Message from smilanick

[Anonymous]

The movie Quitting, directed by Zhang Yang, is the story of a real life Chinese actor and his battle with drugs and finally his recovery with the support of a very loving family. Jia Hongsheng and his family, the orderlies, and friends are the actual people playing themselves. The irony in this is that Jia uses the excuse of quitting acting because its phony.

His parents realize that their son is heavily into drugs and his father opts for early retirement and they move in with their son and their daughter (the sister) who has been enabling Jia. Jia is disgusted with his parents, repeatedly calling them “peasants” because they are not from a city. He is critical of how they speak and so forth. The parents basically serve him, wait on him hand and foot and he continues to disrespect them. He is obsessed with John Lennon and starts saying that he is the son of Lennon, denying the lineage he has from his parents. This sends his mother over the edge. Perhaps the director is making a commentary about the influence of the west, breaking up the lineage.

Once he becomes clean, he embraces his Chinese heritage and no longer claims to be the progeny of John Lennon. At about the half way point you realize that this has become a stage play and you see the separate rooms of the apartment divided from the new focal point of the audience, a very nice touch in my opinion. I really liked all the symbolism.

The film is rated R, however I did not notice any really violent scenes, the worst was when he slapped his father. Additionally, there were no truly illicit graphic drug scenes. Although this is not something I could show my students, basically because it would not fit into the Social Studies standards and of course its rating, I think it would be meaningful to them in that it covers a lot of topics and problems they are having, such as drug issues, identity, caring parents, etc. I enjoyed the film.