liangdong Reviews

Konservfilm (1990)

See for yourself to discover how funny it is!

[2 October 2003]

A delightful piece to watch, although small, it lacks no dramatic impact at all. It tells a kingdom of can people whose peaceful life is disturbed by frequent coup-d'¨¦tat and subsequently the policy about what kind of fruit or vegetable should be stuffed into people's mind (the can): tomato, pepper, lemon and so on. As well-known phenomena of twenty century, mass are capable of following blindly their leader's capricious mind and doing absurd things when acting in such a collective consciousness. The notorious example of this maybe fascist Germany and militarism Japan but the reign under Stalin and Mao bear same characteristics. However, we should note that it is not actually the fault of the leader who is crazy or devil or satanic. The problem should be more correctly addressed to, deep inside people's mind, some unknown psychological weaknesses of average human being. Maybe this is the reason why some people watching this film feel uneasy.

Unlike 1984, with its nostalgic style, this film is more direct and compact and hilariously straightforward. To make people laugh is maybe the only good way to let them face this human disease. And we have to say this is really a good laugh, not by abusing others, which is the commonest form of jokes people enjoy, but by depicting earnest people doing foolish things.

The idea of can people is by itself very originative and throughout the film there are proves of artistic imagination everywhere. Two scenes impressed me: one rebellious guy being beaten to flat by policeman jumping onto him and a couple of lovers being carried away prior to their sexual attempt.

Food (1992)

what can be eaten and how do we eat them

[2 October 2003]

The film goes as the summary tells but it is much more than that. Otherwise it would be another boring idea with no details. The major focus is on the lunch, other meals appearing to be only preface and epilogue, which is pacing faster and faster to reach a point of craziness at one time dumbfounding and mesmerizing. The contest and contrast between two diners are not on how fast we can eat but on what can be eaten and how do we eat them.

This short piece is a good example because the audience feels that it refers to something which cannot be clearly identified, thus allows for multiple explanations. You can substitute 'eat' with various other words, to see what you get there, and you are no where near the director's idea. Maybe he didn't have one at all!

Fireworks (1997)

violence and tenderness powerfully interwoven to reveal an Oriental Mind.

[27 September 2003]

This is the peak of Takeshi Kitano's film career and also an all-time favorite of my personal collection. Even if I am not watching the film, I have always been rehearsing the sequences in my brain on Joe Hisaishi's wonderful score.

Although his film has risen to such height, which means, expressing one's personal world perfectly using artistic media, Kitano is not much talked about outside Japan or Asia, compared to Woody Allen, also once a stand-up comedian and had been enthusiastically hailed by European audience especially French since 90s.

Is it probably because a lot people dislike violence and prefer New York elites talking from beginning to the end? Hardly so and most likely just the opposite. Then it must be that people are uneasy to face or comprehend those acts of violence permeated by Oriental Silence (see my comment on Brother for further discussion on this point).

It is easy to understand that Akira Kurosawa is a great director, just like Steven Spielberg in USA and ZhangYiMou in China, both happen to be big admirers of the former. But talking about auteur film, theirs are far from it. It is easier to understand their works since they are open to the extent of almost flat. On the contrary, an auteur film is not so inviting and stands in front of us like a giant monster before we have any clue where they came from.

It is like Nietzsche with all his originality and self-assurance but hard to be placed right amid European philosophy history, whose existence could only be imagined outside an institutional hierarchy.

Swallowtail Butterfly (1996)

a post-modern adult fairytale

[27 September 2003]

A post-modern adult fairytale like this cannot shows up every year and even today, when I have already seen all of Shunji Iwai's films, I still have no clue about where did this one surface. It is fairly easier to comprehend ‘love letter' or ‘April story', based on a single good idea, or maybe a little more hard work and careful planning with ‘picnic', but there is no fixed procedure to follow in order to conjure up a desperate complex like this.

The hand-held camera movements and those documentary-like jumping shoots, which make some people uncomfortable in other Iwai's film, are more balanced with montage here. Nevertheless, it is the director's favorite way of seeing this world and had been intentionally deployed just as a reflection of personal disposition but not a obligation in a drama.

Note that it is vital to have all those cool figures, even the cameos, which is a test of originality almost all pseudo-filmmakers would fall short and, on the other hand, the audiences never fail to appreciate. However, unlike his contemporary Kitano, Iwai seems have been running out of sarcastic wits ever since then, or maybe just he was too much occupied by subtle tragedy-romance receiving enormous popularity among teenagers.Despite this, he remains one of the few promising film makers in new millennium Japan.

