Short Reviews

I used to be a film critic for a lifestyle website, and if you know me at all, you know me loves ze filmses. Here is a short, unedited ramble about why you should watch my top three.

1. Hero (China, 2002)

The most beautiful film ever made. Christopher Doyle's cinematographic artistry combines with the vision of Zhang Yimou and the martial arts perfection that is Jet Li to create, in effect, the world's premier piece of cinematic history. Hero is a story told in colours that develops with Byzantine twists and turns in the style of Rashômon, rending the heart with its beautiful tale.

The King of the Kingdom of Qin (Chen Da Ming) receives word that lowly county sheriff with no name (Jet Li) has fought and defeated the three greatest warriors of the neighbouring kingdom of Zhao, Flying Snow (In the Mood of Love's Maggie Cheung), Broken Sword (Infernal Affair's Tony Leung Chi Wai) and Sky (Donnie Yen).

The nameless warrior is received into the court as the head of ten thousand families, sitting but paces from the King. From this vantage point, the nameless warrior tells his lord of the story of how he conquered the three warriors using love and hate.

The King of Win is no fool and realises that the nameless warrior's tale is a complete lie - and the King believes that he has the true story figured out. All is not as it seems - the truth is an elusive quarry.

From the tale told, all will learn that the greatest hero is one that does not fight, and that true understanding is achieved without violence.

But for those who live in a world ravaged by war and plagued by the sword, it takes a great hero to find a love that lasts beyond life, to find a meaning beyond the endless bloodshed, and to find perfection in all arts.

This is Hero.

No shot is wasted, from Moon's (Zhang) single rolling tear drop after her master's ultimate betrayal of her innocence, to a perfect shot of Flying Snow and Broken Sword as peaceful, warrior-scholar lovers. The cinematography is unmatched, and the script represents two years of work from China's greatest filmmaker, so it is sure to not disappoint.

Yes, there are undertones of totalitarianism in implicit support for the reign of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, but to dislike this film for such petty political reasons to deprive yourself of truly great art, and blind yourself to deeper meaning.

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2. The King and the Clown (Korea, 2005)

Wang-eui Nam-ja is, without a doubt, Korea's greatest film. In a nation whose cultural phenomenon known as Hallyu is sweeping across the world, proving so popular that some Asian countries are attempting to curb the one-way flow of this marginal imperialism, we have something truly worthy of importing.

My mind is still boggling.

Korea is the origin of many a fluffy romantic drama and chiseled popstar. Who would have known that amongst the "My Sassy Girl"'s and the violent meaninglessness of various wannabe Beat Takeshi films such as "Old Boy" there would be my number two pick? This film has won pretty much every Korean award there is, and a few international ones to boot. It's a damn shame that they didn't run it in Cannes.

The literal translation of the Korean, Japanese (王の男) and Chinese (王的男人) titles of this film are "All the King's Men" or "The King's Man" - a more poetic and deserving title than the English, evoking exactly its original eponymous pun. Wang-eui Nam-ja is a heart-rending tragedy in the finest Shakespearean tradition, updated for modern sensibilities and set in Korea's most popularised period, the turbulent Chosun Dynasty, during the reign of King Yeonsangun of Joseon.

It is a tale of two street entertainers, Jang-Seng (Gam Wu-seong) and Gong-Gil (Lee Jun Ki), who escape life in a circus under a heavy-handed circus owner, who pimps out the (male) feminine actor Gong-gil to bisexual barons and petty landlords who are curious about the man who would act like a woman. Jan Seng is Gong Gil's unspoken protector and friend and eventually convinces the other to escape from the traveling troupe.

Do not be so small minded as to let that confused gender bending turn of events put you off. Lee Jun Ki's performance is spellbinding, as an actor who, who specialises in female characters, moving and talking and acting so much like a female one wonders whether he truly is male. A scene in particular, played out over grassy field, where the two runaways deal with their worries and fears by falling back on the only reassurance they know - acting it out in a beautiful, poignant and multi-layered ad-lib play about two blind old men.

Things take a turn for the better when the two entertainers flee the clutches of the old circus master and get to Seoul. They manage to out dance, out sing, out perform all the rival entertainment there, and begin a show that directly mocks the King and his sexual obsession with his mistress - a fact widely known in gossip circles. But mocking the powerful has its price, and the two are drawn into powerful palace intrigues and yet another show of masks and acting - the true story of the man behind the throne, with all its human complexity.

