Life in a small town is as big as your feeling about it…
We idealize our childhoods in our adult years because it makes it easier to assume that growing up was not as hard as we thought it was at the time. I find myself these days looking back and thinking I was worried about all the wrong things, putting too much energy into things I could not change. Sadly, I find that I cannot remember the names of a lot of my childhood school pals. I remember their faces but their names are gone. I remember the feelings behind their faces so that’s a substitute for not remembering names. Watching Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Green, Green Grass of Home, I remember my childhood again with all the joy and pain that went it. Because within the film are the seeds of childhood’s past.
Ta-Nien (Kenny Bee) has just transferred to an agricultural town to help his sister who, after her husband moves to a new job, cannot continue to teach at the local school. His arrival energizes the children and causes a stir with the locals as he’s charming, playful and completely engages with the children under his wing. His efforts to help the children don’t always go to plan as tensions boil over between the students as they make their way through the school year. On top of that, he has another teacher, Chen Su-Yun (Meifeng Chen) he’s interested in and a girl who was obsessed with him in Taipei comes to drag him back to the city in front of the town. So this year will be interesting for all concerned.
Despite the film headlining the singer and actor, the film as it unfolds isn’t really about Kenny Bee’s character. Yes, Nien is the mainstay throughout the film but the real story is that of the town and of life as it unwinds for all its residents. It’s a sleepy town where the people live off the land and go about their lives as best they can. The children are our guides as they try and understand their parents while making their way to and from school. We see them get into trouble, attend class and generally be children. Some like the children the class nickname “The Three Musketeers” are especially good at making trouble for themselves but Hou is more interested in how the children cope with things than what every event along the way does to the class. Their parents tell them to do one thing but then contradict themselves by doing another. The pain of not knowing why their parents do the things they do hurts some of the class, even when their teacher and their parents know better. Time passes, problems surface and subside. The countryside sits alongside the town as people go about their business. Along the way, we learn about the community in and around the school and how everyone knows what the other person is doing simply by being in close proximity to each other. It’s interesting for me to watch this as I lived in a small town in North Dublin growing up and can see the attitudes of the children and the adults in the people I grew up with. Small towns have their own way of viewing things. This does not make them bad or good, merely a different perspective. The town in Green, Green Grass of Home have achieved an equilibrium with their surroundings and simply go at their own pace. All the while, the beautiful cinematography of Kun-Hou Chen blends the greens, blues and greys of the town and the countryside into the film along with the same love song plays for Ta-Nien and Su-Yun.
The overall thought of the human cast is that they all are trying to find their way but Ta-Nien is our avatar of how the film sees itself. He’s an upstanding citizen and tries to set a good example for the children but again, Hou is more interested in how in trying to do the right thing, Ta-Nien ends up hurting others. His attempts to teach the children a lesson about helping the environment backfire when one child deals with an insensitive classmate to teases him about his older father who does things that countermand what Ta-Nien teaches them. His attempts to deal with his life back in Taipei end up hurting his relationship with Ms. and her family as the community think ill of flashy, trashy people. But once he adjusts, just as we do, to life in the town does Ta-Nien successfully figure out the town and how to live in it. Hou Hsiao-hsien’s point in the film is that going against the flow of things doesn’t help you in the long run. Only by matching the speed and direction of the metaphoric river can you find your place. Again, Hou manages to pull this off without it becoming about Ta-Nien. He wants me to see the smaller view out of the window so I can appreciate the effort in viewing the scene. The best trick he pulls is that it happens in front of you, not to you.
I found myself visiting a small, rural town in Taiwan in the early 80’s for a brief period and coming to know the people there as they lived their lives. I learned about the trials and tribulations of a small group of children, their teachers and the people who loved them. While you can argue that nothing insightful has been learned, nothing damaging has been imparted by taking the time to sit down to the film. Green Green Grass of Home is a good film that you can like without needing to justify its existence.