by Cris Mora-Villa, Contributing Writer
There are thousands of films produced every year from just about every corner of the globe. Whether it be full-length features, short films, or documentaries, there is a near endless river of films that have been forged into existence. A great deal of these movies have continued to influence the audience who consume them, as well as to help shape the medium itself. No one will ever have the time to view them all, as the hours upon hours of footage is too extensive to even make a dent in such a notion. But within the seemingly endless maze of films that are ready at the tap of our fingers due to the age of streaming, there are certain pictures which aren’t usually given the light of day they may deserve. And so exists Hidden Gems, where I take a trip to the past and unearth works that are wholly new to me in the hopes that they just may spark an interest in someone who would have never heard about it otherwise, or has put off checking out something intriguing.
On the 25th of May 2024, the Main Competition jury at the Cannes Film Festival awarded the Palme d’Or to Sean Baker for his latest film Anora. Baker’s win marks the highest industry honor he’s received up to this point, and served as a moment of recognition to celebrate his 20-plus years as a filmmaker. I have yet to see the picture, but the anticipation to do so runs high as it has for every film that has been bestowed with Cannes’ top prize in recent years. The festival’s five-film run of Palme d’Or winners beginning in 2018 is nothing short of phenomenal. From Shoplifters through to Anatomy of a Fall, with Parasite, Titane, and Triangle of Sadness in between, the lineup have been some of my favorite movies period to come out from within that time frame. For such an eclectic group of films which vary so wildly in their themes and tone, to nonetheless be deemed deserving of the most illustrious distinction in cinema is precisely why the Palme d’Or is held in such high regard. I expect Anora will be no different, as I have long been an admirer of Baker’s work. So in honor of his impending eighth feature film, I wish to take a look back 20 years prior, where Baker would take on the role of co-director for the only time in his career, telling the story of one person’s American dream in the film Take Out.
In 2003, Baker would find himself residing atop a Chinese restaurant in New York City. A roommate who was living alongside him would be fellow New School alum Shih-Ching Tsou. While Baker is the more openly recognizable name amongst movie buffs, Tsou is not without her own track record. Her collaborations with Baker actually extend back to his feature debut, Four Letter Words, where she is credited for her work as an assistant editor. From that point onward, Tsou would be no stranger to donning a number of different hats throughout various Baker productions. She would especially gravitate to the role of producer on several occasions, but her other contributions include that of a costume designer and editor, and she has even cameoed a number of times. All of this has, in one way or another, helped shape Baker’s movies closer towards their final product, and in my eyes make her an indispensable ally in Baker evolving as a director. As the pair were looking for the inspiration to strike for another project, that would soon come as they watched restaurant employees regularly step in and out of the shop as they would traverse throughout the city to make their deliveries. And so spawned the idea for Take Out.
After rebounding from a modest attempt at a first feature, Baker and Tsou approached this next film with the goal of arriving at something that would really tap into the humanity of one person’s story in a way that wasn’t achievable through the ensemble of Four Letter Words. By Baker’s own admission, that film more or less served as an introductory experience to the craft of actually making a movie, as opposed to a fully formed picture that could stand on its own merits. That’s at least a rather generous way of putting it, as Baker has simultaneously acknowledged that it did nothing to further his career. Having recently watched the film, that perspective makes sense, as it hardly resembles the work Baker is known for today. The biggest contribution the moviewould have on Baker’s career was planting the seeds for discovering what really interests him as a director. Though in recent years he has taken an interest in exploring characters who are to various degrees involved in the sex work industry, that isn’t at all where he started coming out of Four Letter Words.
Upon scrounging up a budget of $3,000, they would begin their ramshackled production of Take Out. The film follows deliveryman Ming Ding (Charles Jang) as he races against the clock to secure enough tip money to pay off his longstanding debts to smugglers who had trafficked him from China to New York City. Now for as dour as certain aspects within Baker’s other movies can become, there’s an unmistakable severity in just how bleak the premise of this story is. That was at least my initial impression prior to having watched the film, and I found that my feelings were to some extent validated after seeing it in its proper context. Make no mistake, there isn’t any back-alley attempt to soften the harsh tone by Baker and Tsou, as they are very committed to confining the viewer to the world Ming inhabits. So while the overarching tone of the film does have a dispassionate glow surrounding it, that doesn’t exclude its human elements from breaking through when they really need to. Those moments aren’t brimming throughout the film, but their inclusion does matter greatly when it comes to the movie’s final conclusion, as there is a resonance to be found.
