An unpretentiously tragic tale, Tigertail offers a slow but effective meditation upon the life-derailing power of profoundly misguided priorities.
Roughly divided between the youth and late-middle age of a Taiwanese immigrant to the United States, the weight of this film (distributed by Netflix) falls upon a single decision that divides a life into before and after.
Growing up poor among his grandparents’ rice fields, the child-sized forerunner of our middle-aged protagonist Grover forms a friendship with a neighbour girl. Years later, as he works alongside his mother in a poorly maintained factory, he reunites with the girl and the two engage in a light-hearted yet heated romance.
They dance through the night to imported American music, dine and dash at expensive restaurants, and indulge in a late-night riverside rendezvous. It may not be love in the fullest sense, but there is passion and affection, and like the near-sighted teenagers they are, the lovers exercise little practical foresight concerning the future.
Until one day the factory owner offers Grover passage to America. The ticket happens to come with the hand of the factory owner’s daughter, and while Grover may have little personal interest or physical chemistry with her, what a magnificent opportunity!
Grover makes his choice. (Spoilers follow.)
Fast-forward 40 years and Grover (Tzi Ma) is still living in America, divorced and deeply alone. He has almost no emotional connection with his adult daughter, whom we meet in the middle of her own relationship crisis.
Real life for our protagonist, it seems, ended the day he immigrated … or, put more philosophically, the day he utilized a person as an opportunity, taking on a wife as the means to the end of a better life.
For the viewer decently versed in human nature, it comes as little surprise that it all amounts to heartbreak. For the viewer less versed in Catholic moral teaching, an explanation may be necessary: Persons are most important.
This principle runs the length and breadth of Christianity, from creation to the Cross. The Book of Genesis positions humanity as the climax of all creatures, and when St. John famously describes God’s love for “the world” he is referring principally not to geological formations, greenery, or grasshoppers (although these are included), but to the men and women who walk among them.
God lives and dies, Christians believe, putting human persons first.
So when the protagonist of Tigertail – or anyone, for that matter – subordinates another person to other ends, he does not simply ignore a moral principle but directs his energies towards an end that runs contrary to the love that animates the universe.
Little wonder, then, when it all ends in tragedy.
Tigertail may not delve into such principles at any great depth, and it may take its time to make the point (it’s only 90 minutes, but I was checking my watch at 60).
However, if one of the classical aims of tragedy is to awaken an audience with an eye-opening jolt to go and not do likewise, this film is tragic to a tee.
(Originally published in The B.C. Catholic)