LIGHT OF THE SETTING SUN Review: How Trauma Shapes Identity, Inspires Poetry
Director Vicky Du peers into the past through the prism of her own family's history. Why did they leave China? Why did they leave Taiwan?
Filmmaker Vicky Du is ready to dive into her family's history. Why did they leave China and move to Taiwan? Why did they leave Taiwan and move to the U.S.?
Having made a documentary short, Gaysians (2016), served as an associate producer on the sterling doc Free Solo (2018), and produced and directed on the doc series Art in the Twenty-First Century (2020), Du has developed a good eye for framing and sets a calm, deliberate pace for her feature debut.
That seems quite wise, since her family members are cooperative, yet reluctant to readily divulge much of anything, beyond routine facts. In the interview that begins the film, her mother quietly wonders about the point of digging up the past.
It's not that Du is looking for dirt on her family. On the contrary, she is sincerely seeking to understand why her parents treated her and her brother in such an unkind manner that they themselves have trouble talking about the abuse they suffered. The idea that the abuse was primarily, if not, entirely emotional, rather than physical or sexual, does not lessen the lasting damage that was caused.
Quietly, yet with great determination, Du keeps pursuing answers. In talking with different family members, she is able to piece together that her family was forced to flee Mainland China when the Communist Party took power, due to persecution by the new ruling party. They had to make a new, threadbare life in Taiwan, only later to be forced to move again, this time to the U.S.
She also explores the effects of the war and the trauma that resulted, and how it shaped the personalities of her parents, which then manifested in how they treated their children. She talks to her mother, her brother, her grandparents, a cousin and his fiancee, an uncle .. in other words, anyone still alive who might be able to shed light on what happened and why.
Rather than outrage and anger, Light of the Setting Sun focuses on healing and understanding. It's meditative and poetic. Without making bold statements, it wrestles with fundamental issues of identity.
Can you ever make peace with your past? Or with your family's past, even if you don't complete understand why things happened they way they did? Those questions are left up to the viewer to decide, as thoughtfully considered in Vicky Du's wonderfully absorbing film.
The film opens at New York's DCTV Firehouse Cinema on Friday, April 18. Visit the theater's official site for location and showtimes. It will enjoy its Los Angeles premiere at the Asian Pacific Film Festival on May 4, 2025. Visit the festival's official site for location and showtime.
