The Missing –
Taiwan, 2003
Towards the beginning of Kang-sheng Lee’s The Missing, a three-year-old boy disappears.
At the time of his disappearance, the child is at a park with his grandmother
(Lu Yi-ching). She steps away for a moment, leaving him in the care a young
girl probably only five years his senior. The girl, completely unaware of the
seriousness of the situation, rather nonchalantly says something about the boy
leaving with his grandfather and resumes playing on the bars. What follows is
one of the more painful, heart-wrenching scenes I’ve seen in some time, as this
poor woman frantically runs from person to person, from authority figure to
authority figure, asking the same question: Have you seen my grandson? Many
people simply ignore her; others repeat advice she’s already received – make an
announcement, go to the police, ask those children over there. A few even chastise
her from having left the child alone in the first place. Eventually the woman succumbs
to her overwhelming grief, drops to the ground, and sobs.
Running parallel to the grandmother’s plight is that of a
young high school student (Chang Chea) who seems to go through life in a daze.
When he should be in school, he is instead sitting in a computer center
shooting at virtual enemies and communicating with the only other person there
through text messages. The boy is so transfixed by the virtual world that he
doesn’t even react to signs that the man is in extreme physical pain and having
trouble breathing. When the boy eventually goes home, he hardly even reacts to
the shreds of newspaper that extend from his apartment all the way down the
stairs and out the apartment door. He has seen it before, and he had grown
desensitized to it. For a time, his connection to the grandmother is unclear,
and viewers may be initially frustrated trying to figure out just who he is. It
will not spoil anything to reveal that he is not the missing boy years later.
The film takes place during a time of transition for Taipei.
The park the grandmother is in is still a work in progress, Taipei 101 has yet
to be completed, and the people of Taiwan are dealing with the horrible specter
of SARS, which haunted parts of Asia from November 2002 to July 2003. Perhaps
this accounts for some of the disconnect we see in the film. It’s not that the people
the grandmother meets don’t care, but rather that they are slow to respond
emotionally. Much of the time, their first instinct is to ask a ton of repetitive
questions or to try to avoid involvement entirely. The grandmother’s response
is always the same: to keep running, as if scouring the city the following day
will yield a more positive result than it did the day before. Viewers may find
themselves wondering just how much time has transpired at certain points in the
film. However, in this film, time is not necessarily linear, and what happens is
an earlier scene may not be internalized until a later one. It is equally hard to
say when the feeling of loss is hitting these characters and, in one case, whether
it is hitting before or after tragedy has already struck. A case could be made
for either interpretation.
The Missing was the
directorial debut of Ming-Liang Tsai’s protégé and frequent leading man, Kang-sheng
Lee. He has since directed two other films, 2007’s Help Me, Eros, a challenging film to say the least, and 2009’s Taipei 24H, which I have not seen. As a
director, he seems rather skilled at filming quiet moments of desperation and
using imagery to help viewers connect the individuals we see in front of us to
the larger world surrounding these characters. I saw this clearly in the
grandmother’s unsuccessful attempts to contact her son after her grandson goes
missing and in the image of unwanted lunches hanging from the branches of a
tree in a park – a rejection of the care that went into getting them in the
first place. Also, like Tsai, Lee employs long sequences to drive home the
often desperate situations of his leading characters, and he shoots many of
these sequences from a distance, giving the audience the feeling that they are
looking in on these characters from afar, as if they are practically spying on
them. The technique is surprisingly effective.
In one of these moments, we witness the grandmother ask a
young man to take her to see her husband, whom she intends to ask for help
searching for the missing child. To our surprise, she is taken to the Taipei
County Military Memorial. What follows is one of the most moving scenes in the
film and a possible indirect reference to the legacy of SARS. As for those who
question precisely what transpires in the scene, it is not a stretch to believe
that when all earthly hope seems lost that someone will turn upward for
assistance.
The Missing is a
moving film that seems a tad bit too long, even at just 84 minutes, and yet those
who stick with it will be rewarded in the end, for when the film finally connects
its two storylines, it achieves a sense of both urgency and emotion that is
quite involving. We feel for these characters. As for the ending, while some
people will say it is open to interpretation, only one explanation seems completely
plausible. The Missing is not a film
in which a great deal happens. It is
a film that is best felt, and as the
film demonstrates time and time again, empathy may not be so easy to find
anymore. (on DVD in Region 3)
3 stars
*The Missing is in
Mandarin and Taiwanese with English subtitles.
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