Shanghai Triad

Hi Aki,

Tonight we watched Shanghai Triad a 1995 movie from Zhang Yimou with the exquisite Gong Li.

It’s a gangster movie set in the 1930s. Based on a book, Gang Rules. But credits say basically ‘loosely based on’ so they just took a couple situations, couple ideas, from the book. All the same, there are several references to ‘the rules’ which survive, obviously, from the book.

The basic story is a very old one: the head of the Tang family in Shanghai has a lovely young mistress who’s a showgirl at the city’s hottest nightclub. The boss only trusts other men from the Tang family; but this doesn’t prevent his right hand man Song from betraying him, first by fucking the mistress, then by dealing with a rival gangster to take over the Tang crime triad. The old boss, however, has kept watch on all his men, and knows all about this; he lets Song play his hand, then has Song killed, along with mistress Gong Li.

The interesting twist on this is seeing it all through the eyes of 14 year old Shengsui, a ‘country bumpkin’ Tang relative fresh from the country, who is given the job of being the mistress’s servant and gofer. This whole story is compressed into, the credits tell us, 7 days (although they show us at least 8 days; I guess the number 7 was important enough for them to cheat). Each day is counted off with titles: First Day, Second Day, … Fifth Day, Sixth Day, Seventh Day. The kid at first hates Gong Li’s ‘Miss’ because he sees how cruel and bitchy she is, and because she mocks him and calls him stupid. But when they all have to hide out on a small island, and the kid sees who ‘Miss’ really is – for she was once a country bumpkin herself, before the Boss pulled her into this life – he comes to like her and even love her. But she dies and there is nothing the kid can do about that; more, the kid sees that the cute little girl on the island will be the next ‘Miss’ in a few years, as the Boss takes her back to Shanghai.

As usual here with Yimou, the production is gorgeous and impeccable: costumes, props, sets, musical numbers, the reeds by the water along the banks of the island, the setting sun, the moon over the water. Colors are fully saturated, with an almost golden, orange yellow predominating – the usual ‘nostalgic past time’ color photographers pick. Also red, of course, from Gong Li’s mouth to blood on knives to dresses. He makes a big deal out of mirrors in the kid’s introduction to Shanghai Triad life too, then on the island of course the mirrors disappear. I guess this underscores the falseness and superficiality of the gangster lifestyle, and contrast it with the sincerity and reality of peasant life on the island.

By telling the tale through the kid’s eyes, Yimou also tells us a coming of age tale; even as the little girl is now planned to be the next ‘Miss’ so Shengsui is probably being planned to be the next Song – if he’s smart enough and ruthless enough.

One bit that let me down was an emphasis on long steadicam shots representing the kid’s point of view wandering up and down the stairs of a mansion, or through the paths on the island, without cutting back to seeing the kid walking. The bravura of the uninterrupted long steadicam take seems to predominate over good filmmaking, and in general the approach to anchoring us to the kid is weak. But since the story is constructed around his experiences, the film gets away with it.

A beautiful film, but in the end, beauty is not enough. And there is something lacking in the effects. There are shots to remember a long time, but they’re only shots. The film means less than those shots and the production design.

(01 April 2009)

Temptress Moon

Hi Aki,

Tonight we watched Temptress Moon a 1996 film from Chen Kaige, starring Leslie Cheung and Gong Li.

I’m sure you saw it, right? So here’s just a capsule storyline: in 1911 young Zhongliang is a student, and a minor relative of the powerful house of Pang. As a special ‘honor’ he is allowed to enter the Pang palace and serve to prepare the Young Master’s opium pipe (Young Master is married to Z’s sister). Meanwhile young Ruyi, the Young Master’s sister, is a hellion, a wild kid who’s been raised from the cradle smoking dope by the Old Master, her father. One fateful night, Young Master, crazy doped up, forces little Z to sleep with his own sister. The result of this is that little Z hates Pang and the whole lot of them, and runs away. He tries to go to Beijing to study, but is set upon by thieves at the railyard.

