Most
filmmakers working with digital video try to achieve a "cinematic" look, but in
Shih-Ching Tsou and Sean Baker's Take Out—shot in 2004—the video looks like video.
The camera records the squalor and the splendor of its New York setting sharply
and clearly, such that every cockroach and neon sign is in perfect focus. And
Tsou and Baker smartly use that clarity to smudge the line between documentary
and fiction. Take Out has a slim narrative hook, but the directors use it primarily as an
excuse to take a verité, day-in-the-life look at one busy Chinese restaurant in
a diverse Manhattan neighborhood.
Charles
Jang stars as an illegal immigrant who owes money to the organization that
smuggled him into the U.S., and is given until midnight to pay off the debt.
Jang convinces a fellow delivery boy at the restaurant where they both work to
let him take most of the day's orders, so that he can maximize his tips. But
every time the kitchen gets an order wrong, or Jang's bicycle blows a tire, or
his inability to speak English alienates a customer, he gets that much closer
to being on the receiving end of another hammer-beating by Snakehead thugs.
Take Out contains a few moments of too-blunt expository
dialogue, in which the restaurant's staff swap stories about how they got to
America and how they're adjusting, but perhaps because Take Out's novice cast converses in Mandarin, those scenes
don't clunk as much as they might in a typical American indie film. Mostly,
Tsou and Baker hold the conventional drama to a minimum, so they can get on
with showing how that staff preps the fryers, changes the rice water and
refills the chili sauce, and how Jang bikes from low-rent apartments to
high-tech recording studios over the course of one rainy day, all while
preoccupied with troubles that he can't articulate. Take Out is the kind of small-scale, precisely realized drama
that values the little moments, like Jang stopping in the middle of a downpour
to zip up his jacket, while the camera captures every raindrop on his anxious
face. The movie took a long time to get distribution, but there's no expiration
date on filmmaking this strong.