4:30 (2005)0

Xiao Wu leads a rou­tine life like most chil­dren around his age. He ful­fils most of what chil­dren are expected to do such as per­form­ing his own house­hold chores, look­ing after his own meals and hav­ing hob­bies such as watch­ing tele­vi­sion as well as engag­ing in phys­i­cal activ­i­ties. Unlike other chil­dren, Xiao Wu resides in a quiet apart­ment that he shares with Jung, a Korean man who lives by night brood­ing over his unre­quited love through drink­ing and smok­ing. Xiao Wu soon devel­ops a yearn­ing for a friend­ship with Jung by cre­at­ing com­mo­tions in order to seek his attention.It ini­tially sounds like a super­fi­cial side of a young boy whose inter­est is only in being enter­tained by the peo­ple around him. Part of me shares this view that peo­ple use oth­ers some­times, for their own com­pany. ‘4.30’ is a film with many con­tra­dic­tions that breaks the stereo­types of Singaporeans and that is why I believe it is an engag­ing piece. After watch­ing 4.30, I learned to develop a lik­ing for this char­ac­ter– Xiao Wu. Xiao Wu’s matu­rity, inno­cence, thought­ful­ness, and impec­ca­ble atten­tion to detail are both a mix­ture of a child and an adult. I think that his char­ac­ter stays close enough to the like­ness of a child in that his mis­chie­vous deeds such as the cut­ting of cig­a­rettes, the dis­rup­tions and his bold­ness to express his thoughts in his assign­ments are both enter­tain­ing and real. It seemed pretty nor­mal and I think Xiao Wu is like the child we all were, with a rebel­lious side that we might refuse to address or admit to. I have to admit, that I did think he was just seek­ing atten­tion ini­tially and that his search­ing and prob­ing into Jung’s belong­ings were just ran­dom acts of curios­ity. It was fun to laugh and share moments with an audi­ence at Xiao Wu’s mis­be­hav­ior. Xiao Wu seemed like a strong and sen­si­ble one, and I could not help but feel dis­turbed by some of his man­ner­isms in the film. Xiao Wu’s exces­sive addic­tion to cough syrup and his con­stant empty envi­ron­ment was dis­turb­ing. Having said that, I will dis­cuss the way Tan has pre­sented the man­ner of Xiao Wu in con­trast to Jung. This con­trast­ing rela­tion­ship got me inter­ested in the plot and char­ac­ter devel­op­ment of ‘4.30’ and to me, it is a rea­son why this film is ‘louder’ than what most peo­ple would say is ‘quiet’.

Despite the age gap and the lan­guage bar­ri­ers between the two main char­ac­ters, there are sim­i­lar­i­ties between Xiao Wu and Jung that bring about the theme for the film 4.30. Both char­ac­ters are oppressed from lone­li­ness, yearn­ing for attach­ment and sen­ti­men­tal­ity. Although, there is no clear men­tion of what had hap­pened at the end of the film, you get an idea that Jung has some­what moved on while Xiao Wu still clings on to the past of reliv­ing the 4.30 moment. The attach­ment to time is very impor­tant to him as shown in the film through the track­ing of time from clocks and dates. It is the tem­po­ral sen­ti­men­tal­ity of Xiao Wu that touches me and makes me sym­pa­thize with him because a child his age would not have such close rela­tions to time but would be more care­less and care­free. It offers pes­simism in the sense that it addresses the neg­a­tiv­ity of hold­ing on to some­thing and being depen­dent on another. It does open ques­tions to me about time and also, how we might use it to mea­sure what kind of a per­son we are or what we have become (in this instance through the 2 char­ac­ters Xiao Wu and Jung). Throughout the film, there was humor in Xiao Wu’s behav­ior. It was an inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence and you see Xiao Wu as an intel­li­gent boy who is thought­ful. There are strug­gles within his rela­tion­ship devel­op­ment with Jung. There are moments where Xiao Wu sim­ply places an ash­tray on the table for Jung and then pee­ing in his bath­tub to pre­vent him from attempt­ing sui­cide. Overall, it was enter­tain­ing and funny. But more impor­tantly, it voices out the sup­pres­sion of Xiao Wu who is being brought up in an envi­ron­ment lack of parental care. This is also rein­forced in his com­po­si­tion where he shares his ideals on the per­fect hero. Strange enough, the narrow-mindedness in adults appear when his teacher is more con­cerned on the amount of words he wrote as opposed to the con­tent. This could also be a sug­ges­tion of how adults tend to view a child as naïve. There are many witty, cre­ative ways and attempts by Xiao Wu such as when he placed Jung’s face over his cig­a­rette box or when he stole oranges from an altar just to make Jung a cup of juice, that made me grow to see him as a child that is more inde­pen­dent, intel­li­gent and maybe even witty, to the extent that I feel sorry when he soon becomes a slave to emo­tions of attach­ment due to his matu­rity. Could it be that through­out this jour­ney, Xiao Wu had devel­oped an under­stand­ing from Jung the harsh real­ity of life and was influ­enced by it? An exam­ple would be his exces­sive con­sump­tion of cough syrup. It is sad that some­how at the end, he is left alone once again and he paints the win­dows of his apart­ment black in depict­ing that he has lost his dreams (as he had men­tioned ear­lier in the film). Somehow, there is a level of betrayal that Jung had left him alone and trapped in lone­li­ness at the end. But then some might argue that he is pur­su­ing his own role as an adult. All in all Tan, makes us sym­pa­thize with Xiao Wu. The attach­ment to the book Wu holds onto, that records Jung, speaks a lot about the depen­dency on the child for a role model and the yearn­ing to belong. ‘4.30’ has great iden­ti­fi­ca­tion to Singapore. It moves away from show­ing the cos­mopoli­tan side of Singapore, which most of the world knows. This has been a repeated trend in local films. It digs deep into human emo­tions and the iso­la­tion from a place ( Singapore) that is con­stantly evolv­ing. Like Eric Khoo’s ’12 storeys’ that also speaks on sui­ci­dal issues and soli­tude, ‘4.30’ presents to us a per­spec­tive from a child whose only chance of sur­vival seems to be the abil­ity to rely on him­self. I think he even­tu­ally does sur­vive when he paints the wall and returns the oranges to the altar. On a more uni­ver­sal note, I feel that it high­lights how adults might neglect a child’s view, and spoils the con­ven­tion that chil­dren should be seen and not heard. It is deeply touch­ing that Tan presents to us Xiao Wu’s deep emotions-to be attached to Jung-and his cre­ative wit that ulti­mately wins him the atten­tion from Jung (though for a short period of time). His sen­si­bil­ity also makes me see him as a well-liked char­ac­ter as he boldly stubs the cig­a­rettes from Jung when he offers him one at the stair­ways. I think that ‘4.30’ has a last­ing charm to appeal to our soci­ety. It addresses the impor­tance of fam­ily love that I think Tan has approached in his pre­vi­ous shorts but this time, with­out the use of voice-overs. I believe that his new ‘quiet’ film that many have said is dif­fer­ent is in fact ‘louder’ because it brings in new perspectives/ dis­tur­bances and a lot more room for thoughts to a par­tic­i­pa­tive audi­ence. Written by: Genevieve Lee