Ten years pass. Z is now living in Shanghai. He’s been raised by the triad gangs, and loves the Boss as a father; in turn the Boss loves Z like a son. Z’s ‘job’ involves making married women fall in love with him; then the gang blackmail the married woman.

He doesn’t seem too happy about his life, though.

Meanwhile the Old Master of the Pangs dies, and Young Master succeeds; but for ten years Young Master has been a vegetable. So Ruyi is chosen to be head of the house, but since she’s only a woman, a distant cousin is her ‘helper’ – really the old guys intend to go on ruling. What they don’t know yet is that Duanwon, the ‘helper’ has always been in love with Ruyi, so he backs whatever she says – she turns out to be the real head of the house.

In Shanghai, the Boss hears of this, and sends Z to seduce Ruyi and bring her back; the fortune of the Pangs is immense and he wants it. Z asks Boss not to send him back, but Z is sent all the same. He plays hot and cold with Ruyi, who is interested in him right away. Oddly enough, Ruyi as a woman is a totally different character from Ruyi as a child – not spoiled, not headstrong, never seen to smoke dope, and innocent. This doesn’t make a lot of sense, but this movie is about style, not logic.

But Z’s sister is crazy in love with him, too. She’s been so lonely without him, as her husband is only a vegetable, and in ten years Z hasn’t even written once. But he repulses her and tells her he hates her and everybody in the palace.

All the same, Z finds himself touched by Ruyi’s innocence, her frankness, her beauty. Who knows, maybe there is some trace of love for her from when they were kids? He gets her to agree to go away with him, but then he can’t go through with it. He goes to Shanghai and confesses his treachery to the Boss. The Boss turns out to love Z more than the loot, and forgives the betrayal. Instead he arranges for Ruyi to be brought to Shanghai so she can see Z in action; this will cure Z of his heartsickness when Ruyi scorns him, and everything can go back the way it was before.

It doesn’t quite work out the way the Boss intended though. Ruyi is still interested in Z despite how he’s been living, provided he does indeed love her. But he can’t say the phrase – Leslie Cheung is playing the cold bastard yet again just like in Days of Being Wild, the one all the women want, who doesn’t love women back. Sick at heart, Ruyi goes back home, and accepts another man’s marriage proposal. But Z goes back after her, breaking from the triads once and for all. He finally gains courage to tell Ruyi he loves her. But it’s too late. In despair Z determines to go to complete his studies in Beijing after all, but in a final act of madness, he prepares Ruyi’s opium pipe, just the way he did for Young Master on that fateful night ten years back – spiking the opium with arsenic.

Halfway out of the estate grounds, Z has a change of heart. He rushes back to save Ruyi, to warn her – too late again! She has smoked the fatal pipe. From now on Duanwon will be the head of the Pang house, speaking for the brain-dead Ruyi; the triads catch up to Z on the docks and shoot him, and there’s the end to our happy little love story.

Chen Kaige and DP Christopher Doyle try to splash color everywhere on the screen. This is Chen Kaige’s version of Wong Kar Wai, with the emotions always hyped and pushed and exaggerated, characters stylized, narrative stripped of connections and logic until it pushes up against the edge of incoherence. Every character is passionate to the extreme – you could call them crazy. Mirrors are everywhere for shooting things frontward then reversed. Steadicam shots follow people running through the mazes of the palace; wide angle lenses are used to distortion; diffusion filters over a lot of the shots, with frames allowed to go completely out of focus at times. Light is splashed across faces so one part blows out – it’s just that kind of movie.

I didn’t like it much, but I respected it, and I’m glad I watched it. It strikes me that Chinese film is now like Hollywood in the 30s or French films in early 60s. People aren’t afraid to try stunts like this, and can get huge budgets to shoot sweeping period epics like this one, anchored on major stars. It really makes Hollywood films of the past 20 years or so look like timid piles of steaming cliches. Temptress Moon is like a Jean Jacques Beineix film, just delirous, or crazy. I guess if you’re really into Leslie Cheung, you might go for this, and it’s a woman’s picture, so it’s not a knock on the film if I don’t like it much.

