A World of No Escape
by Choo Suet Fun
We all have questioned our place in the world at some point in time or another. This dilemma probably holds particularly true for Tung, the protagonist of Hong Kong director Wong Chun’s Mad World (2016), who struggles to find his footing in the bustling metropolis of Hong Kong and reintegrate into society after being discharged from a mental health facility, only to have his city and its people turn their backs on him. Tung is now defined by the invisible label former bipolar patient, an unwritten warning to all to keep him at arm’s length and a convenient justification for any potentially irrational behavior.
Hong Kong itself is an intriguing paradox of a city: it is modern and fast-moving, yet somehow retains a certain vintage, old-school charm exemplified by its quaint shoplots, ubiquitous trams, and humble dai pai dongs (open-air food stalls), juxtaposed against glowing neon signs and towering high-rises crowding the skyline. In Mad World, the city’s bleak, ominous side comes to the fore, cloaked in grim, somber colors in varying shades and tinged with hopelessness bordering on despair. As Tung navigates the streets—strolling casually alongside his father at times, sprinting as if attempting to escape at others—the surrounding buildings seem to have morphed into sinister creatures, threatening to overwhelm him at any moment with their cold, hard edges.
Tung and his father share a rented bedsit—a recurring setting that bears silent witness to their strained, ambivalent relationship. Close shots of the two-by-four room highlight its cramped conditions, as it appears to heave under the weight of not only the clutter haphazardly strewn into every nook and cranny, but also the lingering uneasiness permeating the air as the father-and-son pair come face to face with their suppressed insecurities and anxieties, as well as each other. The fragile trust between father and son wears even thinner as Tung confronts his father about a hammer found hidden beneath the latter’s pillow, presumably a precautionary measure to defend himself from any untoward attack by his own son. Tung is visibly upset by the discovery as he grips the hammer—now revealed as a weapon against himself, a symbol of betrayal by a wary father who has proven himself susceptible to prejudice and stigma, and to speculations of his son’s perceived “abnormality” in the judgmental eyes of others. The uncovering of the hammer is tantamount to the unmasking of the father’s latent fear and a heartrending revelation for the audience, who are privy to the father suspiciously slipping the hammer under his pillow earlier in the film.
The film progresses with glimpses of the forces that sent Tung over the edge, as he gradually crumbles under the pressures imposed on him by both family and society. Tung bears the sole responsibility of caring for his mentally unstable and emotionally volatile mother, from whom his father and brother have been conveniently keeping their distance. Following the demise of his mother, whose death he unintentionally caused, Tung is constantly traumatized by flashbacks of her final moments (moments which are conveyed through the film’s most unsettling scenes). Instead of depicting in graphic detail the accident in the bathroom that claimed his mother’s life, the film dwells on seemingly innocuous images of bathwater flowing from beneath the seam of the bathroom door amid anguished shouts of resistance against the son’s forceful efforts to bathe her are heard in the background. Then, disturbing abrupt silence. Suspense lingers throughout the scene as the stream of clear water is gradually infused with traces of red, taking on an unsettling quality as the camera is trained throughout on the ebb and flow of blood-stained bathwater escaping from beneath the bathroom door into the gutter. Simmering tension reaches a breaking point as Tung’s patience and tolerance are tested to their limits, making him an unwitting prisoner of his own guilty conscience. Any remaining semblance of familial love—already largely absent in the first place—seems to disintegrate before our very eyes, unraveling the flaws of time-honored Asian “virtues” of loyalty to the family and filial piety.
Accentuated by compelling visual imagery and a subdued yet evocative score by Yusuke Hatano, Mad World is memorable for its sympathetic portrayal of Tung as a fellow human being equally deserving of compassion and dignity, and equally vulnerable to personal struggles, instead of settling for superficial sketches of mental health patients and the challenges they face. Tung walks the fine line between resilience and defiance: he harbors a quiet fortitude and acute sensitivity in trying to navigate a society indifferent to his struggles, while at the same time resisting everyday injustices. From a broader perspective, the film is a cinematic microcosm of a society preoccupied with assigning labels to compartmentalize individuals into familiar categories of identification, as well as a discomfiting reminder of the apathy and hostility that members of the human race are capable of inflicting on one another with societal expectations, attempting to “rehabilitate” those who fail to toe the line by imposing on them the status quo or, worse, confining them in institutions.
Tung and his father’s road to reconciliation is rife with frustration and resentment, yet reconcile they do. The final scene of Mad World is especially poignant, as both father and son, having been pressured into leaving their rented bedsit by their neighbors, share a quiet moment by the lake gazing into the distance, before the father breaks the silence: “Let’s go home,” he offers spontaneously.
But where is home? Where will they call home in a world that demands well-defined boundaries to be drawn between the “normal” and the “abnormal,” and easily identifiable labels to distinguish the deviant from the conforming majority?
Perhaps we live in a mad, unforgiving world after all.
Choo Suet Fun is an editor and translator based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.