Rosenbaum on "Evil in the East and Poison in the West": The Mystery of China

Krista 2022-04-22 07:01:48

By Jonathan Rosenbaum (Chicago Reader)

Translator: csh

The translation was first published in "Iris"

Of the Wong Kar-wai movies I've seen, "Evil in the East" is probably not the best, nor the most understandable - I think "A Feifei" is better, and "Chongqing Forest" is more understandable. However, "Evil in the East" is undoubtedly the most daring and broad-spectrum film, and we may be able to observe some recent changes in Chinese cinema through this work.

After two viewings six months apart, I still can't fully grasp the plot of "Dong Xie Xi Po", but I'm not sure if the plot is important in this work. In every shot, there are so many visual elements at work, they have their own rhythm in each passage, and their own dynamics in each scene, so I never get bored. I had a similar disregard for the plot when I watched Liu Zhenwei's "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" (hereafter referred to simply as "East and West"), a fantasy-filled adventure in which many The stars are the same as "Dong Xie Xi Du", both films are also based on Jin Yong's four-volume novel, and they are produced at a similar time. Of course, in "East and West", the story line plays a similar role as the plot in most musicals. And in "Evil in the West", no matter how solemnly Wong Kar-wai takes his storyline, it remains a functional character throughout the film, serving his innumerable stylistic elements. Of course, Hong Kong audiences probably know the stars of the film and the plot of the novel better than I do, so the story may mean more to them - but I still doubt that the film's visual elements and rhythmic imagery, more important than narrative content.

Because my understanding of "Evil and Poison in the West" is still fragmented and localized, I decided to think about this film in three different ways: we can think of it as a "western film" , a Hong Kong New Wave film, or a film in a sequence of Wong Kar-wai's works. These paths aren't entirely satisfying on their own, but I think they provide at least some clues about the provocative, exciting nature of this film.

Perhaps "Evil in the East" should be seen as an "eastern film" rather than a western, because there are no guns, only swords, and we can also see a camel or two among the horses. middle. Set in an ambiguous period, the film reminds us of those Sergio Leone Westerns, but when viewers find that connection, they're at the same time confused. The western reference point is always a trap, and when westerners are watching Hong Kong movies, this reference point is a temptation for us - of course, I'm not saying that this influence must not exist, I'm just saying, This reference point can make it harder to understand elements that are local. When we watch this film, or Guan Jinpeng's "Ruan Lingyu" and "Red Rose and White Rose", it is hard not to think of Joseph von Sternberg's films, because these works have many similarities: light and shadow Spots and networks of composition, smoky atmospheres, and labyrinthine, grid-like spaces. But it is very likely that these characteristics should be related to Chinese painting and architectural art. Even though Kwan may be familiar with Sternberg—and more likely, Wong Kar-wai is familiar with Leone—these references offer only very limited insights when it comes to understanding their films.

Both Wong Kar-wai and Leone use super close-ups, and they both frame violent scenes very slowly. They also tend to feature killers for hire, bloody vendettas, and scenes where the hero muses alone. In "Dong Xie Xi Du", he is a once very famous horse thief (played by Leslie Cheung), who comes from Baituo Mountain, opened an inn in the desert, and became an agent for hired killers. But Wong Kar-wai's highly elliptical, eclectic style of violence is completely different from Leone's "Red Dead Redemption" or "Once Upon a Time in the West." When Wong Kar-wai expresses violence, he often alternates between two different states: either a brief riot, or a slow action scene, sometimes with unexpected freeze-frame images. Wong Kar-Wai's brilliantly conceived, fragmented, violent passages are actually more reminiscent of Orson Welles' "Midnight Clock" than Leone's operatic duels. In particular, "Evil in the East" and "Midnight's Bell" focus on ephemeral, obscure details rather than heroic spectacles. In fact, these details also seem to indicate Wong Kar-wai's creative thinking. He wants to deconstruct the traditional ideal of the hero and the connection between the hero and the bloody sacrifice - which is also Wells' motivation. (Wong Kar-wai also once talked about "Dong Xie Xi Du": "I'm trying to deviate from the traditional martial arts genre. I don't want to see these characters as heroes, until they become heroes, I want to see them as ordinary people.")

The rapidity of these passages reminds me of the arguments of the German composer Karl-Heinz Stockhausen, who observed the differences in the concept of time between Japanese and Western cultures. The Japanese tea ceremony, he points out, is slower but faster than similar procedures in the West—sipping the tea as if it were never-ending, but taking down the last drop instead. When he applied the results of this observation to Japanese music and other cultural forms, Stockhausen identified a pattern that could help Western listeners and viewers understand the extremes of particular passages. slowness, and the extreme rapidity of other passages (this idea can often be applied to violent passages as well). This principle seems to be used to explain a lot of Chinese films, and it obviously played an important role in my understanding of East Evil and West Poison.

Perhaps the most Leone-like elements in this "Eastern" are the unnatural soundtracks: some compositions by Ennio Morricone, mixed electronically and accompanied by a male voice 's choir, whose vocals sometimes sound like "Four Freshmen". But I was told that the flaw in this element of the film was not Wong Kar-wai's fault. In his just-completed version of the film, which is said to be completely music-free - an unimaginable transgression of the commercial norms of Hong Kong cinema - the producers hastily arranged the existing soundtrack and embedded it in in the film.