(26 March 2009)

A World Without Thieves

Hi Aki,

Tonight we watched A World Without Thieves a 2004 movie starring Andy Lau - same producers as The Banquet. Wow, really good. I have yet to see a movie with Andy Lau that was not a good story.

Andy and his girlfriend are thieves. They just heisted a BMW from an embassy or something, and drove it to Tibet to fence it (why Tibet? no reason except for plot as you’ll see). Along the way, girl gets second thoughts, she’s sick of their life and of Andy. Andy jokes with her. In Tibet she prays, ‘Just because I want to sincerely pray for once in my life.’ Meanwhile Andy is stealing cell phones and anything else his nimble fingers can get hold of. But at the same time, there’s a smart-looking babe who’s doing the same thing. Andy and babe bump shoulders, and he smiles and flirts with her.

Heading back (still in the car, or maybe it’s another one?) Andy and girlfriend get in a real fight. It ends up with her quitting him, and he leaves her stranded by the road in the middle of nowhere. There is no building or stream or tree within miles.

Now down this road comes a group of peasants on their beat-up bicycles. They are from a remote chinese village, and have been working to restore the temples – it’s a skill that is traditional to their village. One of them, a holy fool they call ‘Dumbo’ and who has no other name, wants to cash in his money to go back to the village to take a wife. As they pass the girl, Dumbo stops and gives her a ride to the next small town. They hit it off, and Dumbo gives her a talisman a lama gave him, that is said to quell the demons in one’s heart.

There Dumbo gets his money, a lot – 60,000 yuan. Now his boss tells him to wire the money back to home village, but Dumbo doesn’t want to, because the wire service will take 1% charge, and that’s enough to buy a donkey. ‘Better to give up 600 than lose all 60,000,’ the boss tells him. But Dumbo is stubborn and takes the cash. Dumbo that evening goes out in the fields to say good-bye to the wolves. Every new year’s the other workers have gone home, but Dumbo stayed, with only these wolves for company, and he talks to them.

They see him off at the train station, and Dumbo, still pissed, shouts, ‘Hey! who’s going to take my 60,000? Are any thieves here?’

Of course Andy and his girl are there – Andy has caught up to her and apologized in the station. The sharp looking babe thief is there too, along with her leader, Uncle Li, and his whole team of robbers.

The girl makes it her mission to protect Dumbo from all the ‘wolves’ on the train who would rob him. Andy tags along, mocking her, mocking Dumbo, too. Andy is no saint here.

So that’s act 1: Everybody is now on the train for a few days, Uncle Li’s crew out to steal the money, the girl to defend it, and Andy helping the girl, though he’d love to take the money too. The way Andy sees it, he’s only doing Dumbo a favor, it’s not right to be ignorant, Dumbo would be better off wiser and not so trusting.

Andy crosses swords (well not swords literally, more sleight-of-hand and small flashy moves like pickpockets use) with all the levels of Uncle Li’s crew. He beats them, at every level. The girl does her best to protect Dumbo, but it’s really Andy who is the one saving the money.

He does this mockingly, and finally he lets the sharp-looking babe take the money, then takes it from her. So he can say he didn’t take it from Dumbo. And Andy gets off the train at the next station. There he has a fight with his girl again, and they argue their philosophical positions as to Dumbo. ‘Why are you protecting him? what’s changed? Why? Why?’ Andy demands, and at last the girl answers, ‘I’m pregnant with your baby, and I want to do penance so he will have good karma when he’s born.’

Finally Uncle Li challenges Andy directly: Uncle Li will get the money, or he will leave Andy and Dumbo alone; But if Andy loses, Uncle Li will get Andy to join his gang. Andy does everything he can, but with a trick, one of Uncle Li’s gang fools him, and the money is lost.

Andy has lost. But wait! The packet of money has no money in it – just money for funerals, fake money. Uncle Li has lost! But wait! Andy didn’t switch the money either – so who did?

Turns out there’s an undercover cop on the train who’s been onto Andy and his girl from the beginning. He could have arrested them a long time ago, but he was curious why they were protecting Dumbo. Maybe he is also using Dumbo’s naivete to draw out any other thieves on the train.

