‘CRAZY RICH ASIANS’
“CRAZY Rich Asians” is a movie to be enjoyed and to be analyzed. For some time now the economic growth phenomenon has shifted to this part of the world leaving the Old World and the Americas astounded. Just think how China has lifted millions out of poverty. There are more billionaires there than in the West. How Singapore, an Asian port somnolent for years under the tropical sun has re-invented itself into having revolutionized its agriculture turning farmers into middle- class citizens, Vietnam catching up after the throes of a long war. Even us, the Philippines suddenly in the high economic growth rate level, at least for some. For sure to be on display soon if not already here.
Modernity has come to these Asian societies and more with the advent of economic growth. There is money to live on, money to waste on luxury, money enough to go down many generations. It is a different way of living from the hand-to-mouth, the subsistence status and the just-enough. The presence of a huge disposable income changes lifestyles, affects values, strays from tradition. What was a way of life with a reasonable amount becomes high living due to unreasonably large amounts.
The movie comes from the book, Crazy Rich Asians, by Kevin Kwan. how crazily some rich Asians spend their money – the pink mansion, pink car, pink clothes, pink fur coat of one such rich but zany person, the luxury cars meant for high- speed expressways and perilous mountain roads used in cities with bad roads - tion of jewelry, furniture, art, clothes. As in huge emeralds and rubies, faux European vintage furniture, popular artists’ oeuvre and haute couture.
Well, the book is more than that. The author actually has a facility for the English language, writes with wit and humor and presents characters that express their being caught between modernity and tradition in everyday human life concerns. Who will you marry? Where will you live? What is the company you respect and follow? What do you want to do now and in the future? How do you meld the past and the present in this age of too much?
Amid the comings and goings, the gossip and schemes, the forces in flux in a modernizing society like Singapore and echoed all over Asia today, there are indeed conflicts to be faced, struggles to be won or lost and ideas to be valued, discarded, discussed, debated.
The world is a huge place but when you identify as a society, it is small enough to be like one family, a clan or a tribal group. The members can be in New York City or Paris or Shanghai or Singapore but they unerringly see each other, understand what each is doing, and calculate what is going on in order to make it news, public knowledge, conjecture. Here the values, new or old, play out against the social background they come from no matter how far away, how alien, how emphatically different some of the elements in their surroundings can be.
Rachel Chu is a Chinese-American economics professor whose mother immigrated from mainland China without her father (mainland China is still a dubious background to rich overseas Chinese considering the social upheaval that the communist revolution brought about). Nicky Yeong is a Singaporean from a traditional Chinese family that has enriched itself beyond belief over generations in their new country. When these two meet, two belief systems collide and defensive measures are necessarily taken that do not pull any punches. The supporting characters take over the plot.
Anyway, see it for its over-the-top consumerism, its trying to keep a balance between the old and the new, the characters that this created confusion on how to settle matters.
The acting is good enough, the parties, costumes, dialogue mesmerizing for their scenes of out-of-reality within reality juxtaposition.
The mahjong scene was dramatic though somewhat unclear in the mahjong tile details as I do not play mahjong. But I am told that it was a very individualistic mahjong (Singaporean?) and also incomprehensible to mahjong players here. But it didn’t take away the drama that the heroine won big time.
I also loved the opening scene in - senger jet to Singapore with its deliberately subdued atmosphere of quiet conversation, comfortable lounging chairs and attentive stewardesses, the enclave of the select who can pay the high fares in contrast at the end of the movie when the heroine goes back to reality from the high life, high end and high drama of the story. She ends up in the economy section of the passenger jet with its mix of jostling passengers getting to their seats, heaving their luggage into the overhead compart to cheek in the aisle, in the seating. Here is the everyday, all of us together in one place sans the trappings of inequality, just people getting ready to settle in until their destination. How correct, how apt, how true.
Enjoy the movie.