My Own Private Chinatown

Art doesn’t change. It’s stuck in amber like dinosaur DNA or buried deep in the ice & snow like that thing in The Thing. When we revisit it, it emerges different. Some of those same moments or themes hit us in similarly. But there are new beats we are drawn to because of an expanded life experience. Unseen parallels now take on entirely new meaning. All those events and emotions about life, love, family, friends, hope, tragedy, all of it, have been altered through this mirror maze we call life. What doesn’t change? The art itself.

I was on a flight recently and rewatched Chinatown. I’ve seen this film more than a few times, but it’s been several years since I last viewed it.

In the film, when Chinatown is brought up for the first time, a look flashes over private eye J.J. “Jake” Gittes’ (Jack Nicolson) face as momentary as the pop of a camera bulb. It says everything about his past. In two seconds time, we the audience understand that during his time in Chinatown as a cop on the beat, he saw way more then he wanted. To a white man enforcing laws constructed by the powerful, this was a place he never got his head wrapped around and it spooked him enough to leave the force. The murky depths of history, the longitude narrative of family, and the many secrets known by few and unseen by most. It is only near the very end of the film, when Jake find himself back in Chinatown, that he understands he knows nothing about anything. People are secretive. The law is flawed. Lovers lie to lovers. Family doesn’t always look out for family. People are never what they appear to be.

We all have our own Chinatown to sort out. Secrets come in all shapes & sizes. Being haunted by the past is not unnatural, but deeply human. Chinatown helped me reconnect with some of themes I mentioned above. The work itself is a classic with a complicated flaw of its own in the guise of director Roman Polanski. “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”