Singapore

This is a movie about the lower middle class grind. Upward mobility is not easy to come by, even if you are young and recently graduated from a University. Success is even harder when one lies about achievements. Singapore is like the United States only richer (per person) and more modernized. Wearing a tie and suit doesn’t mean life is going to get any better. Only through the miraculous intervention of the lottery does the patriarch of a family make it out of these economic doldrums. The middle class is feeling the squeeze in Singapore. One character is forced out of financial necessity to consult his high school yearbook to find people to sell insurance to. Singapore is very clean. There isn’t any litter. There doesn’t appear to be any homeless people, Just government projects and repo men. The poverty is in terms of debt not personal possessions.

Singapore is flat, hot, and tropical. There are a lot of people and not much space. If you are rich you can have access to golf courses and better-looking prostitutes (if that is your thing). But in the 270 square miles of Singapore (wikipedia) those with and those without inhabit the same areas. The symbols of success are accessible to anyone who is approved for a credit card. If a person dies rich enough paper mache mansions and sports cars are set afire in honor. Status is very important in Singapore. The economy is thriving but international competition has made “making it” difficult.

Modernization, fierce competition, and the disintegration of the family explain, in part, why there is such rampant urination in the elevators of Singapore. This quiet and wet act of defiance helps highlight the anonymity of life in this country. Nobody seems to have any friends. The family that we witness in this movie is small and they don’t particularly love each other. In the process of spending their collective days scraping by, going to work, cooking, and dreaming of a better life they don’t take the opportunity to understand the people that surround them. The character that returns from “graduating” college has a difficult time viewing his parents as something other than a source of cash. The people of this movie dedicate their lives to the acquisition of money. It is a hard task to succeed in, and those who win die spontaneously, or are later left out in the cold.

This movie is a social critique on the dangers of modernization. The needs of the human soul (like being treated with love and respect) are in low supply in this movie. Intimacy is outsourced to a sympathetic Chinese prostitute. Family stories are told only after, and not during, the life of a loved one. Nobody puts much effort to give a damn about anyone else. There are exceptions to this. But the subject of money is rarely separate from the words and actions of the people presented in this film.

This movie shows the struggle of a group of people trying to live beyond poverty and love the people around them.