Aba­cus: Small Enough to Jail

In 2012, four years after America’s mort­gage cri­sis shone a stark light on the tawdry prac­tices of the country’s lead­ing finan­cial insti­tu­tions, charges of con­spir­a­cy, lar­ce­ny, and sys­temic fraud were filed against the Chi­nese-ser­vic­ing, fam­i­ly-owned and oper­at­ed Aba­cus Fed­er­al Sav­ings Bank. Found­ed in the 1980s by Thomas Sung, a self-made, Shang­hai-born entre­pre­neur who over­sees the busi­ness along­side two of his four daugh­ters, Jill and Vera, Aba­cus is a cor­ner­stone of New York City’s tight-knit Chi­na­town enclave, the 2,651^st largest bank in the US, and the first and only bank to be crim­i­nal­ly indict­ed in the wake of the recession.

Aba­cus: Small Enough to Jail, the new film from valiant doc­u­men­tar­i­an Steve James (Hoop Dreams, Life Itself), opens in the liv­ing room of Thomas and his wife Hwei Lin as the elder­ly Chi­nese cou­ple watch scenes from one of their favourite movies, It’s a Won­der­ful Life. Frank Capra’s Christ­mas­time clas­sic, in which James Stewart’s hard-pressed George Bai­ley admirably over­comes finan­cial ruin, famil­ial tur­moil, and near-fatal self-destruc­tion to final­ly appre­ci­ate the joys of life, is a con­tin­u­al frame of ref­er­ence for Aba­cus, a blunt but appro­pri­ate choice giv­en the very dif­fi­cult and very recent strug­gles that the Sung fam­i­ly have undergone.

The pro­longed legal bat­tle of Sung and his first-gen­er­a­tion clan makes obvi­ous sense as the cen­tre of a Steve James project. But strip the Sung family’s sto­ry of its entire cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty and push it sev­en decades into the past and it’s easy to imag­ine these events as rous­ing mate­r­i­al for a clas­si­cal Capra dra­ma. Truth­ful­ly, a film about the Sungs could have adopt­ed any num­ber of styles and pin­point­ed any num­ber of insights. It’s strange, then, that Aba­cus is often found lack­ing for a per­son­al film­mak­ing stamp, espe­cial­ly since it is from the same direc­tor who gave us 2011’s The Inter­rupters, which remains one of the decade’s most com­mand­ing non­fic­tion­al feats, a sober­ing and increas­ing­ly time­ly chron­i­cle about a group of hero­ic activists attempt­ing to curb vio­lence on Chicago’s South Side.

Which is not to say that Aba­cus is a dis­ap­point­ment as such. At best, it’s a hum­ble heart­break­er, but it owes its mut­ed pow­er less to its esteemed direc­tor than its instant­ly-endear­ing sub­jects, par­tic­u­lar­ly Thomas, who tries his best to fash­ion him­self as a mod­ern-day George Bai­ley in his dai­ly life. He’s a revered hero and trust­ed linch­pin of his dis­trict, the type of man who sum­mons hearty nods and inquis­i­tive con­ver­sa­tion from scores of neigh­bour­hood clien­tele just by trav­el­ing a three-block radius. The sin­gle most poignant aspect of the film comes from sim­ply watch­ing this patri­arch-pro­pri­etor pre­serve his reli­ably sto­ic façade amid a poten­tial­ly damn­ing inves­ti­ga­tion, set off by the dis­cov­ery of a mon­ey-laun­der­ing oper­a­tion being run by one the bank’s loan officers.

Not one for betray­ing even the tini­est hint of pain or para­noia, Thomas leaves the more emo­tion­al­ly-trans­par­ent demon­stra­tions up to Hwei Lin, fea­tured briefly but filled with a can­dour that’s by turns droll and dev­as­tat­ing, as well as their chil­dren, includ­ing youngest daugh­ter Chanterelle, who, we learn ear­ly on, quit her job as an assis­tant under incum­bent New York Dis­trict Attor­ney Cy Vance upon dis­cov­er­ing that he was pros­e­cut­ing her fam­i­ly. Vance him­self appears and makes an unflat­ter­ing­ly pal­lid defence in the talk­ing head scenes that com­prise the bulk of Aba­cus, which allows a mul­ti­tude of speak­ers (from jour­nal­ists and jurors to attor­neys and for­mer employ­ees) to offer com­men­tary, their views on the Sungs falling all over the spec­trum between guilt and innocence.

Even so, it’s clear that the film’s sym­pa­thies fall firm­ly in the family’s favour, which is under­stand­able but occa­sion­al­ly inhibits James from ask­ing the tougher ques­tions about how such low­er-lev­el cons could have tran­spired for years under their super­vi­sion and that of their fel­low high­er-ups. Sure, these infrac­tions are down­right measly when com­pared to the galling offences of America’s biggest banks, but the film can’t escape their inher­ent murk­i­ness, in spite of the Sungs’ appar­ent inno­cence and James’ vis­i­ble scrub marks.

Like so many of James’ films, Aba­cus is, above all, an achieve­ment of com­pas­sion­ate and con­sci­en­tious obser­va­tion that works best when cast­ing an unblink­ing eye on the cen­tral fam­i­ly striv­ing to uphold their lega­cy. Like the Sungs, James is ful­ly aware what their vic­to­ry (or lack there­of) undoubt­ed­ly sig­ni­fies for the present and future inter­ests of an entire col­lec­tive of Chi­nese-Amer­i­cans seek­ing to improve their way of life. The pre­dom­i­nant, no-frills fam­i­ly por­trait – full of obvi­ous care and affec­tion but also pet­ty in-fight­ing, vent­ed frus­tra­tions and acrid jok­ing – is unques­tion­ably cap­ti­vat­ing, but it’s ulti­mate­ly the depic­tion of a minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ty that real­ly lingers longest.

There are flaws in James’ mod­est exe­cu­tion, but it’s hard not to appre­ci­ate a film so uncom­mon­ly attuned to the nuances of the Chi­nese immi­grant expe­ri­ence. By con­tin­u­al­ly cast­ing his cam­era on Chinatown’s bankers, bar­bers, cooks, wait­staff, shoeshin­ers, fruit ven­dors, fish­mon­gers, shop­keep­ers and oth­er, larg­er pop­u­lace, James mov­ing­ly nudges this com­mu­ni­ty towards the cen­tre, tak­ing the nec­es­sary time to acquaint us with the indi­vid­u­als who so often occu­py the unjust side of the Amer­i­can Dream.