The Flowers of War

It’s not often that I am able to review an Asian film so soon after it has been released, even with the wonders of the internet, I usually have to wait several months before usable subtitles become available. But as this one is the Chinese entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars, it seems a DVD Screener is available with full subtitles online much earlier than usual.  But more on that at the end of this review.  I should also mention that I would normally be putting up my Top 10 of the Year right now, but there have been a number of late breaking releases that have quite possibly jumped on the list at the last minute – so I need to get a few reviews out of the way first.

“The Flowers of War” is the latest epic from Zhang Yimou, who is probably one of China’s most famous film Directors to Westerners, as he not only Directed crossover hits like “Hero”, “House of Flying Daggers” and “Curse of the Golden Flower”, but he also was the artistic force behind the 2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony.  However, I have to be honest, I also admire his films for their visual style, but I have never really been touched by anything of his that I have seen.  This changes now.

It is 1937 Nanking, and one of the most horrific events of the 2nd Sino-Japanese war is taking place.   Stumbling through the Horror is American Mortician John Miller (Christian Bale, yes THAT Christian Bale), who seems to be intent on fulfilling his contract to bury a recently deceased Catholic Priest.  A broken man, he not only finds himself in the middle of a War, but the Cathedral he finally makes he way too had become a hiding place for not only a bunch of Catholic Schoolgirls who have been unable to escape Nanking, but a group of Prostitutes have also made it their refuge from the Japanese.  Although initially only interested in collecting his fee, events conspire to make John pretend to be the incumbent Priest, in order to protect both sets of women.  Can he balance those very different groups of women, maybe even find himself again after years of depression, and keep everyone safe from the Japanese?  Even when it becomes obvious that even a noble Japanese Commander may well not have the young girls best interests at heart?

I have a lot of issues with the film to be honest, but I am pretty sure I can blame most of them on the nature of the source material (from a novel by Yan Geiling I don’t think has been published in English yet) – the story relies on a few too many coincidences for my liking, John Miller suddenly goes through a personality change that many will find jarring (although I personally can understand what happened when a conversation hidden late in the film is bought to light), and a section with a local Chinese Army leader seems to be forced too far in the front of the film.

In fact, the first 30 minutes of the film are a bit at odds with the rest of it – it is a little “Saving Private Ryan”, done well, with lots of bloodshed and slow motion deaths – but far from anything special, and I am certain some reviewers did not watch much more than that opening segment.  It’s all perfectly fine, but it isn’t until we move into the Cathedral, and leave the war behind for a while that the magic happens.

Bale is as good as he usually is – I like him as an actor, he always puts in 100% to his roles, even if sometimes his film choices are questionable.  But he manages to pull off the down on the world and himself Character of Miller here, without chewing up the scenery, and is surprisingly capable of sharing the screen with some young and new to acting talent.

In fact special mention should be made of the cast here – Huang Tianyuan is brilliant as the young boy forced to look after the female students, with a conclusion to his story which could easily have ended up as an awful mess becoming both wryly amusing and tender.  The acting from all the females is first class, whether they be Children or Prostitute.  Newcomer Ni Ni impressed me greatly as the de facto leader of the courtesans.

Its a long film, clocking in a around two and a half hours, and after the initial 30 minutes, it really is a film about talking, along with a build up of tension, punctuated by a couple of moments of really rather nasty events perpetrated by the Japanese.  You could actually find the portrayal of the Japanese rather distasteful in this film, but I am afraid the Historical record is pretty much going to show that even for a Chinese film, I’m not sure things are too exaggerated.  The Massacre in Nanking really is a quite horrific example of the depths that the human race can fall to.  However, in the final third of the film, once or principal characters have managed to work through their relationships with each other, I can honestly say I was as emotionally connected with this film as I have been with any film in the last twelve months. 

You really get to know the characters, even though you actually only meet a few on first name terms.  You care about their fates, and the sacrifice that one group make for another is honestly one of the bravest yet logical things I have seen (and yes it IS only a movie, I know this).  Initially I was actually disappointed with the lack of conclusion that the film gave me – but hen I realised that I probably did not need to see any more rape and murder, and it was best to remember these characters alive.

