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Pushing Hands Movie Review

Pushing Hands is a 1991 Taiwanese drama film directed by Ang Lee. It is a solid directorial debut for Lee, but still it’s far from his best efforts.

Having just moved from Beijing, elderly tai chi master Mr. Chu struggles to adjust to life in New York, living with his Americanized son Alex. Chu immediately butts heads with his put-upon white daughter-in-law, Martha, a writer who seems to blame him for her own paralyzing inability to focus. But when Chu begins teaching tai chi at a local school, his desire to make a meaningful connection comes to fruition.

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A part of what is usually called Lee’s “Father Knows Best” trilogy, this movie was the first and thus the weakest of those three films dealing with the cultural crash between East and West. ‘The Wedding Banquet’ is by far the best of the trio while ‘Eat Drink Man Woman’ was more memorable than this one. But as the first in a trilogy and a directorial debut, the movie is pretty serviceable.

Sihung Lung as Mr. Chu was the acting standout. He was so fantastic and very moving in this complex, powerful role. Others were significantly less interesting and/or complex, but he is the heart of the picture. His relationships with others are all very well explored.

The film’s highly emotional storytelling was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it was definitely touching at times and it explored important issues for this director. But on the other hand, a couple of scenarios were overly convenient to wring tears from viewers, resulting in a film that is far from Lee’s most powerful emotionally speaking.

Pushing Hands is technically much weaker than Lee’s future output. A lot of this is understandable given that it was his first movie, but still the cinematography, editing, production design and even his directing were all too weak in my opinion. The movie itself is overall solid and serviceable, but it wouldn’t have excited me for this director had I watched it before his other movies.

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Pushing Hands was a solid directorial debut for Ang Lee. The cultural crash and generational gap are themes that he would go on to explore more forcefully in future movies, but those were still well handled in this highly emotional flick. The acting was also quite strong, but otherwise the movie is technically inferior and only sporadically showing glimpses of Lee’s greatness.

My Rating – 3.5