A Romp With "The Brothers Sun"

It's still weird coming across American-made media that feels like it's actually calibrated to target someone in my particular demographic.  "The Brother Sun," the latest from Brad Falchuk and Byron Wu, is an action comedy that takes place largely in Southern California, starring Chinese-American immigrants from Taiwan.  It switches constantly from English to Mandarin and back, with a little Cantonese and Vietnamese in the mix.  There are little touches everywhere that only someone familiar with the culture would appreciate.  I'm sure that anybody would enjoy watching the show, but seeing this kind of genre series putting this much effort toward getting the representation right is a great surprise.

Charles "Chair Leg" Sun (Justin Chien) is the oldest son of Big Sun (Johnny Kou), one of the most notorious Triad leaders in Taipei.  After an attack puts Big Sun in a coma, Charles goes to Los Angeles to regroup with his long estranged mother Eileen (Michelle Yeoh) and younger brother Bruce (Sam Song Li), who is studying to get into medical school.  Bruce doesn't know anything about the family business, hangs out with a drug dealer best friend, TK (Joon Lee), and secretly pursues an improv career on the side.  Charles has to reconnect with his family, hunt down those responsible for attacking his father, and stay on the right side of an old friend, Alexis (Highdee Kuan), who grew up to be a deputy district attorney.

It's always nice to see Michelle Yeoh, but I love that "The Brothers Sun" has introduced me to so many actors I'd never seen onscreen before.  Justin Chien is a clear standout as Charles, and he has so much screen charisma that I'm stunned his list of credits is so short.  Sam Song Li is exactly as lovable and frustrating as the role requires.  However, some of my favorites are playing minor characters like Alice Hewkin as the gangster May Song, or Jenny Yang and Jon Xue Zhang as Sun family heavies, Xing and Blood Boots.  And yes, the gangster nicknames are all wonderfully ridiculous, and the fight scenes even moreso.  The first episode opens on Charles, an aspiring baker, trying to perfect a new recipe before he's rudely interrupted by assassins, resulting in burnt cake.  The second episode features one of the highlights of the season, where a fight breaks out at a kid's birthday party, with half of the combatants in inflatable dinosaur costumes.    

This is an incredibly silly show.  Sure, it puts across some nice sentiments about cross-cultural clashes, and family ties, and the kinds of pressure that immigrant kids are under, but "The Brothers Sun" spends just as much time giving us a cartoonish depiction of Triad gangsters, Los Angeles law enforcement, and what all those mahjong playing Chinese aunties are really up to when you're not looking.  There's a whole episode that takes place in John Cho's house - well, a fantasy version of John Cho's house that he lends out as a safehouse to gangsters.  When there is drama, it's the most over-the-top melodrama imaginable.  Soon it's brother against brother, husband against wife, and the control of a criminal empire is at stake.

However, there's a great sincerity and authenticity to the silliness.  Everything from the opening titles designed to look like a Chinatown shopping center directory, to Charles' obsession with churros, to the wonderfully eclectic soundtrack reflect a real care and commitment by everyone involved in the show.  There's such an array of different perspectives and experiences on display, and the concerns of these characters all feel genuine and valid, even if the characters themselves are very exaggerated.  You'll see the plot twists and turns coming from a mile away, but they all make sense, and there are some unexpectedly resonant themes explored throughout. 

I, however, was most impressed by the show's creators getting Michelle Yeoh to play a more recognizably Chinese immigrant mother than the one who appeared in "Everything Everywhere All At Once."  Eileen Sun is way more in line with the tough Asian maternal figures I knew growing up - always gossiping, never empty handed, always on the lookout for a good deal, and always both very tough toward and an incredible defender of her kids.  I'd have happily watched another few seasons of "The Brothers Sun" if it meant more of her.

   

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A Thoughtful "Origin"

Ava DuVernay's latest film, "Origin," does a couple of different things simultaneously.  It's a dramatization of the writing of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, a non-fiction book about the global systems of social stratification, by journalist Isabel Wilkerson.  It also dramatizes and discusses parts of the book itself, including examples of the "pillars of caste" in action.    

Wilkerson is played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, who starts exploring caste as a major component of bigotry after the death of Trayvon Martin (Myles Frost).  As Wilkerson travels around the globe for research, deals with tragedies involving her mother (Emilly Yancy) and husband Brett (Jon Bernthal), her story is intercut with the stories of some of the people she's writing about.  A team of researchers infiltrate and study the segregated American South.  A German man and Jewish woman fall in love during WWII, but their attempts to be together are thwarted by the Nazi regime.  B.R. Ambedkar (Gaurav J. Pathania), born in the lowest caste of Indian society, the Dalits, rises to become an outspoken social reformer and political leader.

The film jumps around in time and space, covering hundreds of years of human history across multiple continents.  At the same time, "Origin" feels like a very current, very personal story.  Caste was only published in 2020, and DuVernay's depiction of its creation feels very much like an attempt to make sense of current society through a different sociological lens than the default narratives we're more familiar with.  A major point that Wilkerson wants to get across is that racism isn't the determining factor in bigotry and social division.  The same attitudes and behaviors occur in societies where people share the same language and skin color.  Most of her work is about finding the patterns and connections across different cultures.  The film is very much a process story, where Wilkerson refines and gathers evidence for her thesis over many years.  There are trips to Germany and India, meetings with scholars - at least one of whom plays himself in the film - and lots and lots of discussion of class, caste, and society.  

"Origin" ends up being part documentary and part biopic, and I think that the two sides of the film help one another.  Watching Wilkerson deal with her grief and frustration in the present day helps to show the impact of the continuing legacy of social castes she's studying, raising the stakes.  Politics mostly takes a back seat, but there is a pointed scene where Wilkerson has an interaction with a MAGA plumber, played by Nick Offerman, that makes the film's position very clear.  There are very strong calls to action in the concluding statements from the end of the book, along with a very unsubtle metaphor with Isabel restoring an inherited house to order.  And, of course, the whole film is framed by the death of Trayvon Martin, a symbol for the continuing social injustice that we still see every day.

And on the other hand, the historical recreations give so much more scope to the film, weaving in these different, exciting vignettes from history.  There are some genuine thrills to be had from the WWII and Jim Crow sequences, and some very brave people get some well deserved time in the spotlight.  The strongest aspect of the film may be the editing, which creates the right balance between the more scholarly parts of the film and Wilkerson's personal story, while gradually building toward the final thesis.  I can understand the argument that "Origin," should have simply been a documentary, but then we'd lose the passionate, invigorating performance of Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, which would be a tragedy.

Along with "American Fiction" last year, I'm glad that we've been getting some different, more ambitious films about the African-American condition.  I wish I'd seen "Origin" earlier, because it helps to explain and contextualize some of my frustrations about other films in this vein.  Duvernay's film is such a departure from mainstream filmmaking, it doesn't surprise me that it got no awards attention, and many in the film community didn't know what to do with it.  However, that doesn't make it any less of a filmmaking achievement.

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