Shower

The NEH institute just watched Shower, a sentimental movie about a modern, Westernized man who returns to his father's traditional bathhouse and rediscovers the true community of his roots before it is demolished to make room for a new development. It is a movie you've seen a lot before, with pubs or barber shops playing the role of the bathhouse. The regulars are eccentric and lovable, and the proprietor is good and solving problems and healing relationships. The movie was well done, though, and in the context of modernizing China, a fairly bold political statement. The ending is especially nice, because it manages to avoid a lot of the easier resolutions.