At the end of this part of the paper, please indicate the source, manner, place, and time of viewing the films that you have selected for analysis and discussion.
Hong Kong cinema is famous for the action-filled martial arts pictures in the early decades. However, there is much more to that in Hong Kong cinema from the late 1990s to early 2000s. In this transitional era of Hong Kong both socially and politically, there emerged many films on the theme of physical and psychological dislocation. The characters are often placed in a different location to realize their new identities and complete their journey of self-discovery. This essay will discuss the pursuit and realization of dreams and the establishment of new identities in the films by Peter Chan, Wong Karwai and Stephen Chow.
At first look at Comrades: Almost a Love Story (1996), people will mistakenly think that it is another boring romance picture. In a McDonald’s that symbolizes modern urban civilization, Li Xiaojun, who came to Hong Kong from Wuxi, met Li Qiao from Guangzhou. The two people quickly became good friends who talked about everything. They found that they also have a common hobby, that is, they both loved Teresa Teng’s song. This also became the link that connected them emotionally. They went to learn English together, to speak Mandarin together, to sing Teresa Teng’s song, and to do business together… Love seemed to happen naturally. However, they soon discovered that the other party was not the ideal for themselves, not in Hong Kong. Although they loved each other, they must suppress their feelings. They chose the latter between love and success. A few years later, the two met again in the streets of New York. Teresa Teng’s voice echoed in the ear and they only had a long silence and a smile. Whether or not they can be together again has become less important. What is important is that young lives become mature and strong when they experience twists and turns and experience the happiness and bitterness of life in an alien city.
Changing life needs to start from changing oneself. The people who are exploring the world must learn to forget, learn to compromise, and even learn to give up the most valuable things, to adapt to the new environment and discover their new selves. Just as Xiaoting said, if she does not come to Hong Kong, nothing will happen. But when she came to Hong Kong, it becomes impossible to go back spiritually. From the mainland to Hong Kong, then to New York. The characters continue to deny themselves in times of struggle, and they are constantly discovering their new selves as well. Although they paid heavy prices, after all, everyone has found the final destination. Obviously, this is not a sweet love story, but a sad, thought-provoking life story. Through this story, the contradiction and the complexity of life is revealed. Perhaps the combination of loss, success and failure, happiness and worry, and love and hate are so intricately intertwined that it constitutes a destiny journey that everyone cannot resist. Peter Chan calmly observes the state of life of the mortal beings, and analyzes and presents them in an in-depth manner. No one can stop the change a new life brings to them, just as no one can stop the sunset. Life will never develop in accordance with personal wishes. The movie tells the audience more than just a story, but also the fate of people and society in the world.
Wong Karwai won the Best Director of the 50th Cannes Film Festival in France for Happy Together (1997). Wong Karwai’s films feature a bizarre aesthetic photography and art style. Their plot structure deconstructs urban love and urban mythology with the wandering and paradoxical characters, revealing urban people’s loneliness in loss of affection, love, and faith. In Happy Together, Wong Karwai extended his reach to the topic of homosexuality to continue his spiritual journey about love and loneliness. The film does not present the plot from a sociological or ethical point of view and conduct moral evaluations. Instead, people in the film are not burdened with socially imposed moral judgments and self-criticism for their homosexuality. On the contrary, Wong Karwai has stripped off the moral precepts and mysteries that hover over gays and lesbians. He continued to pursue the theme of love and rejection through the construction of homosexuals’ living conditions and their emotional world.
The accurate positioning and setting of the characters and their images constitute a major feature of Wong Karwai’s films. Happy Together follows Wong Karwai’s character modeling pattern to a certain extent, but it strengthens the character’s eagerness and quest for emotions. The film story takes place in modern times, not in Hong Kong, but the capital of Argentina, Buenos Aires. Two of the film’s main characters, Lai Yiu-fai and Ho Po-wing, left Hong Kong and lost their way to watch the Great Falls of South America. They thus lived in Buenos Aires. In view of this, Wong Karwai’s selection of the film story background already contains a certain measure: the protagonists were living in a strange city, and they further widened the distance between the home society (Hong Kong) and their family in the physical and psychological time and space. They had a deep sense of rootlessness and sense of drift. Therefore, their eagerness and search for emotions, and their support and submission to warmth were even stronger. On the other hand, instability, jealousy and violence in strange cities not only psychologically, but also directly pose a threat to the characters.