I loved this film, and I didn’t expect to.  There are a million things wrong with it.  Yet, as a story that touched my heart, that made me care about the fates of those involved, I have to find this one Highly Recommended.

But now a post-script.  The film is China’s nomination for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.  Now there are various rules and regulations, and it hits most of them happily enough.  Except, I think 50% of the film is in English.  And at least 10% of it is in Japanese.  Which means it doesn’t really fulfil the requirement of the film’s main language being the native one of the country that is putting the film forward.  So, I doubt it is going to make the shortlist – which is a shame.

Re-cycle

Long term readers know that I am a huge fan of the works of the Pang Brothers, and have greatly enjoyed most of their work both as a team and individually post “The Eye”.  For some, they have never lived up to the promise of their Asian Horror debut (and to some extent “Bangkok Dangerous”), but I have always found their films both visually and thematically interesting.  This one however, is one of those which I have started watching on a number of occasions, but for many reasons, I have struggled to see much past the initial 20 minutes.  However, as is usual in my build up to the New Year, I have taken it upon myself to actually clear out some of these half unwatched films, and “Re-Cycle” is the latest to get this treatment.

“Re-Cycle” is the story of Hong Kong Author Ting-yin (Angelica Lee), who is riding high on the success on a trilogy of Romance Novels, the most recent of which has been made into a Film.  Interest in the background to these stories is high, but she is declining to comment on the man who inspired her – not surprisingly as it turns out she has had a long affair with a Married Man.  They have since split, but he returns onto the scene, recently divorced, wishing to start afresh.  Ting-yin wants nothing to do with this, instead desiring to start work on a new novel, in a new genre, a Ghost Story called “Re-Cycle”.  The creative process is tough on her, as she is struggling to even get started, despite the encouragement of her literary agent.  When she does start to knuckle down, she is affected by odd goings on, strange phone calls, mysterious long hair in her basin, and animated garbage start to invade into her solitary life.  Even stranger, is when she suddenly finds herself in a strange alternate world, a decaying one full of all the things that have been abandoned – from ideas, to children’s toys, to amusement parks, to the unremembered dead and a room of foetuses.  Can Ting-yin unravel the mystery of what is going on, why she is here and most importantly, get back to reality before she decays along with the rest of this decaying parallel universe?

I can see how this one really divides the audience.  By pairing up with her partner Oxide and his brother yet again, many must have been expecting something on the level of “The Eye”.  And for the opening 25 minutes or so, we get very much that, a classic Hong Kong Ghost story.  Except, although it is full of atmosphere and shocks, it does really feel like we have been here, done this.  Then suddenly it gets interesting, and really shifts gears.  Suddenly we are in this strange, decaying CGI world, at once visually stunning and full of thought provoking imagery.  It is no longer a horror film, but now far more a fantasy, albeit with some classic horror tropes. 

Lee really is one of the best actresses at mixing the strong female role who harbours a great sense of heartbreak – she is far more than a helpless scream queen.  The film lives or dies on her performance, as so few other characters really get a chance to shine, but she is as watchable as ever.

The film structurally has an issue – it is almost too much like a computer game – she meets odd events, and works out (sometimes with the help of a mysterious Old man and a young girl) how to get through each hurdle, moving onto to the next stage in her quest.  It therefore feels that the film is almost like an amusement park ride, we are on rails working towards the eventual conclusions, with nothing else to help fill the story, or provide resonance with the real world.  When the real truth of the story is revealed, I am afraid it is just too obvious to have ever been a mystery, although it still packs a real emotional punch – especially when her loss is accepted only to be taken away.

My overwhelming emotion with regards to the film is that I just wish there was more.  I wish we had more time to look at the things which had been abandoned, to understand Ting-yin’s life a little more.  Despite the bold imagery, some of the ideas seem a little undercooked – whilst one character in her alternate world makes perfect sense, the second reveal seems to come from nowhere.  Moreover, there is a final scene shock which is probably enough for another film to be made out of, but we are left utterly unfulfilled about where it is going.