Do not miss this goddamn film.

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3. Fight Club, (Hollywood, 1999)

Do you really need a review to see this film?

It is not, as most women seem to believe before watching it, some kind of macho guys only beat-em-up film. Blame that on the stupendously stupid marketing campaign.

As an underground DVD hit, Fight Club is the story of the modern man, raised by the single mum and struggling to find meaning behind service desks and collared shirts. It is the ranting, raging, powerful outpouring of a generation that sees no salvation of the nation, no hope in god, no struggle in war. In the words of Tyler Durden:

"We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off. "

How would one act in a society that places self perfection, the feminisation and the taming of man, as the end goal of human progress? Indeed, very pissed off.

It's Fight Club. You really don't need me to explain more.

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The others, which I will get around to at some point in time:

4. The Road Home (China, 1999)
5. The Jammed, (Australia, 2007)
6. All about Lily Chou Chou (Japan, 2001)
7. LoTR Trilogy (2001-03)
8. Once Upon a Time in China (HK, 1991)
9. Star Wars Eps 5,4,6 (1977-83)
9.5: (NEW) Lust, Caution
10. Matrix (1999)
11. In the Mood for Love (HK, 2000)
12. Miracles (HK, 1989)
13. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Japan, 1984)
14. To Live (1994)
15. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
16. A Very Long Engagement (France 2004)
17. Dead Poets Society, by Peter Wier (1989)
18. Zoolander (2001)
19. The Wind that Shakes the Barley (Ireland ,2006)
20. The Incredibles, by Pixar (2004)
21. Toy Story 1&2, by Pixar (1995, 1999)
22. The Gangs of New York (2002)
23. The Pianist (2002)
24. Troy (2007)
25. Infernal Affairs (2002)
26. Being John Malkovich (1999)

Tales from Earthsea?

The Earthsea Quartet by Ursula Le Guin was one of my favourite novels when I was younger. Imagine my trembling excitement and anticipation when I heard that Studio Ghibli, whose film Naussica ranks in my top ten films of all time, was going to make a film adaptation! I'm sure a similarly great cry of joy arose amongst the fantasy literates of the world when this announcement was made. I was so happy, I think I wet my pants a little.

I have only just seen the Studio Ghibli film, Tales of Earthsea, putting off the inevitable after hearing news that Le Guin herself didn't like it, and negative comments about it from hardcore Ghibli fans. I read Le Guin's essay first, and I thought she might have been too harsh with Ghibli, who in my eyes, could do no wrong (okay, could do very little wrong, since they did make Spirited Away). I really wanted to find out for myself the truth about this film.

They say curiosity killed the cat.

In hindsight, I should have just poked a chopstick in my eye - it would have hurt less.

Oh. My. God. It was abysmal and tortuously bad.


There is a random ramble of things I found wrong with this film (I'll edit this post into niceness later):

The storytelling is just not there. My gentle readers, at the risk of pushing you far past your sarcasm comfort zone, I must say - the storytelling was so non existent in this film, the plot so confusing, the motivations so confounding and the point of the film so incomprehensible, that it makes the violent, meaningless and totally misplaced offal that was Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill look like a well-made film.

There was no characterisation, plot developments were made at random, nothing ever happened for a good reason, and everything about the film was preachy and overdone, else skimmed over and ignored, making the whole film an excerise in confusion.

There is no real sense of wonder or discovery, as with My Neighbour Totoro or Naussica in the Valley of the Wind. Where is the beauty of the cities and islands of Earthsea? Where is man's mastery of the land and the air, and a sprawling, magical majesty of Le Guin's world? Furthermore, where is the serenity of pace, poignancy of subject matter, and simplicity of form and of story we have come to know and love with Ghibli?

Le Guin said:

"Much of it was beautiful. Many corners were cut, however, in the animation of this quickly made film. It does not have the delicate accuracy of "Totoro" or the powerful and splendid richness of detail of "Spirited Away." The imagery is effective but often conventional."

As for the scenery - the quieter scenes on the farm - includes a lamb that might possibly be the cutest little mutton chop to ever grace the silver screen. As a dragon lover though, the forms of the film's dragons were disappointing, to say the least. These dragons rank upon Steven's Dragon-cool-o-meter at the same level as Anne McCaffery's Dragonriders of Pern, and are nowhere near as awesome as the the wyrms of Dragonlance or Dragonheart's Draco.