Ho Po-wing’s beatings, quarrels in the kitchen, fights in the restaurant, and quarrels in the alleys for playing football all refer to the ubiquitous violence in the city. Thus, the film’s protagonists further retreated and escaped to their inner world, isolating contacts with the outside world. On the other hand, this isolation strengthened their emotional needs, even if it was only a short-lived joy. As Ho Po-wing’s request: “I hope you can stay with me for a while.” Wong Karwai also got rid of the moral and ethical entanglement with the homosexuality in an alien city. It can directly focus on the “love” itself in this modern society. Lai Yiu-fai was shaped as a responsible and slightly overpowered family “husband” image. On the one hand, he cared for Ho Po-wing in every possible way. On the other hand, he could not completely escape the self-contained inner world. He quarreled when Ho who came home late at night. When his question on Ho’s previous sexual relationships was rejected, he chased Ho out of the door. When the two finally broke up after fighting with their passports, he finally couldn’t get handle of the pain of the loss, and caressed another man in the theater. The details of these characterizations indicate that the protagonist of Wong Karwai’s film began to move from the heart to reality, from emotion to reason.
Stephen Chow is able to construct a subjective and imaginative space for the characters and their self-discovery journey. In Kung Fu (2004), people’s subjective powers were exaggerated and presented, creating a true illusion of an insignificant person in the 1940s Shanghai society. Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu is a spiritual defense that helps viewers to vent their inward feelings of insecurity and relieve their lifelessness and helplessness. It compensates for the psychological imbalance of the insignificant people in reality with the illusion of justice. The theme of Stephen Chow’s movies generally reflects the growth of martial arts and their inner strength. Kung Fu is a “coward’s liberator.” The protagonists of all his films are from the bottom level of the society in the real world. They are humble, insignificant, struggling to survive, and even suffer from abuse, but they are not lost with kindness and strength. At a critical moment, their strength and courage can always prevail.
In Kung Fu, Sing was originally a street bully with no success. He longed for being the most powerful and most cruel member of the Axe Gang. Once, However, having known the good people from the slum, Sing gradually gave up the idea of joining the Axe Gang, and joined forces with the people who were oppressed and defeated the Axe Gang with his own efforts. He also learned the essence of Chinese martial arts through the refinement of kung fu and realized the transformation of his personality. Similarly, in Shaolin Soccer (2000), the protagonist is at the bottom of the society. But he has never given up the love for Shaolin kung fu. Despite being ordinary people living in the bottom of society, they stepped forward at a crucial moment and became heroes.
Despite the varying themes and settings of the three films, they are all about insignificant figures struggling at the bottom of the society. Placed in an alien physical and psychological environment, they have developed different ways to discover and construct their new selves. Giving in to and making peace with reality, stepping outside the inner world and acknowledging the need for love bravely, and sticking to the kindness and justice when faced with injustice are the solutions are the central themes of the three films respectively. They have all proven to be effective ways in discovering and establishing new identities for the characters, meanwhile making the audience reflect upon themselves.
Part 2
The films that I love in this course are Happy Together (1997) and Kung Fu (2004). Happy Together describes feelings of affection and power, the love and hate of the two human beings. They are entangled, intimate and reluctant to give up, ending up torturing each other. The film uses a strong color and a soothing pace to create a feeling of lovers in a foreign land. Ho happens to be on the demarcation line between annoying and understandable. If it weren’t Leslie Cheung’s brilliant interpretation, the acceptance of this role would be much lower. Leslie Cheung’s performance in the film is very fluent and exquisite, especially his use of body language. I have watched Kung Fu very carefully and consider it one of the best from Stephen Chow. Kung Fu spent three years and tens of millions of dollars, and is no less compared with Hollywood productions. An endless stream of magical martial arts has been created, which is highly original and intriguing. Stephen Chow’s effort in this movie is absolutely painstaking. Each sentence, each little character’s actions have been carefully designed. These humble little details contain extremely rich content and social significance. Every despicable, dull, seemingly short-circuited scenario is one of the most vivid complaints about the social reality that caused this situation.
I didn’t like A Simple Life (2011) as much. In A Simple Life, the actress Ah Tao acted well, but the movie seems a bit fragmented. A lot of shots can be cut off which served little purpose for the plot. There lacks the link between different sections of the film, which is a bit confusing. Andy Law wanted this to be a masterpiece, and to expose social reality. However, the addition of the film industry and all the celebrities guest stars is completely bizarre and ruins the simplicity in the story of Ah Tao. The Mermaid (2016) is another poor film even without considering the high standard of Stephen Chow’s previous works. The advantage is that there is a little taste of classic Stephen Chow. The combination of some classic Hong Kong walk-on characters with some new generations of young performers is interesting. However, I always felt that the jokes in the film are very blunt and badly timed. They are really outdated, as the comedy style from the 1990s are difficult to work in 2016 context. The misplaced and chaotic cultural background makes the comedy elements even more inexplicable. It is a very perfunctory work overall.
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