I had little to no expectation when I started watching No Crying at the Dinner Table, especially since the topic of generational distance in Vietnam has been discussed time and time again by many other media, including Bố Già and Nhà Bà Nữ, both feature films by Trấn Thành.
As a Vietnamese who has experienced emotional silence in my own family, I was concerned that the film wouldn’t do it justice due to its simplistic formula, where, aside from the silent daily-life scenes, nearly all scenes with dialogue are filmed at a dinner table. However, my initial skepticism was dispelled after I actually watched the documentary and saw how raw the portrayal of unspoken grief, trauma, and emotional vulnerability was.
No Crying at the Dinner Table is a 16-minute documentary directed by Carol Nguyen, a Vietnamese-Canadian filmmaker whose filmography often focuses on family, emotional silence, and cultural identity. Most of her films are well-received by the public and critically acclaimed, with No Crying receiving the “Jury Prize for Short Documentary” at South by Southwest, as well as becoming one of the official selections to be screened at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in 2019.
In the film, the main actors are also the director's real-life family.
The film comprises a series of interviews she conducted alone with her father, mother, and sister about their past and their relationship with other family members. Each of the individuals recalls harrowing memories about their loved ones: her mother expresses regret about not being able to be affectionate with her parents before they passed away, her father opens up about his pain of losing his brother to suicide, and her sister shares her lingering sadness about their grandparents’ passing, as well as her distant relationship with her parents. Aside from the interviews, several individual scenes of the family members doing mundane tasks, such as taking a bath or preparing dinner, are shown on screen, and the three only sit together in the final scene.
Behind the shoot at the titular dinner table.
What intrigued me even before I started watching the movie was its title, specifically how it perfectly alluded to one of this documentary’s most omnipresent themes, as stated by Carol Nguyen herself when discussing the movie on her website: the handling of grief. It can be expressed in many different ways, yet crying remains one of the most common manifestations. Meanwhile, the dinner table, where family members gather, is an ideal place for them to share different emotions, including grief. Nevertheless, No Crying highlights the emotional silence within the family that has built up over time and kept the family members absent from each other’s pain.
Grief itself is a peculiar feeling, a mixture of sadness and regret, existing in between the what-have-been-dones and what-could-have-beens; it can stay within us for a long time. Throughout No Crying, grief is explored through all three family members’ stories about their dead loved ones. Each of their stories, though different in context and content, has a similar sense of guilt and regret, a feeling that they could have done something, anything, for their loved ones before losing them forever. While the mother regrets not showing affection to her parents when they were still alive, the father summarizes his story with two words: “guilty forever.” The long-lasting weight of loss and grief is further emphasized in the sister’s story, where, even after years of her grandparents’ passing, she still cries whenever a random fragment of memory about them resurfaces in her mind, and she notes, “I guess you never stop mourning anyway…”
Not being able to share their grief with close ones because of generational distance is another level of pain that many families go through, which is observed in this short film. Distance and the unspoken pains this causes are especially evident in the film's non-interview scenes, where each family member, while carrying on with their daily tasks, hardly ever talks to each other. They keep their feelings to themselves, as if there is a huge wall that blocks their emotions and pain from being shown to one another. This distance is not only shown in scene, but its consequences are also underscored in the interviews, where both the mother and the father express regrets of not being closer to their loved ones before they passed or, more lightly, the sister’s early exposure to non-PG materials like the explicit sex scene in Titanic, partially due to her distance from her parents. Nguyen even notes that her family members’ grief and trauma hadn’t been communicated until the making of the documentary.
No Crying at the Dinner Table lived up to its title from the beginning to the middle, where all family members, when together, barely show their emotions on the dinner table. Yet, towards the end of the film, as they listen to each other’s individual interviews, the emotional barriers and distances between them gradually crumble when they hug each other in tears. This powerful moment, when they allow themselves to be vulnerable in front of others, to finally cry at the dinner table, dismantles the title's premise. Although the cycle of emotional distance in the director’s family is far from being fully broken, the documentary allows for a layer of understanding and empathy to develop in the family’s relationships, helping them be more comfortable talking about their hidden emotions and stories.
Carol Nguyen (sitting, second from left) and the crew behind the project.
Carol Nguyen not only tells a beautiful story about grief, generational trauma, and familial distance, but also creates a safe space for her own family to talk through their trauma and pain, thus kickstarting the journey to resolve their own inter-generational issues and wearing down the metaphorical wall between them in the end. Being part of this intimate family journey, even though only through our screens, undoubtedly made many of the film's audience members, including me, tear up. It made me rethink my relationship with my family, recognize their human fallibility, and try to view them through a more sympathetic lens, much like Nguyen’s family in the film. No Crying at the Dinner Table taught me that silence at the dinner table is never fully empty, but can mask a deep sense of grief, pain, isolation, and feelings left unsaid. I began to confront my silence after watching Nguyen’s family confront their own. Perhaps this could be a path that you can take, too, if you’re willing to give this simple yet nuanced documentary a try.
No Crying at the Dinner Table can be viewed in full on Vimeo. Watch the short film below.
