How to watch the movie The Wedding Banquet from a cross-cultural perspective?

Gao Weitong (Zhao Wenxuan) who lives in the United States is a homosexual. He and his lover, an American man named Simon (Mitchell lichtenstein), live in Manhattan, new york. However, Gao Wei's parents in Taiwan Province province didn't know that their son was gay. They kept urging Wei Tong to get married quickly in order to inherit the Gaos thought. As it happens, Gu Weiwei (Jin Sumei), an illegal female immigrant from the mainland, lives in Gao Weitong's apartment, so Simon came up with the idea of getting Wei Tong and Gu Weiwei married. This not only appeased Wei Tong's parents in Taiwan Province Province, but also allowed Gu Weiwei to get her dream green card and maintained the cohabitation relationship between Simon and Wei Tong. This seemingly foolproof plan led to more complicated events. When Wei Tong's parents heard the good news, they happily came to new york to hold a wedding for their son. So behind a lively Chinese wedding banquet, various emotional entanglements and interpersonal conflicts began.

The film continues director Ang Lee's concern about the ethical and moral conflicts in the multicultural background and the complex interpersonal relationships and emotional entanglements caused by them. The arrangement of the first half of the film may make people feel that it contains enough gunpowder primers to blow up an ethical system that has imprisoned individuals for thousands of years, and there are still many question marks that make people chew and ponder.

However, in the face of such a complicated problem, what Ang Lee showed was not his sharpness of thinking to affirm or subvert any moral values, but his calm narrative ability. Ang Lee's outstanding point is that he can skillfully weave these clues, unfold the story layer by layer, and at the same time push the drama conflict to a climax, carefully balancing the meticulous portrayal of various roles with the cracks of many values and emotions in the name of a universal "love".

The Wedding Banquet is based on the open western culture, and the traditional opposition of China's culture has reached a comic effect. Culture is not only the entrance to the tension of film drama, but also the extension of its context, which is influenced by the unbearable love of comrades and the warmth of family ties. The two conflict and find a quite pleasant fusion point, which is rare for a happy ending.