The banter is back, as a current APA editor trades barbs with the former editor, this time over the Hong Kong International Film Festival.
Chi,
It's been a while since we've resurrected this old feature where we harp semi-randomly about film festival highs and lows. Three years to be exact. Since then, much has happened in our professional lives. You've transplanted to Shanghai, where you've become a staple in the English-language TV broadcast industry. Meanwhile, my research has had me splitting my time between Taipei, Hong Kong, and Los Angeles. This spring, we crossed paths at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, where we each caught numerous films, ate incalculable servings of mango desserts, and scoured the city for an elusive plate of baked pork chop and noodles.
Instead of leaving off where we did three years ago, I want to take us back. Way back. To 1940. Then, a young director in the war-stricken Shanghai film industry named Fei Mu spent much time in Hong Kong planning a project with producer Jin Xinmin and actor Zhang Yi about the later years of Confucius. Long thought to be a lost treasure of Chinese film history, the resulting project, Confucius, was recently discovered. At this year's HKIFF, the Hong Kong Film Archive presented the restoration-in-progress, a stunning 35mm print of a near-complete Confucius, to a sold-out crowd at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre.
The film has its share of static moments, where wise men sit around talking philosophy and strategy, a staple of many historical films to follow in Chinese cinema. There are also many moments of sheer beauty, with a pre-Spring in a Small Town Fei Mu showing off glints of visual brilliance, as in a remarkable high angle sequence that tracks over the back of Confucius's head. The sequence bridges together a series of such shots, each one signaling Confucius's rise as a confidant in the imperial court. It's clean, effective, and mesmerizing cinema, and was for me the highest point of this year's festival.
The film is also remarkable for its presentation of social unrest. Confucius rose in prominence during the warring states period. In the film, his calls for peace are often left unheeded, and Confucius lives the rest of his life in a strange, self-imposed seclusion, preferring the ears of students rather than politicians who for the most part ignore his wisdom about social harmony. The film itself finds a weird balance: not quite satisfied with the outcome of the war scenes, not quite content with the fact that Confucius is ineffective as a political advisor. Fei Mu's depiction is not nationalist, nor is it necessarily political neutral. It follows a figure who retreats from such binaries to discover a higher plane, much like the titular character in The Go Master by Tian Zhuangzhuang, who in many ways is a Fei Mu disciple.
That the film Confucius takes this approach to nationalism and neutrality is interesting in light of the political conditions of occupied Shanghai around 1940. The mid and late 1930s were a time of “hard” and “soft” films -- films about social justice, often painted in nationalistic tones, and films of pure entertainment, often labeled reactionary by its leftist opponents. And here comes a film like Confucius which defies either categorization, breaking free from the political side-taking of wartime Shanghai.
Perhaps it could only be in Hong Kong that Fei Mu and his Min Hwa Company could conceive of such a film, though the film was mostly produced later in Shanghai, where it also first premiered. The project requires some distance from the strictures of conventional thinking and perhaps Hong Kong provided just that necessary distance.
Fast forward about 15 years. In the mid-1950s, many Shanghai filmmakers fleeing the mainland after the Communist revolution ended up in Hong Kong, where they could continue making the kinds of films they used to, like melodramas about social problems or entertainment films about song and dance girls. One such filmmaker was Evan Yang, the subject of this year's HKIFF retrospective. I'd been familiar with Yang's MP&GI work of the late 1950s and 60s, but less so with his earlier work as a writer and young director. My favorite of these early films that I saw at the festival was the 1955 feature Blood Will Tell, one of the earliest color films produced in Hong Kong. This year's festival presented a rare color print, which though faded to reds and pinks, was a stunning experience that I won't easily forget. The technology lent the film an air of the new, but the story was old hat: in fact, it's a loose remake of an old Bai Guang classic, the Shanghai-Hong Kong classic Blood-Stained Begonia from 1949.
So here we have two examples of Shanghai coming to Hong Kong, Shanghai utilizing Hong Kong, and Shanghai learning from Hong Kong. 50+ years later, we see Hong Kong heading north to the mainland for financing, locations, audiences, talent. And we still see Shanghai coming to Hong Kong for stars, structure, and perhaps legitimization. In 2009, it still makes sense to talk about these two cities as intertwined, and the HKIFF's programming of these forgotten classics reminds us of the historical precedence and industrial context out of which the future is likely to be forged. In the same spirit, I want to throw the ball to you, back in Shanghai, for your view on Hong Kong and this year's festival.
