A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

Ozu's sensibility applied to a fragmented Chinese-American family
A widowed Chinese father visits America to see his daughter for the first time in years. For reasons we gradually discover in the course of the film, they are not close, and the daughter, having installed him in her apartment, spends more time away each day, politely avoiding discussing her life with him at all, keeping her emotional distance. We see the father, despite his broken English, take walks, strike up casual conversations with a few Americans, like an unemployed girl lounging by a pool in her bikini, who explains she wants to be a "forensic scientist," to which he replies he was a rocket scientist back in China, a claim we will find out a great deal more about later in the film. The father begins meeting an Iranian woman of his own age in a nearby park each day, discussing their respective family situations, which parallel each other in some unfortunate ways. Beginning to snoop on his daughter a bit, the father finds some surprising things about her life, but angers her...

Father and Daughter: Wayne Wang Back in Form
Mr. Shi (Henry O), a retired Chinese rocket engineer, travels from Beijing to meet his daughter Yilan (Fiehong Yu) living alone in America for the first time in 12 years. Mild-mannered Mr. Shi is a pretty outgoing person, ready to learn and happy to chat with other residents, including "Madame" (Vida Ghahremani), an elderly Iranian lady he met in the nearby park.

Still there is some tension between Mr. Shi and Yilan, who suggests he go on a tour around the country before winter comes. Or maybe she just doesn't want him here. The father is genuinely worried about his daughter, recently divorced. Mr. Shi really wishes her happiness - which means remarriage, perhaps - but his eagerness only makes the situation difficult.

"A Thousand Years of Good Prayers" is based on the novel by Yiyun Li (which I haven't read), but the cinematic adaptation and its low-key approach would remind us of a classic film "Tokyo Story." Like Yasujiro Ozu's touching drama, Wayne Wang...

Language of the hearts
This film is one of the best on humanity, exile and loneliness. The story of two American immigrants who came from the farthest corners of the globe and speak two entirely different languages ties humanity in the strongest way. As Rumi said in his poem, the language of the hearts is far more expressive than what the tongue utters.

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