Saying all this, I really enjoyed the film, not just on a purely visceral level.  It is certainly one of those films I would consider getting a Region A Blu-Ray player to see, but there is also enough in terms of the themes of loss and abandonment to make it worthy of multiple views.  It is probably the fact that there are so many wonderful yet unexplored ideas and images that make me a little disappointed in the end – another 10 minutes of running time, a little pruning and some more dialogue would have raise this one up a notch, but it still remains Recommended!

Hansel and Gretel

Up next is the second film that somehow I missed first time around, although in this case it was more I got the film at a time other things were going on, and it just dropped down to the bottom of the pile.  However, I had heard good things about the Korean Horror/Fantasy, so I had high hopes when snuggling down on a cold Winters Afternoon to watch it.

“Hansel and Gretel” takes us on a journey with Eun-soo (Cheon Jeong-myeong), a young man driving around for work, while his girlfriend is pregnant at home.  A car accident leaves him stranded in the woods, where he comes upon a young girl.  She takes him back to her house, to meet her younger sister and older brother, and her doting parents.  He soon realises all is not well – these are children to which every whim is met (big platters of cakes for breakfast anyone?), and his attempts to be assisted to get to the nearest village are ignored.  Then the parents run off, asking him to stay in charge. Not to worry though, as the son brings home another couple, a preacher and his rather catty wife.  Eun-soo keeps trying to escape, but eventually realises things are even stranger than he could have ever expected, leading to a psychological story of abuse, lost childhood and a storybook you just don’t want to be a part of.

The film is utterly gorgeous.  The colour palette is bright and hyper-real, and in terms of set design, the whole thing is designed beautifully.  It has that bright glare that only childhood memories can have, and your eye is constantly drawn to new detail, with the occasional curve ball thrown in to just put you off kilter.  Surreal is the order of the day, yet it never quite goes too far.

The story is a fascinating one, playing with the themes of abandonment and abuse from the original fairy tale, but aside from that, it is no retelling of Gingerbread Houses and wicked Cannibal Witches.  There are subtle hints of trails of breadcrumbs, but this film does not really take its cue from there, rather a couple of Twilight Zone Episodes, to say much more would spoil things.  There are some wonderful ideas though, such as a never ending attic, a women turned into a tree, and another who becomes a doll.  But is never quite moves from the realms of disturbing and creepy into that of outright horror.

Whilst I enjoyed the film, it does have problems.  Part of me thinks it maybe tries a little too hard to be “A Tale of Two Sisters”, and whilst visually it is nearly on a par, it never quite is able to compete in terms of acting, mood and just that lingering feeling of something unsettling going on.  The eventual back-story takes up too much of the final third of the film, and is frankly just not as interesting as what went before.  The Preacher character, although suitably creepy, just mirrors something from the past, and feels a little too convenient.  Most frustratingly, our main protagonist, Eun-soo, is really little more than a cipher – I never really found out who he was, and what he was learning from the experience.  There are hints that maybe all is not well between him and his pregnant girlfriend, but they seem unimportant and are forgotten once the film reaches its conclusion.  He is just a nice guy in a strange place.

There is a lot here to enjoy, and certain images will stick with you for a long time.  I think it is a film full of great ideas, and visually I have rarely seen better.  But it lacks something in terms of emotional connection with our characters – even though the underlying events are potentially heart breaking, and the themes of destroyed childhood and parental abandonment are strong, you lack a real emotional attachment with anyone, which means you never quite care enough about what is going on.  So it is Recommended, but its not quite hitting the heights of really great Korean Cinema.

Shutter

The next couple reviews are films that hard both back to my early dealings in Asian Cinema (i.e. Horror), and also odd omissions from my watching C.V.  This film I can’t believe I missed at all, being as it is probably the key Thai Horror, and as I often say, I really should watch more films from Thailand.

