Achieving Double Happiness:
An Interview with Mina Shum

Mina Shum is a film director. Her first feature-length movie, Double Happiness (opening in Canada on July 28), has already received critical acclaim in both Europe and Canada. The film’s success has taken Shum to Berlin, Cannes, Toronto and Montreal to participate, and receive, awards for her film-making. Perhaps her most prestigious award to date was winning the Wolfgang Staudte award — a cash windfall of 20,000 deutchmarks, which Shum used to pay off her student loan.

“It’s been a bit crazy,” Mina explained to me over the phone. “You’re supposed to smile and look great but all the while you’re tired. I went to film school learning how to focus a camera. No one can prepare you for this [success].”

Double Happiness is a movie about Jade Li ( played by Sandra Oh), a Chinese-Canadian woman who struggles to find her own identity in a world that attempts to limit and define how she is to think, speak and act. Even the name of the movie suggests a dichotomy. Double happiness is the Chinese symbol for marriage, which is literally two happiness symbols joined together in union. But the movie is about Jade trying to find two types of happiness. One is what her family wants and one is what she wants, and it’s a fine line that she has to walk to find either.

Because Shum is also of Chinese descent, the trials and tribulations of Jade Li are very much her own. Like her character creation, Shum’s parents were critical of her pursuit of the Arts, acting and directing in particular.

“(My parents) were really wary of me going into the Arts. I come from an immigrant background and my family wanted me to get a steady job. But to go out and become a profound artist? It didn’t make sense to them. It’s not a safe career. The word ‘freelance’ doesn’t even exist in my parents’ vocabulary.

“But in terms of making films, my parents are poor. I am not upper class, and most people who go to university are. That was a very big distinction. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed the class distinction as harshly as I have until I went to university. But I needed the education. I couldn’t have done what I am doing right now without going to school.

“The whole film was very much a part of me in terms of the sensibilities and the camera angles and the colours. You can walk into my house, and you know that the person who lives there would love Double Happiness. It’s not the fact that she is the director, but because all the colours are the same and there is that sensibility that is similar.

“When I was 19, I was at UBC pursuing my degree in theatre, which was then acting and directing for stage. Later, I realised that instead of trying to do all the different art forms I was interested in, why don’t I make films, because they encompass everything: music sound design, directing, writing, photography. That’s how I fell into it. Actually, I didn’t fall into it. I was completely focused the whole time. Because, as a director, what you are essentially doing is conducting a band. And the band consists of Sandra Oh as the lead singer; the guitarist will be Peter Wunstorf, director of Photography; the production designer is your bass player and your producer is the drummer. And it’s my job is to conduct and write it.

“I live, breathe and eat film. For example: What magazines are on my bed? Sight and Sound, Film Comment, plus the book Woody Allen on Woody Allen. All I do is watch film. I was very fortunate that I have been training in the Arts since I was 15. I was a concert photographer, I sang in a band, directed theatre and acted as well. All those things really helped me.”

With the character of Jade Li, Shum has created a hero who does not give up on her dreams. Jade is someone who wants to succeed. She has the courage to follow her convictions and to go beyond the safe, quiet world of her parents’ home.

“I think that it is important to create heroes that are not the usual Schwartzenager/Bruce Willis type. If I could sit through Apollo 13 and imagine myself as Tom Hanks and worrying about how I am going to land the ship, there’s no reason why someone like Tom Hanks shouldn’t be able to sit through my film and feel the struggles of Jade. Because that’s when freedom happens. That’s when equality is really reached and equality is what I’m pushing for. There are a lot of people who have identified with Jade so far, and that is really good.”

(At this point I wanted to stick up my hand and cry, “Yes! I identify with Jade’s struggle to become her own person. Thank-you, Mina Shum, for portraying twenty-somethings as hard-working individuals instead of slackers and dead-beats. But that would have been shameless hero-worshipping.)

I’m prepared for the backlash of my next question: How do you feel being pigeon-holed as Canada’s most successful Chinese-Canadian filmmaker? It’s the question that has dogged Shum since the success of Double Happiness. I know this, so I accentuate the question in a very sarcastic, haughty voice that provokes laughter from Shum.