A Scene at the Sea (1991)

a jade to cherish

[27 September 2003]

The way Kitano combines his sequences is both original and powerful and he shoots them without a single complex show-off of camera movements. He is the man who knows montage instinctively and he got his cut-point clean and strong, always keeping perfect emotional harmony with the music. In the first minute of this film you will be able to see his method, quite unexpected and exciting, which stirs your attention immediately.

The story is good, too, fully revealing the gentleness of unspoken determination and the power of silent movement. It would be hard to imagine a world as beautiful as this for a hearing-impaired couple and I am sure I will be unable to make a complete story of them by myself including so other minor interesting material. You must really be devoted to the world of silence with boundless love and intent to be able to do it.

The ending sequence is worth mentioning, due to its apparent spontaneity, when the death of our hero is welcomed by such a passionate depiction of music and exulting sea. Try to reflect on this and see if you can understand it.

8½ (1963)

one film alone will be sufficient to claim him as a maestro

[27 September 2003]

Undoubtedly Fellini's best and maybe the only one we enjoy even we sometimes feel he is too much indulged in his circus show. In making this film Fellini had transcended making films as an artistic work once for all and proved to us even a disastrous directing crisis can be successfully survived and turned magically into a masterpiece.

It is not enough to just sit there and watch the film itself, for you would never be able to understand how this magic was being done. There are too many references to the director's real life experience and he made it that way it is no longer possible to divide fiction from real life and thus provide us a sublimed reality which is the dream of every artist.

Everybody had a reason to appear in a film or even to exist in this world. The explanation for this and also the labyrinthic relationships between them is thought unable to be represented inside a single film(or even a series of them), used to be, that is, before we see this film.

The criterion DVD can give you much information even if you do not have access or won't bother to dig into those commentary and biographical books.

In one word, if a film can be so dazzling while you are on it and still remains flawless after you have tried to analyze it cold-bloodly afterwards, then it is enough for you to decide that director's talents are something mysteriously inborn and one film alone will be sufficient to claim him as a maestro.

Winter Sleepers (1997)

character analysis

[23 September 2003]

Contains Spoilers Ren¨¦: Typical intellectual, director's alter-ego who seems to have a meditative pursuit of life. He has a strange way of dealing with his amnesia: taking photographs of his personal life Being a projectionist is a good symbol of his life attitude: detachment with no obsession or rebelliousness. However, he does not shirk the relationship with other people blindly but accept what his destiny arranges for him, as symbolized by the baby in his lap at the end of the film.

Marco: Typical male animal, in addition to chasing opposite sex all the time, his only concern is watching TV and consuming garbage food. His trouble besides jealousy is that he fails to penetrate Rebecca's spiritual world. He has this smug clinging fascination to material things that he even ask for the exact price of Rebecca's mother's inheritance auction. Eager to show off his new sports car but disappointed to find out that his girlfriend is not interested at all. His reaction after losing his car makes a strong contrast to other people's indifference to material wealth. It is interesting that he keep asking Rebecca to do one more part-time job, for what? For giving him more money to those libidinal excursion? That final sequence of falling in the air is wonderful.

Rebecca: Female with temperament of literature. Her need of Marco is at one side a prove of the advantages body has over spirit, on the side the yearning and beautification of her curious mind to what Marco represent, a primitive, wild force. However, both he and she felt unquestionably her intellectually superiority and it seems quite normal for a woman like her to establish man-woman relationship like this: She need him but not love him, so need him just like a dildo which can be reasonably substituted by masturbation, or even preferred in certain cases. To piss under the tree is probably from Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex and I am sure Laura wouldn't think of doing that.

Laura: Female of melancholy who has less intellectual superiority but more emotional sensitivity and prefers bonny intellectual to simple-minded male animal. Her job in the film is just sitting there watching the patient dying and drinking with other nurses afterwards. She express her female quality in activities such as going to beauty salon and visiting Ren¨¦ after he failed to show up on a date. Her repugnance to Marco is just what we expected.

Breaking the Waves (1996)

¡®It is accomplished!¡¯

[23 September 2003]

Although Lars Von Trier is always connected with DOGMA 95 in many people¡¯s view, I dare to say that his cinematic creativity has nothing to do with those meaningless restraints. That means, getting rid of all the technical dogma propositions will do no harm to the artistic value of this film (and also dancer in the dark) which is carefully planned script and instinctively chosen motive: the heart of gold.

PIETY: Bess, the heroine of this part of the trilogy, has no special disposition but a nearly innocent piety. She believes the existence of god not by studying Christian classic or, like many intellectuals in our time, being converted at last after a long futile search of truth in this very material world. Those who try to prove the existence of god, those who try to speculate on the existence of god, are not believers but she, she talks to god all the time like talking to an alter-ego. A superior-ego maybe, severe to her to the extent of cruelty maybe, still, he understand the love and pains in her life. After everybody has abandoned her, he is still there, in the last scene on the boat.