Our main protagonist in “Shutter” is Tun (Ananda Everingham), a handsome freelance Photographer, who seems to have it all – looks, great job, pleasant personality and a lovely Girlfriend, Jane (Natthaweeranuch Thongmee).  After attending a wedding party one night with his college friends, Jane and Tun are involved in a car accident, where Jane appears to run down a young girl.  In a moment of ill-judged panic, Tun convinces her to drive on before anyone notices.  This eats at Jane’s conscience a lot, yet when they revisit the scene of the accident, they find no evidence at all of anything having happened.  However, Tun is initially intrigued by strange imagery, possibly of a Ghost, on his latest Photographic sets, and he is beset with a terrible back ache.  Jane and Tun investigate the world of Ghost Photos, and eventually uncover a horrible truth about a past tragedy, one which casts a worrying light on the true nature of Tun.

On the face of it, co-directors Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom (Best name ever!!) have crafted little more than a by the numbers Asian Horror movie.  Long Haired Asian Female Vengeful Ghost?  Check.  Use of a common phenomena (Photos of Spirits in this case)?  Check.  A dark personal secret hitherto unsuspected? Check.  Yet, to be fair, this one is actually in the superior bracket of these films.

Being a Thai film, it is never going to be a film reliant of graphic detail, and is stronger for that – it relies on atmosphere and some quite excellent set pieces, aimed to chill you rather than scare/upset you.  In fact, the weakest aspects of the film are actually when our Ghost makes a full appearance, not because it is bad, it is just we have seen Sadako-lite too many times before.  Yet a glimpse here and there works really well, as does the use of the technical side of Tun’s Photographic Skills – the Darkroom and the flash bulb.  It is certainly a film made on a budget – it is not lushly filmed, but certainly looks professional enough, and makes the most of what it can place on the screen.

It is also a film that needs to be watched fully to the end.  Tun seems a nice guy, but his strange reaction to the hit and run seems utterly out of character until we discover his actions in the past which are only revealed in the final half hour.  He is moved very slowly from being the handsome hero, to someone quite weak and actually to be despised.  Jane on the other hand works her way up, from being the pretty girlfriend who is there to act all scared, to the more investigative of the two, and actually at some point becomes our lead character.

It also has the unusual structure of effectively having three endings.  Tun and Jane eventually track down the dead girl who is haunting them, and we get a rather sad story of a lonely girl and her grief stricken mother.  Then we get the full story of Tun’s relationship with this girl, and our understanding of some of the events are made clear – involving something that is all too human and far more horrifying than a ghostly image.  If it ended there, that would make it a reasonable film, but it is that final few minutes, when everything is tied together, when vengeance is shown to be eternal and unforgiving, then that is the point it suddenly become special.

The film is also pretty open minded about the phenomena of Ghosts on film.  It is willing to show that a lot of them are fakes, either accidental double exposures, or mock ups designed to sell magazines.  But it also leave the door open for those which are unexplainable (although suggesting that a Polaroid ™ cannot be faked is just wrong).

For me, this is a worthy, even superior entry into this genre.  It is disturbing enough to chill, but has enough character work in it to maintain interest even when the Ghostly activities are not the main focus.  And that final scene, well that makes it worth the price of admission alone.  Recommended.

The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake

Video review time, and from the depths of exploitative CAT III, here is a very different Herman Yau film.  Proving that there is life in the Chinese Bio-Pic, this film ranks as one of the very best I have seen in a long time.  Highly Recommended.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9bUrBZ2P3E

The video is a bit more off the cuff than usual, its just I had a stinking headache and I just could not get my head around writing.

The Ebola Syndrome

This is one of those films I have had in my to-watch list for longer than this blog has been in existence, harking back to my Horror Movie love, rather than anything Asian-influenced.  It has quite the reputation, but I have always ignored it as out and out gore films do not really interest me.  What is more interesting it that it is directed by Herman Yau and stars the always great Anthony Wong – two people which always get good reviews here, and who are teamed up again in the NEXT film I want to talk about.  And the fact it was produced by our friend Mr Wong Jing… well that just adds an extra nuance. 