The cop rounds up all the gang but Uncle Li and sharp-babe, but he gets them in the end when sharp-babe double-crosses Li. Andy and the girl the cop gets when they go to see Dumbo, who has given blood to another passenger and fainted; They stand over him, wishing that he might never have to wake up and so he could go right on dreaming he lives in a world without thieves. Then the cop comes in, and tells them he’s onto them. He switched the money eariler, and now he puts it back into Dumbo’s bag.

It all seems like it’s over, but … Not quite. As the train travels into town, slowing toward the station, Andy and his girl slip up into the ventilator compartment above the main cabins. And down the car, so does Uncle Li! Even as Andy is climbing onto the roof, the girl sees Uncle Li where he looks down through the opening into the compartment where Dumbo, and the money, are.

Andy pushes the girl up on the roof, ‘Wait for me,’ he says, and he confronts Uncle Li who has the money. The two face off, one final time, as the train slows into the station…

… In the station, Uncle Li’s gang members are rounded up in police cars. A blind begger – we recognize Uncle Li in disguise – tries to get off the platform, but is met by the cop, who sees through the disguise.

5 MONTHS LATER

The girl is pregnant, very much along. She is eating mu-shu ravenously. Someone comes up – it’s the cop. ‘Don’t wait for him, he’s not coming,’ the cop says. ‘Let me finish eating first,’ she answers. He tells her that his wife is also expecting, and also eating everything, just to make sure the baby gets enough nutrition.

A series of flash cuts to the past tells the tale of the final battle:

Andy won, he beat Uncle Li, and his bloody hand drops the bag with the money down beside the sleeping Dumbo. But Uncle Li has a hook on a string, and it catches Andy right on his neck. Li slips out as Andy lies there, bleeding to death, but pounding on the floor of the ventilation compartment, above the compartment where the detective is. The detective charges out, in time to scare Uncle Li off, so the money is secure by the sleeping Dumbo. When the detective finds Andy, dead, he also finds Andy’s cell phone in his hand, an unsent text message on it: ‘Wait for me. The Dumbo affair is resolved.’ The cop hits the ‘send’ button, and I guess that’s how he knows where to find the girl later on. Now he tells her, ‘When the baby is born, tell it the truth. Let it know what kind of a man its father really was.’

An epilogue wraps it all up: The girl is back in Tibet, praying outside a monastery. Women take her baby – I guess she is giving the baby to a holy life? I’m not sure about that.

Movie is shot widescreen, anamorphic. Lots of bright saturated colors. Most of the movie Andy has a long wig on, looking a little like a hippie. The battle of wits is very nicely scripted, with twist and counter-twist, some humor, some sex appeal, some wit, and even some meaning and sincere emotions. Just a great script, the sort of script they ought to option for Hollywood if they could.

The train location is wonderful. This falls into a line of movies set on trains or ocean liners, where a band of strangers can interact, but nobody can get off; nobody else can join them. The train however makes it tough to adapt for Hollywood, since nobody here rides trains (or ocean liners!) anymore.

Only thing I didn’t like about the movie is the stunts. Instead of real stunts shot in boring conventional manner, they chose to cover the stunts in flashy quick cuts of extreme closeups. The scene is basically an impression of what might be happening, or a puzzle or code that we must put together in our minds. It reminds me of how Fred Astaire insisted they photograph his dancing. He demanded that all his dance numbers be shot in long shot, with one take – or as few shots as possible. This was boring cinematically, but it showed off Astaire and his partner’s dance moves. When Hollywood had dancers who couldn’t dance all that well, they would cover the number with long shots, closeups, medium shots, and do lots of cutting – so the dancers had only to manage one good move at a time, then cut to another take of the following move; and going in close conceals how the feet are really doing.

That’s kind of what this film is like in the crucial, almost-magical theft moves, and the move and counter-moves of the thieves as they battle in the train corridors. There are just a bunch of flashy cuts, and it leaves the impression that the actors couldn’t handle the stunts themselves.

