Even though we do not like to admit it, many of us depend on the sweat of immigrant workers to maintain the living standard we have grown accustomed to. Whether we are talking about the thousands of migrant workers crossing the US-Mexican border into the United States to work as nannies or gardeners or whether they are the hundreds of migrant workers taking care of elderly people in many Asian cultures, immigrant workers often do the kind of jobs others will not touch anymore. For many years, Singaporean director Wei Liang Chiang has tackled the subject of immigrant workers, their status and their daily struggles in short features such as “Jin Zhi Xia Mao” (2015) and has teamed up with fellow filmmaker You Qiao Yin for “Mongrel”. The story about a group of immigrant workers in Taiwan deals with many of the issues we know from Chiang’s other features, while it also includes his technical approach to scenes, such as using long takes and silences in order to give the audience an impression of what it must be like to live on the outskirts of a society.
Mongrel is screening at Melbourne International Film Festival
Oom (Wanlop Rungkumjad) is one of many immigrant workers in Taiwan, consisting of people from Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia. He has to take care of Hui (Kuo Shu-wei), a disabled young man, while also looking after Hui’s mother Mei (Lu Yi-ching), who is unable to afford qualified workers for the job. When she approaches Oom, asking him to end her son’s struggles once and for all, he is shocked by the offer and asks his boss, Hsing (Hong Yu-hong), to be replaced. However, as he is tasked to train the man who is to be his successor, he changes his mind.
At the same time, the group of immigrant workers Oom belongs to is frustrated with Hsing, as he has promised time and time again to pay them. As he realizes the dangerous situation he is in and because there is no help coming from his bosses, Hsing gives Oom the task to keep the other workers in check. His new task, however, does not only result in new responsibilities, but also endangers his own status among the workers.
When “Mongrel” screened at Cannes Film Festival 2024, it was given a special mention for its portrayal of illegal immigrant workers within the “rough Taiwanese” social landscape. We will come back to this statement later on, but this quotation sums up the first element of “Mongrel” which deals with a realistic portrayal of what life must be life to someone like Oom and the others within the community he has been calling his home for some time now. Chiang and Yin present the outskirts of a society, but not just people like the main character, also those characters like Hui, Mei and even Hsing who are either left behind or who have chosen to make a living with the misery of others, although it seemingly makes their life just as miserable (if not more). Therefore “Mongrel” is quite a dark feature at times and sometimes even hard to watch, as there seems to be not ray of hope for the characters we meet, with even the camaraderie of the immigrant workers being hollowed out during the course of the story. Whether this is a realistic world the two directors are portraying is tough to say, but they sure manage to capture the kind of hopelessness and the fatal cycle of exploitation defining the lives of these people.
Additionally, the creative choices enhance this impression. In long, sometimes painfully long scenes you are confronted with the various aspects of the lives of these characters. Whether we are talking about a dispute among the workers or Hui’s desperate cries that he does not want to be in any kind of institution, there are many examples of scenes which will prove to be quite challenging for many viewers. This of course serves the aforementioned intentions of the filmmakers, but at the same time you cannot help but feel these moments being somewhat redundant after a while, especially since they stress the same kind of message, feeling or atmosphere over and over again.
To add to the intended realism of the feature, the performances are very natural. Wanlop Rungkumjad as Oom gives an especially noteworthy performance given the difficulty and complexity of his character’s moral choices. To come back to the statement mentioned before, he has to decide between survival and compassion, which he manages quite well and which adds to the drama in many scenes. Similar to other cast members, such as Lu Yi-ching, he achieves this without much dialogue, which is truly impressive and quite clever since the situation of these people speaks pretty much for itself. Hong Yu-hong as Hsing succeeds in portraying a character who would be the “villain” in any other story dealing with these topics, but who adds depth to this person, showing he suffers just the same as all the others.
“Mongrel” is a drama about a system of exploitation which is often quite difficult to watch. And while it is arguably a bit repetitive, Wei Liang Chiang and You Qiao Yin manage to tell a story that is (sadly) timeless, dealing with the possibility of compassion and humanity in a dark and often hopeless situation.