In “The Ebola Syndrome”, we follow the misadventures of outright loser Kai (Anthony Wong).  Before the opening credits we find him having sex with his Triad bosses wife, and when caught in the act, he proceeds to murder 3 people, and is about to murder a young girl, but is stopped before he can light the petrol he has doused her in.  He escapes to South Africa, and finds a job in a Chinese Restaurant.  The owners are aware of his past, and use him as a cheap dogsbody.  After 10 years things reach a head, when he joins his boss on a trip to a Zulu village that is in the grip of an Ebola outbreak whilst in the search to buy some cheap pork.  The ever-horny Kai decides to rape a dying native, and contracts the disease himself.  However, he is one of those rare individuals that does not actually succumb – after a bout of man ‘flu, he is it and healthy again, but a carrier of the disease.  He is bullied by his boss and his wife one time too many – he rapes the wife, kills them both, and then chops them up and serves them as Hamburgers in the restaurant.  This starts an outbreak of Ebola in Johannesburg, but Kai is not one to hang around – he finds the savings of his now deceased boss, and returns to Hong Kong, to continue his spreading of the disease.

Right, let’s just make this clear.  At face value, this is an exploitation film that covers all the bases – Rape, Racism, Cannibalism, Necrophilia, Food-Based Masturbation, Autopsies, and child peril.  I’ve probably missed a few taboos out.  It’s pretty graphic, and frankly not something that anyone other than the hard core gore/CAT III fans would actually want to see.  But it is also the blackest of comedies, and has a quite amazing central performance.  Oh, and for us sensitive Brits – several scenes of animal dismemberment – not a happy film for any live Frogs and Chickens!

I remember the furore over Ebola back in the late 1980’s – after the AIDS scare, but before SARS, this was the great flesh eating plague for darkest Africa which was going to destroy the world.  It never quite happened (although it does exist although outbreaks have really been quite small and limited to small villages in Africa and the odd laboratory accident).  The reality is here that whilst the film is using the cause célèbre for the poster, it really is a treatise on AIDS – its no accident that most of the infections come from the fact Kai just cannot keep his pants on.

Wong is utterly fantastic.  I have come at his career somewhat backwards – whilst he is now an elder statesman of the Hong Kong film industry – it really was not always that way.  He made his name in CAT III films like this, and has a large back catalogue of unsavoury characters.  Yet, even though his Kai is a loathsome and unkempt individual, Wong plays him with such Charisma, that you know the film just would not have worked at all with anyone else in the role.  In-between the moments of (at best) lewd and (more usually) repulsive behaviour, you actually find yourself feeling kind of sorry for this man – he is bullied by all and sundry, used and abused by those around him.  It does not go so far to make him sympathetic, but it does raise it above pantomime villain.  And you can just see the fun that he and Yau are having – knowing the off-the-cuff manner in which most Hong Kong cinema is made, you just know so much of this is either made up on the day of the shoot, or improvised.

If you can live with the graphic, over the top and unsavoury moments, then there is also a downside to Wong being such a powerful presence.  Any periods when he is not on screen, the film frankly slows to a crawl.  Any moments with the Hong Kong Police are just painful, and utterly lacking in any interest.  There is a sub-plot which involves the young girl who was doused in Petrol, who has grown up to be a Cabin Attendant.  She encounters Kai, and is overwhelmed by his odour, reminding her of what he did 10 years ago.  And despite it being bought up a number of times, not an awful lot is done with this whole idea – and has a pretty perfunctory conclusion during the final moments.  It is like the inventiveness of the first two thirds of the film has impacted on the time available to develop much of the original script.

So in the end, I enjoyed this film far more than I actually intended to.  Graphic gore movies are not usually my thing, and really I watched this in order to gauge the growth of both Wong and Yau.  I’ve seen far worse visually, but it was actually unusual in that it had a sensible progression of story.  Coupled with a brilliant and fun central performance, I am going to shock even myself and give this – Recommended!!