Crazy Rich Asians was tonight's tv movie. A romcom, reminiscent of the old musical style. Awesome, sounded great, and this was another I hadn't seen.. being stuck in Ireland for the pandemic is at least helping me get through my film list..
Aw man, it's great! What a feelgood movie - and the time just flew, as we watched a young Chinese-American woman navigate her way through her boyfriend's well-to-do family, based in Singapore (which they, apparently, basically own). Invited to accompany him to his friend's wedding there, she goes to the trouble of learning Chinese, which isn't her native tongue, really tries to fit in - but all she gets is hostility: from his ex, the ex's bitchy friends, and his mother, for whom she just isn't good enough. Thank goodness an ex-college buddy of hers lives there too! so she gets some support. Meantime, we get crazy super-rich lifestyles, song and dance numbers - terrific entertainment! Even my mother liked it, and she's hard to please - why, it even inspired her to unload about her own experience with her disapproving mother-in-law.
Highly recommended, a real mood-lifter.
So, to balance that, right afterwards they showed I, Daniel Blake - in which Ken Loach takes us through the story of a builder, middle-aged now, who has a heart attack on the job, in Newcastle. His medics are adamant that he's unfit to work - but for some inconceivable reason, the benefits office decides that he's ineligible for disability benefits. He applies for an appeal, but hears nothing - and in the meantime, has no income whatsoever. So he goes on the dole. They make him take a cv-writing course, which goes right over his head - he has no computer skills. So, in short, he ends up handwriting a cv - in pencil - which he touts around the building sites. The benefits people decide he's not making an effort, and sanction him, cutting off his money. When he gets a phone call about his appeal, he explains that he's gone back on the dole to get benefits - whereupon the guy on the phone calls him a scrounger and hangs up on him.
He befriends a young woman with two kids - they're homeless, she had to flee an abusive relationship. They're from London, but it was too expensive to house them there, so - they move them to.. Newcastle..?! She gets lost on the way to her benefits appointment, is late, gets her benefits cut off. At the food bank, she's so desperately hungry (having directed any food she got to the kids) that she wolfs down a cold tin of beans, which of course she gags on, so then she's embarrassed, having spilled food down herself. She gets caught shoplifting sanitary products (because nobody donates those to food banks), and ends up on the game.
I know these are fictional stories - but they're so realistic. And this film was made just five years ago. I can believe it all - and even if you get benefits, they're substantially lower in the UK than in the rest of western Europe, and I really don't know how anyone survives on them. As Daniel Blake says, all he wants is to maintain his dignity as a human being. As the general saying goes, a society can be judged by how it treats its poorest citizens. There but for the grace of God go we all..
Well, if I feel the need for a filler during gaps in tv tomorrow (there's certainly enough sport on!), I'll be back to the St. Patrick's Festival website - where the next thing up is a concert by Kíla! I've seen them live - they're a madcap mashup of trad Irish music, and I love them. And wouldn't that be just the thing to display on my new, bigger-screen, smart tv?!
