Wayne Wang, often described by U.S. film critics as "our resident Chinese filmmaker," has returned —if not exactly to his roots then a turf where he feels especially comfortable. After drumming up ubiquitous crowd pleasers like "Maid in Manhattan" and "Because of Winn-Dixie," it looks as though Wang has decided that his quota of Hollywood obligations has been fulfilled and he can now allow himself to get more personal.
The result is a look at Chinese- American life through the eyes of a Chinese traveler, who's arrived in the United States from Beijing and feels a bit alienated.
"A Thousand Years of Good Prayers" is brilliant without being ostentatious, minimal and restrained, sometimes to the point of rigidity. The whole movie in fact, is designed to reflect the aura radiating from protagonist Mr. Shi (Henry O) and to a lesser degree, the reluctance of his daughter, Yilan (Faye Yu), to accept and embrace her father. The opening scene shows Mr. Shi —a 70ish widower arriving at an airport somewhere in the American West. Yilan picks him up wearing a dark suit that looks too 1990s to be fashionable and too tight to be comfortable, and her forced, small smile shows her stress. Yilan hasn't seen her dad in 12 years and is probably going through a private, inner meltdown, not that she'll let that become an excuse to shirk her daughterly duties. As she picks up Mr. Shi's suitcase and guides him out of the building — the pair come off as a Chinese gentleman fresh out of the Far East, accompanied by his extremely efficient secretary. Their conversation as such, is kept to polite one-liners.