One final nice touch: At one point Andy is hanging off the side of the train as it speeds along an overpass. Uncle Li holds Andy’s wrist, and threatens to drop him. ‘Don’t kick your legs so much, die with some dignity,’ Uncle Li says. Andy answers, ‘Listen, I’m not Jackie Chan! I don’t want to die and I’m not going to go with any dignity if I can help it!’

(25 March 2009)

That sounds like a great movie! I’d love to watch it but...hey, I already know the story! Andy Law is a genius!

Yes, that’s the problem with doing this. I don’t always have to reveal the whole story, but sometimes I find something really right – or wrong – with the ending, and I want to talk about that.

Here I found the back-and-forth of the ending a little strange. Build up to the final showdown between Andy and Uncle Li, then, then ... train pulls in? What happened? We see Uncle Li got away, what about Andy?

The concept is good, but it really wasn’t done well for my taste. I think we should have seen the girl get the message: ‘wait for me. Dumbo case is resolved.’

Then we have to know what ‘wait for me’ means – it wasn’t clear in subtitles, but maybe in the dialogue it was that they have a certain place to meet if anything happens, and it should be in five months, or each month on the 14th day, or second Wednesday, or something like that. It seems odd that the cop should show up the same day the girl does, or has he come there every single day for 5 months?

But we absolutely need to have the suspense build up if the director is going to hide ‘what happened’ from us.

Also I wasn’t sure about the final shots, was she giving the baby to a monastery or not? If she’s giving it away, it kind of makes sense, she is tainted – or maybe even going to prison – and doesn’t want the child to be touched by the bad things she has done. But then, why not leave the kid with Dumbo and his wife in the village where everybody is so honest they won’t even steal cow shit from one another? And if she leaves the kid, then how will she ever tell the kid the true story of his father, the way the detective tells her to do? And why does the detective look so different in this last scene? I didn’t mention that to you, but he has shaved his mustache and beard, looks very different, I wasn’t sure it was him, even.

Topper Takes a Trip (Bonus: Days of Being Wild)

Hi Aki,

Tonight we watched Topper Takes a Trip and Days of Living Wild.

I thought Wild was very powerful, forceful, and had a flavor – you could tell the personality that made this film. Great portrait of the main guy. But, what was that scene at the end? Did that make sense to you? Tony Leung, who has not been in the film before, is getting ready to go out. he’s in an underground room we have never seen. He combs his hair, and he puts a big fistfull of bills in his pocket, and then a deck of cards, so we both think he must be a gambler, but still…what in the world????

Topper Takes a Trip. This movie was done for less money (and it shows) than the original Topper. I was mistaken about Topper, by the way, it’s not an MGM picture, but from Hal Roach studios. Hal Roach was an indie of those days. He made mostly Laurel and Hardy, and Little Rascals, comedy shorts. He also hit it big with 1,000,000 years B.C. Later in the 40s, a surprise caveman hit.

Anyway, they couldn’t get Cary Grant for this one, so they replace him with a wire terrier.

So that’s the big lesson of the movie, for all producers and moviemakers in the world:

Can’t get Tom Cruise? Hire a dog!

I just thought it was funny, that the producers thought they even needed the dog – why not just have one ghost? Why did they need two? I didn’t analyze the scenes carefully, but my guess is that they had a script hoping to get Cary Grant. But he wanted more money, or else he had other films to make. And in some sequences there was Cary-ghost in one location while Connie-ghost was in another location.

So, they thought about maybe giving her another ghost companion, and ended up instead of hiring another star…getting the dog!

(written around 17 February 2009)

Century of the Dragon

Hi Aki,

Tonight we watched Century of the Dragon a 1999 film from Andy Lau and company. Looks like it was shot on video.

Here they take Infernal Affairs (rookie cop out of academy drops out and goes undercover a long time in triads, rising to be aide of one of the top bosses) with The Godfather (son of a triad boss who is crippled in hospital takes over for him and proves even more ruthless) and Godfather 3 (old triad boss retires, tries to go straight – but cops still consider him a gangster and triad members still try to bring him back into the underworld).

