really caught up in a meaningless rat race and that his father was the real sucess. He sees his father as a very important man, who labored in love. The community seems as though it cannot exsist without Mr. Liu. With big shoes to fill DaMing sheds the material world/modernity to take care of his brother, the bathouse and the community. He takes on his fathers role as the community pillar. This movie is a must see. I don't know how to use this movie in my curriculum--but I might just find a way!

Frank