Endings
TO LIV(E) concludes with cautious optimism on two fronts. In her
last letter to Liv Ullmann, Rubie ends with the hope that China,
Vietnam, and, by extension, Hong Kong will improve their
respective situations so that all, including Rubie and Liv, will
be able to meet as friends. Rubie concludes the film on a note of
good humor. In fact, she signs her letter, "Love,
Rubie." The last image of the film shows Tony and Teresa,
saved from near suicide and break-up, alight from their taxi at
the airport, baggage in hand, on their way to Australia.
CROSSINGS, on the other hand, ends on a pessimistic note. Rubie
burns incense in memory of Mo-Yung on the subway platform where
she was murdered. The last shot shows a graveyard in Hong Kong.
Earlier, Benny and Mo-Yung had had a tryst near that graveyard,
and Benny told the story of his mother being buried there after
working herself to death to support the family. Rubie has
promised to return Mo-Yung’s bones to Hong Kong, presumably
to that same cemetery.
While TO LIV(E) ends with death averted and hope in the future,
CROSSINGS concludes with the finality of death and the
uncertainty of Rubie’s future. She returns to Hong Kong with
Mo-Yung’s bones, but it is not certain whether or not she
will return to New York, stay in Hong Kong, or go elsewhere.
Since, after death, even bones continue to drift between
continents, Rubie’s continued "crossings" between
roles and professions, between nation-states, and between Asia
and the West also seem to be one of the few certainties in a very
uncertain, fictional world. That global filmmakers themselves
will continue to drift and make films about this "floating
world" of displacement and hybridity also seems fairly
certain. To bring Chan’s pessimism back around to a more
hopeful note, a quote from Bhabha’s
"DissemiNation: Time, Narrative and the Margins of the
Modern Nation" follows:
For it is by living on the borderline of history and language, on the limits of race and gender, that we are in a position to translate the differences between them into a kind of solidarity. (p. 170)
Continue to Acknowledgements