Not as good as the brilliant Infernal Affairs trilogy, but good anyway.

The deep-cover rookie becomes aide to Andy Lau, who was a top triad boss but went straight. The cops don’t believe he is clean though, so they keep the cop spying on him. The cop, sing, is like in infernal affairs unsure where his loyalties lie, although here it’s simpler: he still thinks of himself as a cop, and he knows Andy is innocent of any crimes since before the cop went undercover.

Meanwhile Andy’s partner, who remained in the triads, is gunned down by the cops and his son vows revenge. But the son turns out to be a real bastard. And the triad bosses want Andy to take over the crippled man’s place as head of the hung hing triad group.

Meanwhile the only commissioner who was sing’s boss at police dies, and sing gets a new boss, a bastard who hates Andy because Andy made a joke of him ten years before.

Oh yeah, Andy’s mom is godmother to a guy in the gangs who is a total loser andliability and will only get them all in trouble.

And Andy’s wife was a club girl and knows how to handle herself.

And Sing’s got a girlfriend who’s a club girl, another parallel between him and Andy.

Lots of twists and turns. Stunts are not so great, action is only fair, but the story is well worked out.

As I wrote, it looks like it was shot on video, I don’t know why. Don’t know why they translated the title as ‘Century of the Dragon’ either.

(written around 13 February 2009)

The Emperor And The Assassin

Hi Aki,

Tonight we watched Chen Kaige’s The Emperor and the Assassin, starring Gong Li, the most beautiful woman in movies.

Very pretty, lavish sets, great costumes. Long though, with stylized, slow acting deliveries. But the acting style I thought did a good job of raising the characters above the ordinary into legend, like classical theater.

The king of Qin wants to unify all the kingdoms under one rule. His lover Gong Li concocts a plan to go into exile to get the king of Yan to send an assassin to kill the king of Qin; when this will fail, the king of Qin will have the pretext he needs to conquer yan. None of the other kingdoms will help yan, because yan brought it on themselves with the assassination plot.

But along the way gong li becomes convinced that the king of Qin is really evil; he doesn’t want to be emperor to protect all the people, he just wants power. And the assassin she picks is a humble man who has given up killing. She falls in love with the assassin.

Of course we all know how history ends, so it amounts to, in the end of the movie, a judgment on the king of Qin and whether the end justifies the means, and an historical judgment on his rule.

And the judgment is – thumbs down! Which kind of surprised me.

I remember the Jet Li movie (Hero – was that the name?) in which a series of assassins are sent to kill the king of Qin before he can conquere all the other kingdoms. The assassins all fail, at last Jet Li almost makes it – but he has along the way become convinced that the goal of a unified country is more important than anything else, and that only Qin can do it, so he dies, but he is glad to do so.

This movie is an answer to that one, or that one was an answer to this one. I’m not sure which came first; this was made in 1998 so maybe the Jet Li film came later.

More like a play than a movie in many ways. The emphasis is on the characters and the big scenes they have with one another. There is only a pair of big action sequences, one to open, and one in which a city, the capital of Zhao, commits mass suicide rather than surrender to the hated Qin.

The colors are beautiful, especially the reds – must’ve been in technicolor – and there are masses and masses of people in battle scenes. If it was digital it was a damn good job for that time period.

Of course since I don’t know the history of this period at all, I’m left wondering whether the story is made up for the movie, or is an untrue legend, or is history.

One thing I forgot to mention about the Emperor and the Assassin is that I always think these Huang-Ti movies are really about Mao Ze Dong who unified and founded modern china. So they are criticizing him or defending him. In this movie it’s criticism, and the extended sequence of the destruction of Zhao might stand in for the cultural revolution. His statement, ‘I want to protect all the people,’ in the movie refers to all the subjects of the seven kingdoms, but in maoist context would refer to all the classes; destroying all the Zhao people would mean destroying the bourgeoisie and intellectual class. ‘when I said all the people, I didn’t mean the people of Zhao! They treated me badly when I was a kid, they didn’t give me enough food, they made me herd livestock!’

(written around 10 February 2009)