Be with Me

I had heard mixed things about "Be With Me"...The critics, with whom I never agree, loved the film....Several of my friends, whose opinions I value, called it "pretentious".

I usually HATE movies like "Be With Me"....I hate pretentious movies, I hate slow movies, and I REALLY HATE movies with very little dialogue....

Well, "Be With Me" is slightly pretentious, very slow and has very little dialogue. It's not perfect and for the first fifteen minutes I was wondering exactly where the director was going....But it all comes together, and it ends up being a very sad, very inspiring, very relateable movie! I'd never heard of Theresa Chan, an amazing Singaporean woman who after being becoming deaf and blind at age 14, managed to learn English, write a series of books, travel the world and do a lot of volunteer/charity work....and now star in a movie! Her story really makes you want to do something with your life. Obviously, it's hard to make an "exciting" movie about a woman who obviously has a great deal of trouble speaking, but her story was very interesting (and is mostly told in subtitles)....She's definitely a woman who puts the rest of us to shame.

As a side-note, I would like to note that in my home country, the USA, there is a sizable minority of immigrants who live there for twenty years, and still cannot speak any English. In the country where I now live (Thailand), the majority of foreign residents (including many Americans) do not make any effort to learn Thai. And yet this amazing deaf and blind woman (raised speaking only Cantonese) can learn to speak and write English, and write several books in the language!!!! People should be ashamed at their laziness! The other three stories in the movie are more "arty" but all of them are handled fairly well. As much as we probably don't want to admit it, the vast majority of humankind can probably relate to the three stories of more traditional loneliness in the film....After losing his wife, a man loses the will to live.....A girl is spurned by her new "crush" for no apparent reason....Even the slow, fat man with a heart of gold was sympathetic....

And as this IS a Southeast Asian movie, there's even a ghost!! Anyway, this was a flawed film (too many closeup shots of people eating...), but definitely a surprisingly good one. 7.5/10

"The cinematic spectacle has its rules, its reliable methods for producing satisfactory products. But the reality that must be taken as a point of departure is dissatisfaction. The function of the cinema, whether dramatic or documentary, is to present a false and isolated coherence as a substitute for a communication and activity that are absent." Guy Debord Critique de la séparation (1961)

Eric Khoo's "Be With Me" will divide its audiences. For some, weaned on slick Hollywood mega productions and blockbusters, the film's deliberate measured pacing is likely to exasperate, while others, plugged into the hype from the Cannes Festival, are likely to ignore its flaws and sing its praises.

The truth probably lies somewhere in between.

Interwoven among its three vignettes on love/lost/yearning, "Finding Love", "Meant To Be" and "So In Love" is also the semi documentary – on Theresa Chan. Told largely through subtitles, the story on how she had managed to overcome life injustices after being deaf and blind will strike a chord with many viewers. The segment does however come across as being rather detached, causing some of the other segments to be less developed.

Ironically, the poignancy of the film is corroborated by its Singapore setting, where the denizens are constantly admonished to be productive and efficient, and its humanity for the most part, relegated to mega TV charity fund raising programs. That "Be With Me" was able to speak to the heart of the ordinary, the downtrodden, the destitute and the minorities there, may perhaps then be the best accolade one can accord the film.

Be With Me is essentially a quiet film with minimal dialogue and action, but yet radiates a certain degree of power and influence on the audience throughout the course of the show. Three short stories are interwoven around a real-life docu-drama featuring the indomitable Theresa Chan, who although blind and deaf, displays more strength and hope than any of the other characters in the movie.

Did the film make me cry, as it supposedly did to many critics around the world? No it didn't. So you mean the show wasn't touching for me? Wrong. Do we have to cry when something touches the heart? Many times what goes on inside the heart does not translate to what comes out from the eyes. My emotions were stirred and I felt my heart clench at various moments when the characters suffered through the quiet desperation they went through.

It was an enjoyable movie, though the ambiance and overall darkness of the film may suggest otherwise. I felt most amazed at what Theresa Chan was capable of accomplishing despite her most unfortunate disabilities. Not just the physical aspects, where she showed us her astonishing ability to take care of herself, but also the mental and spiritual aspects of her life, where she is so strong in the mind and the faith in her God. It would be so easy to blame the heavens and let go of life but yet she displays a remarkable determination to make the fullest out of her existence. Her situation puts the other characters' plights in the shade and render our own complaints with everything around us irrelevant.

Be With Me not just provides a silent inspiration to audiences, it also showcases the many facets of local life rarely experienced in a busy world where everything revolves around us at breakneck speed. Take a time out and allow yourself to sit through an hour and a half of peaceful contemplation with what is it that really matters most in our lives.

There are no memorable quotes in this film as it is mostly silent. It plays like a symphony with glances and expressions doing the talking.

It is about love: love lost, unrequited love, love despite the odds being against it.

Theresa Poh Lin Chan was deaf and blind. She did not sit idly by in misery, but became an accomplished women despite her handicaps. She is real. This story is about three fictional characters that crossed in her path, some only peripherally.

A man who lost his wife and sunk into the depths of despair until his son, a social worker, started taking his cooking to Teresa; a lesbian who found love on the Internet, and then lost it without explanation, and whose suicide attempt brought about the meeting with the man and Teresa; and a security guard who was hopelessly in love with a beautiful executive and passed by the man on the way to deliver a letter to his love - a letter that never made it because of the suicide attempt.

The strange twists of love are looked at languidly and with strong emotion. It is a beautiful film.

The film is special in that it takes away a very essential part of a film: the dialog. The director has to use another way to get across the messages, and this is by no means easy. The viewer also has to adjust to the lack of explicit dialog in order to appreciate the film. I sat through the movies uncomfortably. I nevertheless like the film since it gives me a chance to exercise my imagination.

Another unusual feature of the film is that the three parts of the film do not connect with each other. I see it as a way to express the core idea of individual solitude in a modern society. Everyone is confined to his or her own world. It's not easy to confront this unfortunate aspect of cosmopolitan life. To the extent that the viewer finds the whole film boring, it's already a success. Atomized life is indeed very boring.

I also saw through the deaf and blind character that we should not take our senses for granted. Try imagine how your world would be like if they are taken away from you. The character's will of accepting her physical deficiencies is very inspiring.

In contrast, the parts about the security guard and the short relationship between two young lesbian girls are not worth remembering. It's nothing new. You find these people all the time.