The characters are likewise terribly executed. They are nothing like the characters in the book, and while this in itself was not a bad thing, they are not interesting at all, with mere sketches of personality and a few distinguishing features thrown in to help you remember who is who. Ged in the film is not the Sparrowhawk, Archmage of Roke of the Earthsea books. The Ged of this film as some kind of doppleganger, a pale imitation with the same superficial semblance, but none of the soul that makes Sparrowhawk a true hero. Throughout the film, I was horribly reminded of the cardboard cut-out characters of David Eddings, but even his books had far more memorable and fleshed out characters.

Even the original Japanese voice acting seemed rushed and unrefined, with both Cob and Therru's voices being downright annoying. For the first time ever for a Ghibli film, I will say that I enjoyed watching the film more with the English dubs on than in the original Japanese.

Worse - the film seems to have been edited beyond comprehension, into something resembling a Daft Punk music video - a series of images that seem profound, but are really empty fronts for nothing at all.

Le Guin said:

"The moral sense of the books becomes confused in the film. For example: Arren's murder of his father in the film is unmotivated, arbitrary: the explanation of it as committed by a dark shadow or alter-ego comes late, and is not convincing. Why is the boy split in two? We have no clue. The idea is taken from A Wizard of Earthsea, but in that book we know how Ged came to have a shadow following him, and we know why, and in the end, we know who that shadow is. The darkness within us can't be done away with by swinging a magic sword."

As for themes and thematic symbolism - there were none, at least none that made sense. We're watching Ghibli, not Evangelion, so I expect plots to connect and actions to have motivations.

This is the primary crime that this film has propagated is a malaise that runs deep through Ghibli's latest offerings:

"I think the film's "messages" seem a bit heavyhanded because, although often quoted quite closely from the books, the statements about life and death, the balance, etc., don't follow from character and action as they do in the books. However well meant, they aren't implicit in the story and the characters. They have not been "earned." So they come out as preachy. There are some sententious bits in the first three Earthsea books, but I don't think they stand out quite this baldly."

i.e. That shit don't make sense, brother. Howl's Moving Castle and Spirited Away are equally guilty of this crime. Having your characters say profound statements about the truth of the world, the nature of good and evil, the facts of life and death is all well and good, but talk rings more than hollow when the action has nothing to do with, well, anything even remotely connected to the themes the character's dialogue is pushing.

"But in the film, evil has been comfortably externalized in a villain, the wizard Kumo/Cob, who can simply be killed, thus solving all problems. In modern fantasy (literary or governmental), killing people is the usual solution to the so-called war between good and evil. My books are not conceived in terms of such a war, and offer no simple answers to simplistic questions."

Deus Ex Machina. The poor storyteller's false idol. If you like this film, then good for you - though I highly suggest that you go educate yourself on the development of fantasy in the last century or so, on film and on paper.

Ms. Ursula Le Guin, I couldn't agree more - they ruined your book. Goro Miyazaki, what have you done? Please, please, please don't make anymore films, ever.

Fighting Weltschmertz and Chasing Eidolons

Weltschmertz \Welt"schmertz`\, n.
Sorrow or sadness over the present or future evils or woes of the world in general; sentimental pessimism.

Eidolon \Ei*do"lon\, n. [NL., fr. Gr. ? image. See Idol.]

1.	a phantom; apparition.

2.

an ideal.

It's hard to live in a world that seems so bad. Nietzsche believed that creative forces were healthly, so much so that in fact, in a world without God, they were the only things that made life worth living.

I tend to agree, though of course my engineering and scientific background would add that pursuit of knowledge and creation of the new and the useful as well as a beautiful are the pursuits and endeavors that we should strive for in order to give our lives meaning.

Thus, the way in which we shall fight the draining, empty decay of the weltschmertz that secretly eats us all up inside is by chasing an eidolon, one which may not be unachievable, but we should strive for nonetheless.

Chasing Eidolons:

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1. The pursuit of great arts; finding meaning in every book and every film.

2. The pursuit of knowledge, the satisfaction of the unending why in the tradition of Odin All-father

3. The pursuit of creation of that which is useful, for functionality in the marriage of knowledge and skill via the works of man is beautiful.

4. The destruction of the weltschmertz that dwells within!

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Give me a lifetime to try it out, I'll tell you if I'm successful.