Between the French New Wave and the Hong Kong New Wave, there are many hidden parallels: Guan Jinpeng is interested in film history, and he is also influenced by certain Hollywood traditions; Yan Hao can also be roughly regarded as the 1960s Johann Frankheimer's counterpart - a director influenced by the French New Wave who tends to be at the mercy of his own script. And Wong Kar-wai's connection to the French New Wave is largely down to his eclectic style and the youthful, energetic, and romantic way in which he approached contemporary urban life (as described in "A Fei Zheng"). Biography" and "Chongqing Forest" are obvious). It is worth noting that his autobiographical film "The True Story" is set in 1960, when Wong Kar-wai himself was only two years old, and this time was the moment when the French New Wave began to surge. (Hong Kong film critic Zhang Jiande pointed out that the title of the film indicates that it is the Chinese version of "Rebel Without a Cause," with "A Fei" derived from Cantonese slang for annoying teenagers.) One might also Will tentatively add: the foreign accents in French New Wave films, as well as the unusual French dialect, may be very similar to the "language salad" in "The True Story" and "Chongqing Forest." Both films contain dialogue in Cantonese, Mandarin and Shanghainese.

As in the French New Wave, there was a very important photographer (he was Raoul Coutard - a virtuoso and gifted technologist, most of Jean-Luc Godard, Franco Sauvage Truffaut and Jacques Demy's early feature films, both by him), the Hong Kong/Taiwan New Wave has their own chief DP, he is Du Kefeng. Born in Australia, Du Kefeng studied Chinese art history at the University of Maryland, became a sailor, and eventually settled in Taiwan, where he became an apprentice to Chen Kunhou, the photographer of Hou Hsiao-hsien's early films. Since then, he has worked as a photographer on several films, including Yang Dechang's "A Day at the Beach", Kwan Jinpeng's "Red Roses and White Roses", and Wong Kar-wai's "A Feifei", "Evil in the West" and "Chongqing Forest". Countless directors hired him as a cinematographer, and he used his excellent skills to define China's new wave in all aspects.

We tend to think of the French New Wave and its contemporary derivatives as low-budget black-and-white films, but the French New Wave also includes many higher-budget films designed to invade the commercial mainstream—such as Godard's "Contempt", Rivette's "The Cultist", Truffaut's "Fahrenheit 451", Chabrol's "Duet" and Skolimovsky's "The Adventures of Girard", etc. . And all of Wong Kar-wai's late feature films belong to the latter. It is often mentioned that while "A Feifei" was a huge success in Hong Kong and Taiwan and won many festival awards, it was a shocking failure at the box office because of its all-star The lineup gave it a genre expectation, but audiences didn't seem to get what they wanted. (Wong Kar-Wai was going to make a two-part film, but the box office performance of the first film was so bad that he couldn't find funding for the second film. In Tony Wren's imagination, some of the project's unfinished elements, may have been inherited by "Dong Xie Xi Po".) It is possible, and the possibility is not small, for the same audience group, "East Evil West Poison" will also disrupt their perception of genre films. Looking forward to it, but apparently this movie didn't end so badly. Its release in Hong Kong last summer was reportedly a moderate success.

Although these Wong Kar-wai films differ in theme and style, they are clearly the work of the same artist. For example, the ambiguous action scenes in "Dong Xie Xi Du" are also very obvious in "A Fei Zhengzhuan" and "Chongqing Forest" - they are like swift, gorgeous movements, and highly emotional A (sometimes desperate), explosive episode.

Both "A Fei Zhengzhuan" and "Chongqing Forest" contain multiple stories -- they are more like collections of stories than novels -- and so does "Dong Xie Xi Du," which breaks down most of its plot into fragmented narrative. But the difference is that the source of the story of this film is not Wong Kar-wai himself. On the whole, "Dong Xie Xi Du" is more radical in form than its two predecessors, and it is more conservative in its handling of off-screen narration. The stories of "A Fei Zhengzhuan" and "Chongqing Forest" are both told by several characters, and each character helps the audience pick up some narrative clues in a separate segment. And "Evil in the East" has only one narrator, and that is the owner of the inn.

In Wong Kar-wai's films, this is already quite a difference. In his kaleidoscopic early films, each important character graciously offered his own perspective and made it part of the narrative. Wong Kar-wai went to great lengths to try to add some of the same thematic elements to the innkeeper's narrative in "Evil in the East," and we occasionally find that he did. As the title of the film foreshadows, he tries to talk about time in this film The relics and the burden of memories - linked to the fascination with the clock in "A Fei Zhengzhuan", while "Chongqing Forest" tells the story of two different young men who both struggle to Want to forget about unhappy romantic relationships. And in this film, a magical wine plays an important role, and whoever drinks it can forget his memory. In fact, as contemporary Chinese films gradually step into the future, more and more film directors focus instead on rethinking and clearing the dilemma of the past.

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Extended Reading
  • Daryl 2022-03-26 09:01:12

    Maggie Cheung's temperament is simply invincible. The aloofness and loneliness of the desert are contrasted with the alienation and emotional confusion of the characters. In my heart, the peak of Hong Kong martial arts movies.

  • Rasheed 2022-03-26 09:01:12

    The failure of many funny movies is that they often give people the feeling that the protagonist's IQ is not enough, but this movie just uses a very high laugh to cover up the discomfort brought by funny movies. It seems that the style of the whole drama That's it, it won't make people play or dislike the IQ of the protagonist

Ashes of Time quotes

  • Ou-yang Feng: If you don't want to be turned down by people, the best way is to turn them down first.

  • Ou-yang Feng: People say, when you can't have what you want, the best you can do is not to forget.