Brian
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B,
You're absolutely right on most counts -- it has been waaay too long, and we've both made some interesting, if not always conventional, career choices. But I'll have to take issue with one characterization you made...a staple in the English-language TV industry? If by staple, you mean someone who's been around the block and back, well, let's just say that I have yet to host anything as zeitgeist-changing as David Wu's Talk Da Talk -- for better, or for worse. I do, however, remain a flinty cineaste, meaning nothing quickens my pulse more than the film-crit equivalent of crossing swords. That sounds gross, I know, but if there's anyone I'd rather exchange, err, thrusts with, it'd be you.
Fittingly, you've gotten us started with a stroll down Hong Kong cinema's memory lane, which, much like the actual alleyways in HK, continues to remain delightfully varied and meandering (see: Johnnie To's swoon-worthy Sparrow). It's also interesting that you chose Confucius as a Chinese iconoclast planted somewhere between neutrality and nationalism, since these days, he's back to being a cultural lightning rod again. I'm sure you know all about the decision to cast The God of Gamblers and gun-fu, Chow Yun-Fat, as the sage in all his bearded glory. I don't think it's nearly as blasphemous as people here on the mainland make it out to be (isn't the patriarch he plays in Curse of a Golden Flower a warped, drunk-off-his-own-power version of Confucianism gone wrong anyways?). But then again, I haven't had to wrestle dueling notions of fusty nationalism and unquestioning nostalgia all my life.
My point is, history has a way of rearing its head unexpectedly -- and Chinese filmmakers have always been more than happy to seize the moment for their own creative and financial gain. Already this year, we've seen two major motion pictures about revered historical figures plow their way through Chinese box offices -- Chen Kaige's Forever Enthralled (which in non-Chinglish, is “Mei Lanfang” -- otherwise known as China's most well-regarded opera singer) and Wilson Yip's Ip Man. I've heard plenty of Chinese people compare the two, though one tends to get brutalized much more than the other. (Hint: it's not the film that features an uncharacteristically zen-like Donnie Yen going to work on Japanese generals and Chinese hooligans alike.) Both movies faced their share of adversity in the form of casting (in Mei Lanfang, everyone's favorite media punching bag Zhang Ziyi was deemed too bitchy, among other things; Donnie Yen as the venerable Ip Man too much of a hothead ); both cast aspersions on what it means to be enshrined as cultural icons in a country with as many competing ideologues as China.
Both have also been careful to distance themselves from the source material. Correct me if I'm wrong (and I'm sure you will), but the term “period piece,” at least in China, seems to be undergoing some subtle, but noticeable transformations. Chinese moviegoers are no longer content with just the facts, ma'am -- they want to tap into a feeling that upholds their status as a modern, cosmopolitan force to be reckoned with, without relinquishing hold of sacrosanct “Chinese” principles. The halcyon days of the stylistically domineering wuxia pics (halcyon for you; heinous for me) like Zhang Yimou's House of Flying Daggers are starting to make way for films that are costume dramas in name only. Their narratives are becoming more fluid; their historical fuddy-duddy-ness less severe. Or in the words of so many white, over-the-hill male film critics: more lust, less caution.
I didn't have a chance to view any of Evan Yang's work (I blame it on a certain elusive plate of baked porked chop and noodles), but I now wish I did. Yang sounds every bit the flighty entertainer many of today's Chinese or Shanghainese filmmakers seem to have stopped trying to emulate, in their neverending quest to direct the next Great Chinese Masterpiece. Although I guess Ning Hao's Crazy Racer (which screened at HKIFF), and its Guy-Ritchie-meets-early-Feng-Xiaogang-meets-late-Steven-Soderbergh's pedigree comes close, albeit in its own maddening way.
Before I talk about that movie (and its equally well-received predecessor Crazy Stone), I want to return to what we usually talk about with a great deal of consternation: the programming itself. HKIFF has long been held as the industry standard in Asia, if not creatively (Pusan still takes the cake in that regard), then at least institutionally. At the very minimum, we could expect to see certain trends being crystallized, or a certain brand of prestige picture being foisted upon easily impressionable members of the film fest circuit. To my knowledge, this simply didn't happen at this year's HKIFF -- at least not with any of the Asian cinema.
