Getting Wet: Shower or Bath?

Xizao / Shower (1999)
Directed by Yang Zhang
Cinematography by Jian Zhang

    Most films are filled with meaning, though those involved with a project may have intended a different meaning than certain members of the audience takes away with it. Still, there are some projects that are written and produced with the intention of a meaning being evident and shared by all: Shower is definitely one of these films.

    The referential meaning of Shower is that–though Da Ming (Pu Cun Xin) has a “successful” life in the city with a job that pays well, a wife, and nice clothes–he is not happy because these things are sterile and impersonal. When he returns home he finds his father (Zhu Xu) and brother (Jiang Wu) in a simple life that is full of hard work, respect, and customs. This way of life does not appeal to Ming: he’d rather take a quick shower than spend the day in a bath house.

    But his family is happy; the fact that their way of life is about to be torn away–when their home and business are torn down–hangs over the father. He is being displaced and has nowhere to go. When he dies the same happens to Ming’s brother because he loses the sheltered life that his father built for him. Many of us can identify with this explicit meaning because we remember visiting older relatives in our childhood. They always seem to live in another world, one that is being torn away from them, and they always seem to ignore it or be unaware that it is happening. They hold onto the past because of how meaningful it was. The old men come to the bathhouse to socialize, to compete, to assert their authority and knowledge. The young men come to this bathhouse because it is a haven from the problems of life: marital difficulties, lack of self-confidence. The implicit meaning is that everyone understands one another here and cares about what happens to their companions. They strengthen one another as they share their experiences and troubles. The simplicity of life as it was in the past is more meaningful than modern life is becoming.

    The motif that is woven through the fabric of the film expresses the symptomatic meaning: it is the water. It cleanses body and spirit. It strengthens the mind and soul. The water is what brings everyone together, what is always there for them when they need it. It is a valuable commodity that is necessary for life in a town where a well has gone dry and it is valuable in a city that is expanding too quickly to think of the consequences of who and what is being destroyed as a result.

    Shower is coherent throughout and travels at a slower pace than most American audiences are used to and prefer. The historical stories lend to the intensity of effect, as do the characters’ trips into the park where the whole town comes to meet. The film is complex in how it weaves the different character’s lives together: the father cares for the son who believes in the boy who can only sing when water is falling on him who is disliked by the man whose wife beats on him (and these are only a few of the storylines). The movie obviously has originality because there aren’t many films out there set in bathhouses or with cricket fights. Even the park has its elements that are foreign to westerners even if it is reminiscent of a plaza. Most of all, this movie is a heart-wrenching look at doing the best one can with what life gives one and the fact that life isn’t always peachy.