Dark Matter is a neat little film about the promise and peril of being a Chinese graduate student at an American university. It gives you a peek inside the subculture of young Asians imported into the country in virtual indentured servitude to the careers and egos of middle-aged academics.
Liu Xing (Liu Ye) is a brilliant math student who's come to the U.S. to study with renowned cosmology professor Jake Reiser (Aidan Quinn). He immediately put Xing to work and is impressed with the results, as long as they conform to Reiser's existing theories on the structure of the universe. Xing winds up living with two other Chinese graduate students, Little Square (Li Bo) and Old Wu (He Yu), and becomes friends with Joanna Silver (Meryl Streep), a rich man's wife who's fascinated with China and has become a patron of the constant stream of Chinese graduate students flowing into Professor Reiser's lab. Xing even develops a crush on a pretty townie (Taylor Schilling) who runs the local tea shop. He writes letters back to China telling his parents of how wonderful things are for him in America.
But then things stop being so wonderful. Xing's academic career is stalled when his theories on so-called "dark matter" conflict with Professor Reiser's ideas and a much more Americanized student with the Americanized name of Laurence Feng replaces him on the fast track for a PhD. His townie girl crush tells Xing she just wants to be friends and he eventually ends up selling cosmetics door-to-door. But Xing's letters home remain and bright and cheerful as ever, covering up a black depression that explodes in a moment of violent insanity.
Sadly reminiscent of a tragedy at the University of Iowa nearly 20 years ago, Dark Matter gently engages you in considering a cultural and economic phenomenon that's been around for so long, it's become a cliché. Asian graduate students in the sciences are so numerous, they've become a punch line on shows like Futurama. This film helps you to think of them as real people, the kind of people who want to make money, become Americans, go home or even win a Nobel Prize. It helps you to imagine what it's like to be stranded in a strange land, surrounded by your countrymen but still very much alone.
The acting is also pretty good, though it's odd to see a Meryl Streep movie where she doesn't give the best performance. She's fine, but Joanna Silver's a fairly minor character who contributes more to the atmosphere of the film than she does to the plot. No, the standout actor here is definitely Aidan Quinn. Reiser is the linchpin on which Liu Zing's life turns and Quinn does an excellent job at showing how vanity and envy can dominate the minds of even the smartest men. Liu Ye and Lloyd Suh also draw such a wonderful contrast between the frustrated integrity of Liu Xing that eventually turns in on itself and the vacuous ambition of Laurence Feng that leads to reward, as it so often does in this unfortunate world.
There are a lot of little things to enjoy in Dark Matter. From Reiser's feisty secretary Hildy (Blair Brown) to Xing's interactions with his roommates to Bill Irwin playing Hal Silver, the rich man who tries to tolerate his wife's involvement with the Chinese students. The only quibble I could have with it is that the movie does move very quickly from the beginning to the end of Xing's emotional implosion and it feels like there's about 10 or so minutes of the film that have been left out. A lot of the dialog is also in Chinese with subtitles, so you do have to accept that.
All in all, though, I quite liked Dark Matter. It's a good little movie that deserves a gander.
Liu Xing (Liu Ye) is a brilliant math student who's come to the U.S. to study with renowned cosmology professor Jake Reiser (Aidan Quinn). He immediately put Xing to work and is impressed with the results, as long as they conform to Reiser's existing theories on the structure of the universe. Xing winds up living with two other Chinese graduate students, Little Square (Li Bo) and Old Wu (He Yu), and becomes friends with Joanna Silver (Meryl Streep), a rich man's wife who's fascinated with China and has become a patron of the constant stream of Chinese graduate students flowing into Professor Reiser's lab. Xing even develops a crush on a pretty townie (Taylor Schilling) who runs the local tea shop. He writes letters back to China telling his parents of how wonderful things are for him in America.
But then things stop being so wonderful. Xing's academic career is stalled when his theories on so-called "dark matter" conflict with Professor Reiser's ideas and a much more Americanized student with the Americanized name of Laurence Feng replaces him on the fast track for a PhD. His townie girl crush tells Xing she just wants to be friends and he eventually ends up selling cosmetics door-to-door. But Xing's letters home remain and bright and cheerful as ever, covering up a black depression that explodes in a moment of violent insanity.
Sadly reminiscent of a tragedy at the University of Iowa nearly 20 years ago, Dark Matter gently engages you in considering a cultural and economic phenomenon that's been around for so long, it's become a cliché. Asian graduate students in the sciences are so numerous, they've become a punch line on shows like Futurama. This film helps you to think of them as real people, the kind of people who want to make money, become Americans, go home or even win a Nobel Prize. It helps you to imagine what it's like to be stranded in a strange land, surrounded by your countrymen but still very much alone.
The acting is also pretty good, though it's odd to see a Meryl Streep movie where she doesn't give the best performance. She's fine, but Joanna Silver's a fairly minor character who contributes more to the atmosphere of the film than she does to the plot. No, the standout actor here is definitely Aidan Quinn. Reiser is the linchpin on which Liu Zing's life turns and Quinn does an excellent job at showing how vanity and envy can dominate the minds of even the smartest men. Liu Ye and Lloyd Suh also draw such a wonderful contrast between the frustrated integrity of Liu Xing that eventually turns in on itself and the vacuous ambition of Laurence Feng that leads to reward, as it so often does in this unfortunate world.
There are a lot of little things to enjoy in Dark Matter. From Reiser's feisty secretary Hildy (Blair Brown) to Xing's interactions with his roommates to Bill Irwin playing Hal Silver, the rich man who tries to tolerate his wife's involvement with the Chinese students. The only quibble I could have with it is that the movie does move very quickly from the beginning to the end of Xing's emotional implosion and it feels like there's about 10 or so minutes of the film that have been left out. A lot of the dialog is also in Chinese with subtitles, so you do have to accept that.
All in all, though, I quite liked Dark Matter. It's a good little movie that deserves a gander.