B, my (dual-layered) question to you, then, is this: has Hong Kong film really fallen that far, and if so, does that mean Shanghai is about to take the mantle?
Chi
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Chi,
I'm not ready to write off Hong Kong cinema just yet. Compared to most industries, it's still fairly robust, structured, and active. Meanwhile, I see no indication that Shanghai, or anybody for that matter, can take the place of what Hong Kong film has represented for 50 years.
On the other hand, it's commonly accepted that HKIFF has been eclipsed in many ways by Pusan, as you've mentioned. The best Asian films that played at HKIFF were ones I'd seen in Pusan last fall: Hirokazu Kore-eda's Still Walking and Hashiguchi Ryosuke's All Around Us. Both, incidentally, are from Japan, which probably reveals where I think most of the creativity is coming from these days. The major mainland films everyone's been talking about -- Yang Jin's Er Dong, Zhao Ye's Jalainur, and Li Hongqi's Routine Holiday -- were all Pusan discoveries. So it's safe to say that as far as regional film festivals go, HKIFF has been overtaken. It's also safe to say that the Shanghai International Film Festival still has a long way to go in this respect.
Many articles have been written about the relationship between Hong Kong cinema and the mainland. Cheap labor is often mentioned; audacious sets and resources almost always are. CEPA and huayu dianying (“Chinese cinema”) are the new keywords. Forever Enthralled and Ip Man are great examples of these collaborations in action, and you've pointed quite convincingly to a way in which their reception has been colored by the casting decisions. In the case of Ip Man, I wonder: could anybody else have played the titular character but Donnie Yen? Or more specifically, could anybody have played him other than a veteran of Hong Kong action cinema? I'm not talking about talent, which the mainland certainly has. I'm talking about cinematic credibility, which continues to give Hong Kong the upper hand.
And then there are people like Edmund Pang. I'll always remember what Pang said about his latest film Trivial Matters at the Q/A when it played in Pusan. Trivial Matters is comprised of a series of dirty jokes involving such colorful elements as blow jobs, marijuana, feces, and hookers. Pang explained that his motivation was to make a film that would definitely get banned in the mainland. I didn't interpret his motive as a marketing device (in the way that “banned in China” makes distribution a certainty in the U.S.). Rather it was a gesture of youthful rebellion, not against the PRC per se, but against what he fears Hong Kong cinema is becoming.
Though he didn't have any films at HKIFF this year, Pang was not absent. Along with 35 others, Pang was hailed by the Hong Kong Film Development Council as being among the “New Action” of Hong Kong cinema. The idea is to promote these 36 young directors to potential overseas investors and co-producers. Needless to say, the program book given to the press de-emphasized the scandalously local Trivial Matters in favor of Pang's Isabella and Exodus, which won awards at European film festivals.
You asked if there are any noticeable cinematic trends in sight at HKIFF, and I'd agree with your hypothesis that there really aren't any. The evolving trends are not observable onscreen, but behind, in things like the trade show FILMART and the Hong Kong Asian Film Financing Form (HAF), or at the “New Action” presentation. A coherent picture of Hong Kong cinema's cutting edge is more about proposing what the future will be like, which may or may not include the mainland, rather than analyzing what was innovated this past year. In fact, many of the big name Hong Kong films programmed at HKIFF looked to the recent past rather than to the future: Dante Lam's Beast Stalker, Law Wing-cheong's Tactical Unit - Comrades in Arms, Wong Kar-wai's Ashes of Time Redux, the Film Workshop retrospective. Based on the trade seminars, brochures, and Filmart presentations, the future seems to point to big HK-mainland co-productions, and small youthful local films -- which from an economic perspective makes sense.
At least, that's the accepted picture of the future. But you and I know it's far from that simple, and I'll point to a not-so-obvious anecdote. We saw Kim Ji-woon's The Good, the Bad, the Weird at a very sold-out screening in the very big Hong Kong Cultural Centre. And we witnessed an energetic, though debatably meaningful, adventure-comedy get the most rousing response I've ever seen from a Hong Kong audience. There are many inferences we can make from this, least of all the fact that considerations of the Hong Kong or Chinese markets should never be limited to a discussion of Chinese-language films. But it also says something about style, humor, energy, and novelty. Which perhaps leads us to Ning Hao. So, take it away.
Brian
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