A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

Toronto International Film Festival Program Book
September 2007

Wayne Wang is a legendary US-based Chinese filmmaker forever experimenting with different cinematic forms. I had met him many times with my mentor David Overbey over the years but we really only got to know one another after I moved to San Francisco to run SFFILM (née San Francisco Film Society). His playful intellect hit something of a grace note with this and The Princess of Nebraska, which represent a fascinating moment in time in the relationship between Mainland China and its diaspora. We ended up collaborating in SF on a couple of “remixes” of his famous films and he supported our Awards Night as a presenter, while being a great lunch date along the way.

A Thousand Years of Good Prayer
Wayne Wang
USA, 2007
Mandarin, Farsi, English
83 minutes
Colour/35mm
Production Company: North by Northwest
Executive Producer: Yasushi Kotani, Taizo Son, Jooick Lee
Producer: Yukie Kito, Rich Cowan, Wayne Wang
Screenplay: Yiyun Li, based on her short story
Cinematographer: Patrick Lindenmaier
Editor: Deirdre Slevin
Production Designer: Vincent De Felice
Principal Cast: Faye Yu, Henry O, Vida Ghahremani, Pasha Lychnikoff
Production: North by Northwest

This small-scale work of great emotional resonance represents Wayne Wang’s return to the low-budget filmmaking that made him a leader of the American independent film movement of the eighties and early nineties. It also sees him eloquently re-engage with the themes of films like Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart and Eat a Bowl of Tea, particularly the conflict between duty and desire faced by Chinese immigrants in America.

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers concerns Mr. Shi, an older Chinese man who comes to a barren American suburb to visit his daughter, Yilan (Faye Yu), recently divorced and consumed by her work as a librarian. She is impatient with his presence, and it gradually leaks out that she is seeing a married man on the sly. Meanwhile, her father strikes up a friendship with an Iranian woman of his own age (Vida Ghahremani), a connection which inspires him to reconcile with his daughter. This is a film of precise, carefully orchestrated scenes, privileging quietness over emotional fireworks, simple observation over fussy camera movement. Cultural touchstones act as key narrative instigators: for example, the daughter’s lack of a wok indicates to her father that something is wrong in her life. Wang’s vision of America as an alienating, unfriendly place of almost agoraphobic spaces between houses and people is compelling and allows much of the film’s emotional life to remain unspoken.

Wang is aided immeasurably by gifted Chinese American character actor Henry O as the father. His subtle use of body language and restrained delivery make the film’s emotional climax all the more rich and profound.

 A Thousand Years of Good Prayers was written by the award-winning author Yiyun Lee, based on her short story of the same name. Yiyun, who is on Granta magazine’s recent list of the best young American novelists, also penned The Princess of Nebraska, which was directed by Wang as a companion to this film and is also screening in the Festival

—Noah Cowan

(Please see The Princess of Nebraska for Wayne Wang biography)