Now I totally get if Europeans don't like watching their own movies. I watched this movie Shanghai Trance at Erasmus Huis yesterday and it was totally depressing! It's the kind of movie which in the end people would say, "what the hell was that? i don't get it". But it was the resemblance of the lives portrayed on the movie with what happened in my actual life that frustrates me.
It's like watching your entire frustrating childhood being portrayed in a movie: the whole Chinese culture, generation gaps, mothers/grandmothers whose hobby is yelling at people, the rich and obnoxious uncles, parents who keep bugging you about your salaries, the wooden house that could collapsed in any second. And I tell you what, that didn't feel good at all.
But set aside all those aspects, for me it works successfully in portraying the urban reality of Shanghai. It captures the real lives of people from different kind of backgrounds who struggle their own lives living in a big city. Me as a resident of Jakarta can really relate to this quote said by a girl standing in a boat, "the sea is gray, the sky is also gray, it's like the endless of grayness.."