An additional conductor on the technical end of the spectrum which heightens the impact of those moments and emotions imbued within the viewer are in part due to Take Out’s distinctive style. To match the film’s unobtrusively laid out plot, it is also shot with a documentary-esque method of filming employed by Baker and Tsou. Scenes will simply observe Ming from either a lengthy distance or through extreme closeups. For whichever way the camera is positioned, we are able to clearly catch every ounce of what the film is choosing to focus on, on a minute-by-minute basis. Whether it’s the countless interactions Ming has with the strangers of the city, or the hazy interludes from inside the restaurant, the specificity of lens for which the pair use to capture their story is one that solidifies itself as the most unique work either Tsou or Baker have ever worked on. While that initial decision was in part made as a cost effective measure, its use here as a stylistic avenue benefits the picture enormously. Four Letter Words applied a loosely similar idea, as Baker wanted to simply observe its titular characters in the specified environment. A drawback of making that choice is that it creates the possibility for limited characterization, as was the case in Four Letter Words. That is clearly not the case in Take Out.
As for the actual contents of the film itself, it would be inaccurate to anoint the film a masterstroke of storytelling, as if it were a Bong Joon-ho picture. Baker and Tsou’s approach is far more simplistic, and the ensuing film is all the better for it. With a runtime of only 90 minutes, Take Out is by far the most glacially paced movie I’ve seen Baker direct. I do, however, consider it to be more of a feature than a bug. While I do appreciate the kinetic energy Baker is able to conjure in a movie like Tangerine, there’s such an intentionality in how much of what the viewer sees is contained to the mundanity of Ming’s life. Like a lot of the other protagonists in Baker’s films, Ming is constricted by the financial limitations imposed upon him. Those restrictions and their subsequent cause vary from film to film. A movie like Red Rocket introduces its main character as someone returning to their old home after emphatically exhausting all of their options in the chase for success. Ming finds himself near the start of that journey, but his story is depicted in a more grounded manner. Without specifying an exact timeline, Ming has been illegally residing in the States for at least a couple of years. And while not all the details of his situation are explicitly stated aloud, enough is provided to offer a clear portrait of the life he left behind and why he persists in remaining in his state of stagnation. Virtually nothing about the life he currently lives is as he wants it to be, but he continues to exist alongside it regardless, for the betterment of the only thing that means anything to him: his family.
The theme of family and formulating connections with those who we may consider as family has been a running thread through a number of Baker’s films. Starlet beautifully weaves its story as a coming together of different generations in the face of compounding loneliness. Take Out similarly does the same, but with Ming’s Chinese heritage. Although this is an American production, Tsou translated the film’s screenplay as being written entirely in English to being mostly spoken in Mandarin. The switch back and forth between the two languages only helps to further establish an isolation to Ming’s everyday life. Any kind of support system he could have at home or at work is entirely nonexistent from his perspective. Without his family present, he seemingly believes himself to be alone. Seemingly. The absence of Ming’s family isn’t used as a crutch to spell out his motivations, as he himself only sparsely mentions them to his coworkers. Despite this, however, the specter of the life he’s separated himself from hangs over him as Ming tirelessly traverses the cold streets of New York to deliver order, after order, after order to people who are either completely unaware or couldn’t possibly care less. What Tsou and Baker are able to accomplish in structuring the film to be so repetitive is a sense of compassion and urgency for Ming to accomplish what he needs to in order to meet his goal. The opening scene of the movie callously presents what is at stake should Ming fail, so that too is not lost on the viewer. And so it makes it all the more poignant for how the film arrives at its ending. Baker himself has described aspects of the ending as inelegant, and while I understand what he means, it does its job of tying together its themes, while staying true to what preceded it.
The movie’s individual themes and narrative are in their own separate way akin to almost all of Baker’s followups, in a sense setting the precedent for how he would tackle the similar ideas in future works. What I find to be the defining element of Baker’s work on a thematic level, as well as also being intwine with the backbone of his movies’ plots, is the emphasis on the hardships placed on his protagonists. In comparison to a film like The Prince of Broadway, whose main character (who is of Ghanaian descent) is put in a very precarious dilemma involving the fate of a child, Ming is a Chinese immigrant who is at risk of grave bodily harm if he is unable to produce the money needed to secure a greater freedom. The Florida Project ends with feelings of uncertainty, as the viewer is finally allowed to escape with its protagonist from a cyclical future. Ming doesn’t so much escape by the end of the movie, as he is simply reminded that in a place as vast as New York City; he isn’t alone as he may think. In that way, he comes to understand that his story is not a unique one. What may seem like the longest day of his life is in fact just another blameless tribulation that must be endured if he is as committed to the potential for his family’s future as he says he is. That theme has exhibited a great deal of power among Baker’s filmography, but its positioning in Take Out is arguably the most effective it’s ever been across any of his films.
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