Dementia and Alzheimer’s are often referenced as some of the most challenging conditions on both the person with the condition themselves and their family. Trying to navigate through the often rapid declines, as both the person with dementia and as the caretaker/family, is difficult. Banr, the directorial debut from Erica Xia-Hou, follows a family trying to function through the phases of dementia. As Liu Ximei (Sui Le) struggles with the disorientation and loss of self characterized by dementia, her husband Zhang Jianjun (Baoqing Le) grapples with the loss of his wife as he once knew her as well as his own impending mortality.
Banr captures these nuances of caretaking and living with Alzheimer’s with precision. From Xi Mei’s point of view, the world slowly becomes less and less sensical. The editing becomes more and more elliptical, with progressively more non-sequiturs inserted in—be it half-remembered precious moments or seemingly random flashing images. During moments of frustration, the world seems to stop operating on logic altogether, blurring, shaking, and warping.
The repeated motif of fish slowly becoming abstracted, fake, or out of water is a lovely and poignant way of representing her decline. However, during her moments of lucidity, we see who Xi Mei was and how her caring, spontaneous nature still remains. Sui Le does a fantastic job of capturing the subtle nuances of distress and confusion, but also unbridled joy and peace.
From Jianjun’s side, the camera and editing abide by normal narrative conventions, but the world is no less imposing. Seemingly everything, from the local market to the bathroom door, is a potential obstacle for his wife. His former incompetence in household duties and the inevitable grappling with his mortality slowly creeping up on him. As his life progressively becomes more dedicated to taking care of Xi Mei, Jianjun’s spaces become darker and more condensed. He reminisces about the “before times,” comparing his wife to who she once was.
Although we only get bits of character dropped about him, the death of his comrade being the most poignant, it’s more of a boon to the film. Becoming a caretaker takes up most of his life, and after forty years of marriage, Jianjun’s whole life has been subsumed in taking care of the woman who took care of him. Baoqing Le’s performance has much more subtleties in comparison, but the subtle changes belying his increasing frustration and fatigue are great.
However, the perspective I found both the most illuminating and the most difficult was that of their daughter Yunyun (also Erica Xia-Hou) for, admittedly, very personal reasons. My grandmother passed away from Alzheimer’s back in 2021. For most of the time she was in decline, I couldn’t visit. Yunyun, a surgeon, finds herself in a similarly isolated position; already swamped by the responsibilities of her job, she’s unable to initially help with caretaking. But, with one parent on the decline and the other risking his health to take care of her, she reckons with the fear of losing both her parents in quick succession. The final sequence of her lying in her mom’s hospital bed was probably where I cried the hardest. Although we see the least of her perspective, Xia-Hou maximizes Yunyun’s limited screen time to great effect.
The human body is a weird contradiction: both a machine honed by evolution and refined by modern medicine, and one tumble down the stairs or illness away from failure. Humans have spent decades and decades attempting to mitigate the inevitable effects of aging and illness on the body. BANR beautifully encapsulates the toll that Alzheimer’s takes on the family unit without veering too much into resentment, infantilizing, or joylessness. It’s a gorgeous film on all accounts, which is even more impressive considering Xia-Hou directed, wrote, starred, and edited the film. I’m excited to see what Xia-Hou puts out next with a first effort with such a clear artistic vision and clean execution.
Review by Red Broadwell
Image Courtesy of Vista PR/Shangjia Picture Film Culture