AAAFF Dispatch: Day Four

Tonight the four-day Austin Asian American Film Festival ended its 2009 run with two documentaries: the short My Mother Said (Kuna ni nanang) and the feature Old Partner (Wonangsori).

My Mother Said, by filmmaker Jessica Sison, is the highly personal musings of her 99-year-old grandmother, recounting highlights from her life. Starting out with images of an old woman in a church, and the titular song, it's a documentary with an abstract feel as the woman recounts her history, such as being there for her own mother's death and lacking any mementos of her mother. My Mother Said was the second film in two days that used Ilacano, a language spoken in the Philippines, the other being Fruit Fly.

Old Partner, a South Korean documentary, is an uneven film with some powerful moments, but rambles on more than the film's complaining wife. An aging farmer who does everything by hand faces the inevitable death of his equally elderly ox, which he's had for half of his life. Despite the constant nagging of his wife and his own failing health, every day the farmer goes out to his fields with his ox; it's painful to watch both of them move, although not as painful as it is for either of them. At times seemingly callous, it's hard to deny the intense bond between the two. While the farmer's typical response to his wife is is a grunt, or "huh," if the ox makes a noise, it gets his full attention. 

His dogged refusal to use modern machinery or pesticides is constantly reinforced by images of technology passing him by. The cruelty of forcing a creature at the end of its life to keep working seems almost unbearable sometimes, but it's hard to condemn a man who so clearly must work, and seems to keep himself and his ox going by willpower alone. At 78 minutes, there's nearly a minute for every year of the man's life, and at times the documentary feels even longer. 

Old Partner could use some serious editing, as it was impossible not to fidget through most of the film. Still, the story itself is worth watching, although the tender-hearted will have a tough time viewing it alongside the impatient.