Final Blossay: How Should We Live Our Lives?

           Everyone has their own idea of what is important in life.  Steve Jobs’ opinion was, “Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”  I happen to agree with these values but everyone is different and holds certain aspects of life closer to their hearts.  With everyone following different imperatives and having different morals, is there a right and wrong way to live life?  I say no.  I think the way you choose to live your life is part of what makes you, you.  I will look at a few different characters in the films we have watched this semester, including Noriko and Shukichi from Late Spring, Ho, Mark, and Kit from A Better Tomorrow, Sergeant Lee and Sergeant Oh from Joint Security Area, and Cuiqiao from Yellow Earth, to look at what was important to them and how this affected how they led their lives.

            In Late Spring, we watched the lives of Noriko and her father Shukichi, a modern middle class family in Japan.  The main plot of the film consists of determined efforts by a few people in Noriko’s life to get her to get married.  As a cultural and time period matter, women usually had their husbands picked out for them in an arranged marriage.  In the 1940s however, things were only just starting to change to a time when women could start to choose their own husbands.  Noriko seems to be stuck in this metamorphic time where tradition and modern expectations are being integrated.  She is very hesitant in the film to get married, saying that she is content where her life is, at home with her father.  Her aunt and her father however, are of a different generation and seeing Noriko getting older and still not married worries them.  Her father appears to want his daughter to have her own life and is concentrating on her happiness while her aunt seems occupied with the process of match-making. 

Something to notice is that Noriko is never told that she is getting married by her family.  Instead they plead with her and ask her to consider the man they picked out for her.  This is a big change from the traditional match-making and marriage process.  Besides her being content at home, Noriko also worried about what would happen to her father if she went off and got married.  In the end, Noriko likes the man her family has picked out for her and ends up marrying him, only under the impression that her father would also be remarrying.  After the wedding, her father is shown in their home alone, suddenly overcome with loneliness and sadness.  After the film, we realize what is important to Noriko and Shukichi.  It is not cultural norms or expectations that dictate their actions but love, family, and happiness.  Shukichi is looking out for his daughter’s happiness over his own.  Noriko got married not only for herself but because she thought it was what her father would want.

Early in the semester we observed the relationships between Ho, his best friend Mark, and Ho’s brother Kit in A Better Tomorrow.  Ho and Mark are prominent members of the Triad where they are literally partners in crime.  Although Ho has chosen the life of a criminal, he encourages his younger brother Kit, who he is very close with, to join the police force.  When a deal goes wrong, Ho is sent to prison while Mark is crippled in a gun fight and Kit and his father are attacked in an apartment.  Kit and Ho’s father is killed in the attack and reveals to Kit that Ho is does not have the cleanest track record.  When Ho gets out of prison, Kit wants revenge against him for their father’s death, blaming Ho and Mark is significantly lower in the hierarchy of the Triad.  Ho is stuck between his friend and his brother because he wants to become someone his brother can reconcile with but Mark wants Ho’s help in taking revenge on Shing.  In the end, he helps Mark, who is killed in the final fight, and turns himself in, giving himself to Kit so that Kit can take credit for arresting him and closing the case. 

Each of these characters had some intense choices that were made, but they were all made for each other.  Ho changes his life around after prison for his brother.  Kit gives his gun to Ho in the end so that Ho can kill Shing.  Mark turns the escape boat around to save both Ho and Kit and ends up being part of the reason why the brothers reconcile with each other in the end.  Although Mark is not Ho’s actually brother by blood, he is a brother through their friendship.  Kit and Ho realize how important family is in the end and all three men’s self-less acts are evidence that they lead their lives according to what is best for their family because that is what they hold dearest to them.

In Joint Security Area, we followed Major Jang as she tried to solve the case of how two North Korean soldiers were killed in the North Korean border station.  What we come to learn as the plot develops is that the two soldiers from the South Korean border befriended the two North Korean border soldiers through a series of events.  It all began when Sergeant Oh and Private Jeong save Sergeant Lee from a mine.  They get to know each other and eventually, Sergeant Lee brings in Private Nam into the friendship.  When they are caught together one night, all hell breaks loose.  Lee shoots the North Korean officer who discovers them, as well as Private Jeong.  Oh ends up finishing off the officer that walked in on them and lets Lee and Nam escape, coming up with a story that both sides must stick to in the investigation.  In the end, Nam attempts suicide and ends up in a coma and Lee steals a pistol from an officer and commits suicide.  What do we learn about these men from all of this?  I think that their story reveals that friendship means the most to them and they did the best they could to protect each other in a situation that was doomed from the beginning.  Lee commits suicide in the end because he cannot deal with the fact that he killed his friend and that his other friend tried to commit suicide because of something he did.  Oh helps Lee kill an officer and even has an outburst during the investigation when he sees that Lee is about to give himself up.  Nam so determined to protect their friendship jumps out a window to avoid a lie detector test.  For these men, friendship was what was meaningful in their lives and without it, they all fell apart.

In Yellow Earth, Cuiqiao’s life changes when Gu Qing comes to her village.  Gu is a soldier of the Eighth Route Army looking for folk songs to turn into communist songs.  He travels to Shaanxi and stays in Cuiqiao’s home along with her father and her brother Hanhan.  Cuiqiao, like all young girls her age, is expected to enter into an arranged marriage.  At the beginning of the film we see her fearfully watching a wedding procession of a young girl her age and an older man, knowing that she would suffer the same thing.  When Gu introduces Cuiqiao to the new thinking of the Eigth Route Army, such as women being able to join the army, Cuiqiao becomes hopeful and wants to join the army.  However, her father informs her that she will have to be married in order to afford a bride price for Hanhan.  Gu must return to the army and Cuiqiao begs him to take him with her but he tells her that once he gets permission for her to join that he will return for her.  But he doesn’t return fast enough because Cuiqiao gets married.  She decides to go to the army on her own and tries to cross the Yellow River at the time of its strongest current and disappears.  We are led to believe that she drowns in the river.  Unlike the characters form the other films, family is not necessarily what comes first for Cuiqiao.  For her, her personal freedom is what matters most to her, and she ran away trying to attain that.  If family was what mattered most, she would have stayed with her new husband for the sake of her family.  But Cuiqiao lived a hard life that she had no choices in and so it is not a surprise that her freedom was what she decided was most important.  It’s not to say that family was not important because she did go through with the wedding, probably for Hanhan’s sake.  It’s just that freedom was the choice she made for what she wanted for the rest of her life.

I think a lot of factors account for how someone chooses to live their life or what becomes most valuable to them.  The characters from the films are from all different time periods from all different countries.  The most common thread between them is family.  There is probably a good majority of people in this world that would also say that family is the most important thing to them.  Looking at all of these films together has revealed that the love and respect for one’s family is a universal element of how people choose to live their lives, whether it is protecting family or making sacrifices for family.