Sundance ’21: Amy Tan—Unintended Memoir

Amy Tan is a literary bestseller on the magnitude of the late, great Tom Wolfe. She has only published six novels and two full-length nonfiction books since 1989, but each one has been an event. Her debut novel, The Joy Luck Club became a sensation and so did Wayne Wang’s film adaptation. She is a totally appropriate choice for the American Masters treatment and director James Redford obviously had the connections to get Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir into this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where it premiered yesterday.

Tan’s early novels incorporated considerable autobiographical elements, but they were still fiction. The “Joy Luck Club” was indeed based on a real-life investment and social cooperative formed by her parents and their friends (it seems like there are a lot of lessons to draw from that alone). Unfortunately, her early teen years were marred by the tragic deaths of her beloved father and older brother, as well as the erratic behavior of her unstable mother.

Redford does a nice job tracing how her real-life family history is reflected in her work. Clearly, Tan is reserved by nature, but he gets her to open up on several occasions. Viewers will find a good deal of emotional resolution or payoff in the film, but Tan would surely chafe at the triteness of calling it a “recovery” story.

Indeed, Tan is refreshingly candid. When asked about the criticism of supposed Asian stereotypes in her work, she cuts to the heart of the matter, explaining the outrage-chorus will never be satisfied with anything that isn’t outright propaganda. Exactly so.