take out (2004)
Take Out (2004) is a film about an undocumented Chinese immigrant in New York delivering food on a bicycle. It is an hour and a half long, and most of it is just shots of Ming, our protagonist, delivering takeout orders, interspersed with shots of his coworkers dealing with customers at the restaurant and, occasionally, each other. It is a perfect example of what I love about cinema.
There is more going on, of course, than the raw description of the story would have you believe, but I'm not exaggerating when I say that this is, for the most part, ninety minutes of watching a man deliver food to his customers. In almost any other medium this would be deeply tedious, but these small interactions, often a few seconds at a time, are able to condense so much into them, through the language of cinema--the cinematography, the set design, the acting--that it is an absolutely harrowing experience. It shows us the harsh realities that someone like Ming experiences on a daily basis without preaching, or dwelling on it--the cinematography has a very cinéma vérité quality to it. He has more deliveries to make, there's no time to spend on just how racist that last customer was.
Every now and again there is a film whose story simply couldn't be told in another medium, and there is an absolute joy to being able to witness an art form firing on all cylinders, where every frame on the screen is able to sing, where the movie is able to be so uniquely itself.
And there are so many details that went into making this work. The bikes these guys are riding are absolutely the sort of bikes you would expect a New York food delivery messenger to be riding in 2004. These customer interactions, the dynamics between the coworkers, all feel extremely real. And that realism makes every moment land that much harder.
I could go on at great length about this film, but at heart all I have to say is this: I loved this, and I think there's a very good chance you will, too. It's available on the Criterion Channel, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.