Eat Drink Man Woman

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Cooking is a daily task, so while people are cooking, they might ignore what does cooking symbolize. Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman talks about Master Chu’s family that occurs in Taiwan. Master Chu is a widowed father of three adult daughters. He is a chef, spending his days working in the kitchen. He cooks at home, always preparing for a feast dinner on Sunday night and also he cooks for a little girl Shanshan. Eat Drink Man Woman depicts the relationship between food and family, and it attracts a lot of film critics, including Leonard Klady. He expresses his opinion about Lee's work in “Liberty”, but that one of the ideas he given out is potentially doubtful. He states that preparing food in Lee’s movie is Master Chu’s way to eliminate interaction.…show more content…
Klady argues that cooking is irony for Master Chu, since his family’s relationship is not in accord; audiences will notice that besides the Sunday dinner, Chu Family hardly talks to each other. Even when Master Chu wants to start a conversation with his daughter through phone call in the beginning of the movie, his daughter refuses to listen what her father say by cutting off the line. Moreover, in Klady’s review, he mentions, “the ritual of preparing food is a means to avoid interaction”(Liberty). Having this comprehension is rational since throughout this movie, we have seen lots of cooking scenes—from killing fish to chopping vegetable, to making dumplings. The detailed shots of preparing food directly give audiences a message, saying that Master Chu enjoys cooking and every time when he cooks, he always pay hundred-percent attention on cooking. For example, when he is making chicken soup, his technique is superb and unique. The shots illustrate the preparation of chicken soup from cage to bowl and he pays a closer attention on every step, trying to make nearly perfect soup. All in all, Master Chu’s concentration on cooking throughout the movie makes Klady conjectures that Master Chu uses cooking as a tool to relax and escape from the reality. After the death of Master Chu’s wife, the Chu family seems to lost the main string that can activate the family spirit and Master Chu as a parent in this family has no clue on how to overcome thisn. There is a shot in the movie, where Master Chu is cooking in the kitchen alone, and there is a black-white portrait of Mother Chu hanging on the wall outside of the kitchen. Mother Chu can do nothing to release Master Chu’s stress, so what he can do is keep cooking. Cooking seems to be an individual work to most people. Klady will assume that cooking can allow them to

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