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YakSmurf
Reviews
Chinese Box (1997)
Interesting but not compelling
I understand what they were going for with this, but somehow it failed to move me very much. The artfulness is enjoyable, but for some reason, perhaps the acting or the perennially bouncing camera, I never was released into flowing with the movie. Instead, it felt like acting, and thus I couldn't help but feel a manipulated instead of moved.
It's a nice try, however. Irons is fun to watch, if not as well done as in others. Gong Li is more enjoyable on her deeper roles (such as Temptress Moon and Raise the Red Lantern), as opposed to the shallow one turned in here, due to playing a shallow character (as with Shanghai Triad), or one which does not seem to break out into the foreground, perhaps compounded by being clumsily mashed into an English-speaking role. She didn't look comfortable the entire film. No one did, ever. Perhaps that itself is a facet of Hong Kong, and an effect that I failed to catch.
Then again, truly moving art films are hard to make. While it didn't score anywhere near off the charts with me, like the far more graceful Temptress Moon, it was still much enjoyed over the usual local (Hollywood) fare.
Feng yue (1996)
A subtle, contrapuntal masterpiece on circumstance, belief, and the undermining of the human heart
When I rented this after reading the pitiful, typically over-sensualized box, I hoped only that it might struggle above tepid mediocrity in some way. In fact, I saw it and despised Leslie Cheung's petty Songlian and his sister Caifei He for the first hour.
Yet then I began to realize how intricately woven the characters and plot were as visual symbols began reappearing, and the movie began to happily shirk off introductory pretenses and reveal the forces behind the characters and their actions. Songlian's pettiness began to reveal itself as an intense and justifiable self-hatred, and that of his sister as terrible hopelessness. Meanwhile the others in the movie undergo powerful transformations as well, as we see how people struggle to bring their own beliefs to bear beneath the tidal wave of external circumstances. We see how they fail, and how their failure propogates their weaknesses, undermining others.
Overall we see the power of the subversive as it plays on the human mind and heart. We see beliefs destroyed at several levels, we see new beliefs emerge, less pure and more calculating. We see regret unfold in each of the characters, or worse, cold numbness to it from enduring too much.
And there is nothing to regret about the movie, except that the subterranean depths of the content make recommendation difficult (this is not a movie for most grandmothers, even though it is still delicate in how it examines its touchier subject matter). Still, it is beautiful in everything it does. The sights, the characters, the transformations, even the twistiness. We rever the characters and their changes, for good or worse because we understand them irrevokably. The movie is highly rich and interwoven. Elements interplay even down to recurring symbols, and by the end we realize that the entire movie is really symbolized in the first ten minutes, even though there is no way we could realize that from the beginning even if told so. Those ten minutes where we see the beautiful Pang estate, and the children, and life so revoltingly innocent at first glance. That is purposeful. What we take for inconsequential initially is proved to be far from it, and really that contrapuntal layering of pretended motive and deeper meaning continues throughout.
Every minute in this movie counts. Every side glance reflects meaning. "The Piano" was supposed to be subversive, sensual, touching and powerful, showcasing how the heart must contend with external harshness. However, it is clumsy, ugly, blatant, and ineffectual in comparison to "Temptress Moon" which tells so much more with so much less, and it breaks our heart unspeakably, but is above the painful, selfish bitterness or wallowing found in "Farewell My Concubine", "Raise the Red Lantern", and "Indochine" which really tell stories half as complex (maybe not Indochine). The characters in Temptress Moon are noble, despite and because of their outer twistedness and rent hearts.
A sumptuous earring, a swinging lamp, fresh roses, Songlian's longings for Peking, and twisting opium smoke and speeches on its merits and cruelties-- all these symbols snake by at first, yet come to how powerful meaning in the end, and they strike us at many levels in the movie, each time richer with understanding. I left far surprised and impressed. Finally, a movie great enough to express itself in humility of pretenses. If only they'd ditch the stupid and coarsely sensual box.
Yao a yao, yao dao wai po qiao (1995)
Triad is a promise stillborn
I had hopes for it, and it opened beautifully. It promised introspection, scope, meaning, and a bit of beauty, yet the first three were still-born, and the last ruined by triteness. But, the expected revelation in this movie never came. And in the mean time, Gong Li was incredibly annoying the entire film, due to her successfully acting the part of the spoiled singer flirt. I used to enjoy watching her, but after this torture, not any more. Why see this, when you can see Temptress Moon, which was richly embroidered with meaning, and did have scope, and it not only met, but exceeded propounded expectations? Sadly, Shanghai Triad has a superior video cassette box, since it is a film of superior marketing, but drastically inferior plot, scope, characters and quality.