“The most fortunate thing about Double Happiness is the critical acclaim it has received. Which has moved me beyond the token figurehead, the ‘Oh, she’s the Chinese-Canadian filmmaker from Canada.’ It’s the ‘She’s the award-winning filmmaker from Canada.’

“But it gets frustrating because I answer that question a lot. But at the same time I know that I’m a first. So, whenever there’s a first, the media takes note of that. It makes me newsworthy. So if it means that more people come to see my film because I’m newsworthy, then that’s cool. But has it been difficult for me to obtain success? Not really, because it is hard for anybody. It’s being in film. It’s trying to find your own individual voice. So I can’t cry you a river about how difficult it was. But I can certainly say that there has been a lot more attention given to me because I am precisely all those newsworthy things: I'm the Chinese- Canadian filmaker from Canada. I’m also female. I’m also young. I’m only 29. I’m only 29 and I look 13.”

Although the promotion of Double Happiness has jetted Shum from one side of the Atlantic to the other, she is already in the early stages of her new project, Drive She Said.

“Drive She Said is a romantic comedy about falling in love with oneself and the freedom of the human spirit. I’m really excited about it. It’s another film about the search for self, just like Double Happiness. If Double Happiness is about how to find the courage to dream, then Drive She Said is about how we as women find the courage to know about our futures. We’ve never been in these positions of power before in the entire history of our gender, where we can have opportunities and be financially independent. So what do we do? What about all that encoding about how we are supposed to act. Do we ignore that? Do we take some part of it? Think about Jade in Double Happiness. Is she Chinese? Is she Canadian? Which part does she ignore, what does she keep with her? It’s the same question: How do you marry tradition and change?”

Shum’s main directive in her films is to highlight the spirit of the individual. This is what makes her films so believable. She touches the core of hopes and wishes and uncertainties that humans face daily, while interpreting human nature as essentially good and eager to achieve.

“I think that everyone has a dream. It’s whether they’re allowed to share their dream with others or have the courage to share with others. And I think in Jade’s case, she definitely found the courage to be her own person. That was very difficult. I think that everybody wants to be something when they grow up. It’s just that they have been taught they are not allowed to be that person. ‘That’s not right,’ and ‘Women don’t do this.’ And we, as individuals, need to break those boundaries down. And dream again. There is all this nihilist cynicism that is happening. I mean I grew up with the Punk Rock thing. I’m not stupid, but for some reason, people think that smart has to do with cynical. You don’t have to be cynical to be smart. You can be melancholy- optimistic, which is where I’m at. Because, like I said, I believe in the goodness of human nature. But, I also know that life is really rough. And, if we as human beings can just admit that, ‘Yeah, it’s really hard, but I’m going to get back on my own two feet and I’m going to go at it again because why not.’ If there is one thing that Generation X has promoted it is the attitude of ‘What the fuck for?’ Well, I’m saying, ‘Why the fuck not?’ If you have one life to live, what’s it going to be? You are going to do this only once. Are you going to waste it?

“I don’t know how old I was when I developed this idea, but I thought: When I am a grandmother, and I’m sitting in my rocking chair with my grandkids, I want to be able to say to them, ‘Well, I tried and I failed,’ rather than say: ‘Well, I could have, but I didn’t.’ And I think that this attitude is because my parents were very safe, so I decided to be the risk taker. Opposites attract, I guess.”

Overall, Shum envisions the future of films (especially her own) with an optimism she holds towards human nature.

“We’re in a very intolerant sound-byte society right now. They all want to know what happens in a movie, so you have to rephrase it in a very simplistic way. Plot: this is what happened. Enjoy it.

But there is a market for the intelligent in-house film and for the independent mind, which is all very exciting. It means we’re moving into a society where there is bigger tolerance for the individual. Where there are children being brought up where ‘gay’ is not a dirty word. And that is really exciting, and really cool. But at the same time you have ‘Water World.’ What the Hell’s that? ‘Fishtar!’ I don’t really know if we need that type of movie. If you release a film, that’s fine. But you can also add intelligent commentary in a film. And that’s important.”

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