She always reminds me of another woman, a modern saint, Simone Weil. The picture kept appearing before my eyes with Weil¡¯s famous face, devastated by excess labor.

LOVE: We might notice that there are certain differences between the love inside Bess, which is a religious one generated from her love toward god, and the love we experience ourselves everyday, a mundane, temporal one based on fragile contract. Thus we cannot make a sacrifice like that because we always follow dodo¡¯s advice about ¡®a woman has to care about herself¡¯.

OPPRESSOR: Women are expelled from those religious activities which should be more appropriately called political activities, a dirty and abstract game. But the inner power of Bess makes her to question ¡®how can men love a word?¡¯ It is as if Jesus himself will try to pose a question with a simplicity, vividness and directness like this. Of course nobody is listening because for them there is no truth in the talking itself but just who is talking.

DEATH: Like all the saints in our history, Bess doesn¡¯t have to die but she chooses to die in her own way. When she was waked up by dodo after fainted outside the church, her voice became so quiet and determined, without hate anymore, without confusion of destiny anymore, only a fearless frankness, as if she has acquired a new hidden power source from the earth: you have to go to the end of road when time comes without cowardly lingering on by many excuses, and thus you can say onto yourself on the cross with great relief:

¡®It is accomplished!¡¯

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988)

The KITSCH Kundera strongly struggled against come back all the time.

[23 September 2003]

It has always been a disappointment to see the film after you had been excited about the original book.

Because here the unbearable thing is no more the lightness of being but love, romance of Hollywood style.

You may find that certain important events are missing here, like Franz in Vietnam, Thomas¡¯s refusal of signing the petition, Teresa¡¯s mother etc. Because they are disintegrating the film, or simply because they are not relevant to love affair.

It is somewhat unavoidable that the point Phillip Kaufman choose to evolve this film become love affair and Daniel Day Lewis choose to act like he is a don Juan(unfortunately, not of a genuinely Czechish style).

Thomas maybe called a Don Juan, but a Don Juan is still far from a Thomas. That is the fundamental characteristics of Milan Kundera¡¯s hero.

The most disappointing thing happens when toward the end of the film someone is expecting that truly shattering declaration of ¡°I have no missions. No one has. And it¡¯s a terrific relief to realize that you are free, free of all missions.¡±, they just heard somebody murmuring ¡°I was thinking how happy I am¡±.

Leolo (1992)

l'histoire de ma vie n'existe pas. Cela n'existe pas.

[22 September 2003]

The film's mesmerizing effect due largely to the magnetic male narrative voice and the repeating usage of "Parce que je reve, moi, Je ne suis pas".

Somebody say it is poetic, actually it is not the best word to describe it. But this maybe the only word people can think of with a non-realistic phenomena.

The lyric rhythm and recursive manner of story-telling is vintage DURAS. As far as I have noticed, this is the most sucessful representation of Duras' literature method on movie screen, except india song, of course. Try to read l'amant to better understand the resemblance.

Blow-Up (1966)

Definitely not for everyones taste.

[22 September 2003]

People watching Antonioni's film always get this feeling of a long-night's exhaustion.

In a few words, according to my opinion, what Antonioni tried to express here is that: Life is a CHAOS, and personal behavior is nothing but those moments of passion-explosion(aiming a camera to a model is like making love to her).

After that, all you feel is deeper confusion and the absurdity of everything around you. However, your only way to survive is to accept them, just like throwing back the imaginary tennis ball.

The suspense of a murdering case is just an excuse of narrative. People think they can find a reason to act, to discover something meaningful, but it is futile as always.

Some say it is not a good film because they are not entertained by it. I guess so, they are not entertained by the reality of life itself either.

Going Places (1974)

To dance a valse you need to be elegant, but going places you don't.

[9/10 · 28 August 2003]

Not so many people like the movies of Bertrand blier simply because they don't understand them. Simply because they are different kinds of people.

If you have not been living under a deep desperation intertwined with great personal hope it may be hard for you to enjoy the humor blier shown here.

And also the film of blier cannot be classified easily as black-comedy or cult etc. like those of pulp fiction etc. Because there is this delicacy which the audience of north-america frequently fail to appreciate.

When I looked at these two `hooligans' dining with Jeanne moreau in the seaside restaurant, I felt they were more gentil than any gentleman can have been.

The urge to make love wildly like these is the normal reaction we feel under the unbearable pressure of meaningless being-symbolized by the camion suddenly emerges at the Carrefour.

SO, les valseuses is much better a name than going places. To dance a valse you need to be elegant, but going places you don't.