I'm fortunate enough that the UW Cinematheque has supplemented it's semester long Hou Hsiao-hsien retrospective with another, five film retro covering Hou Hsiao-hsien's early carreer (sadly, I won't be able to see two of the films, his first feature Cute Girl, and the later Daughter of the Nile; on Thursday, the film 1983 film The Boys From Fengkuei plays, so I will be able to see that). The Hou retro began on Thursday with A Summer At Grandpa's (1984) and The Green, Green Grass of Home (1982).
A Summer At Grandpa's, for being an older film, is somewhat reflective of Hou's later, mature works, even if it doesn't quite match the splendor of City of Sadness, The Puppetmaster, and The Flowers of Shanghai, lacking the pervasive sense of melancholy (though it exists in A Summer At Grandpa's and concern with Taiwanese history and identity, it is still a very strong film, a multi-generational portrait of a family in a small, provincial town. The two main characters, the adolescent boy Tung-Tung and his little sister Ting-Ting are sent to their Grandpa's house (he's a local doctor) while their mother convalesces in a Taipei hospital. This was the film where Hou Hsiao-hsien developed his trademark long-take, static camera style, capturing the stillness and quiet of the sleepy provincial town. Hou Hsiao-hsien also garners many, many impressive, naturalistic performances, not only from his adult actors, but the legion of child actors who inhabit the story. The film slowly develops it's multiple, familial plot-lines over the course of the movie; it's is perfectly paced, wonderfully acted, precisely directed, comic, warm, sad, and even affectionate. A wonderful movie.
If Chinese has a word for "whitebread," it would aptly describe The Green, Green Grass of Home, a rather bland and unoffensive commercial picture from early in Hou Hsiao-hsien's carreer (it's a star vehicle for Taiwanese pop-singer Kenny B, who is not a good actor). Again, it's saving grace is the performances of the child actors (interestingly, all of the children were dubbed by one amazing vocal actor, the film was shot without sync sound), one of whom resembles a Chinese-version of the kid from About a Boy (though will less pronounced eyesbrows....the eyebrows...I'm still entranced.....); while this short, musical-comedy/ecological parable is OK, and somewhat entertaining, it gains it's main importance from the fact that this is the film where Hou developed his method of directing actors. It's basically worth watching for the curious and Hou Hsiao-hsien completists.
I was elated to learn that Hou Hsiao-hsien is acquiring the video rights to all of his films and is scouring for the best negative materials. In the future, we should be seeing a complete collection of Hou's films on DVD (the two prints that we saw are from an archive in Taipei, and they are very rare, The Green, Green Grass of Home was in a somewhat poor state, it was shot in Eastman color, and has faded somewhat, causing the telltale pinkish tinge).
Some quick notes (yeah right) on Majid Majidi's newest film, Baran, a love story of sorts, between a young Iranian day laborer and an Afghani girl who, due to her father's injury, is forced to dress as a boy and work a construction job (first we get the obligatory antagonism, as the girl, Baran, under the name Rahmat, replaces Lateef in his role as construction site gofer/cook; which lasts precisely to the moment when Lateef learns Baran's secret). While at times, Majidi seems to be channeling De Sica (neo-realism + sentimentality), this film is much less sentimental, especially when compared to The Color of Paradise, most of the time it is quiet and muted, and I really enjoyed the cinematography. Like The Color of Paradise, Baran is sort of a theological/moral play, as Lateef is transformed, via his unspoken love, from a selfish teenager to a paragon of Islamic charity. While watching the film, I couldn't help but think of two other, similar, yet far superior, films: Abbas Kiarostami's Through the Olive Trees, with it's portrait of young Iranian lovers, and the Dardenne's brothers La Promesse, with it's portrait of exploited, poor refugee workers. Sure, Baran is watchable, and even enjoyable, but I would rather sit down and watch those other two films.
I felt a little guilty about spending most of my recent movie-going time at the multiplex, so I decided to visit one of our local arthouse cinemas and see a movie called Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which was supposed to have gone over really well at the WFF. Similar to Woody Allen's first foray into feature film, What's Up, Tiger Lilly?, Don't Ask, Don't Tell is a redubbed, recut (with some additional scenes added) Z-grade science-fiction film from the 1950s, one that starred a young Peter Graves (I think it was originally called Killers from Outer Space), turning it into a satire of homophobia. Graves "plays" Dr. Fartan, leader of Project Manhole, which is a US Government conspiracy to eliminate homosexuals by luring them into the desert with the promise of a free Barbara Streisand concert and then dropping an A-Bomb on them. Unfortunately, the Enola Gaybasher misses it's target and drops the bomb on Inbred, Texas (yes, this is the level of wit on display here), which really has nothing to do with the story, but whatever, however, Fartan is captured by some hilariously bad aliens who turn the former uber-heterosexual into a gay man. Then there is a plot by the Homosexual Aliens from Uranus to turn everyone gay, with Dr. Fartan's help. The film is witless and juvenile, which wouldn't have been a bad thing, if it was funny, let's just say that the concept sounds a lot better on paper. However, I did think of the way they used the word "Fabulous," was pretty funny. I would call this movie the worst I've seen all year, if it wasn't for the fact that Storytelling is hateful and pretentious.
Well, I'm going to assuage my multiplex guilt by going to see Baran and Lovely and Amazing today, and some early Hou Hsiao-hsien films on Thursday. I can only hope they are better than this last stinker I watched.
I got a good dose of genre movie purity yesterday when I went to Walter Hill's newest film, the prison-boxing drama Undisputed; Roger Ebert payed the film a tremendous compliment in his review by comparing it favorably to the Warner Brothers genre pics of the 30s and 40s, and I have to agree. Lean and taut, the film marches to it's inevitable conclusion, the climatic bout between convicted murderer, and former California Heavyweight Champion, Monroe Hutchen (Wesley Snipes), and convicted rapist, and former World Heavyweight Champion, James "The Iceman" Chambers (Ving Rhames), a brutal slugfest that at one point had me doubting what I thought the outcome would be.
Eventhough he is the ostensible star, and an executive producer of the film, Wesley Snipes is clear outshown by Rhames and Peter Falk, who plays an imprisoned mobster and boxing aficionado. Hutchen barely ever says a word (he keeps to himself, doesn't really speak unless addressed, and delivers a hard, cold stare to those around him; that, and his undefeated prison boxing record, mark him as a respected man in the prison), he is laconic, and possessed, if you excuse the expression, by an almost zen-like calm (he wiles away the time in his cell by constructing structures out of toothpicks, when he is put in solitary, he even builds a large, Japanese-style temple). Hutchen, though he never really talks about it, owns up to his own guilt, he beat a man to death for sleeping with his girlfriend. Chambers is an egotistical motormouth, who steadfastly maintains both his boxing superiority, as well as his innocence of the rape charges (Hill makes the central dilemma of Chamber's conviction very interesting; Rhames is charismatic and believable in his denial, eventhough everyone around him believes he is guilty, admitting to a prison adminstrator that his defense lawyers didn't allow him to tell everything that happened that night; that and the $75 million dollar lawsuit brought against him; but to counter all of these factors, Hill intercuts scenes from a TV interview with the victim, who is tearful and sincere, and whose story is equally, if not more, plausible than Chambers), he immediately sets out to gain both dominance and independence, by physical violence, and he manages to alienate just about everyone, except for his cellmate, who is played by Wes Studi (the film is populated with character actors who don't get many lines, but who have faces and a certain physical presence). Chambers's attitude creates a rare moment of unity as the Mexican Mafia, Black Muslim Streetgangs, and White Skinheads ban together to support Hutchen in his fight against Chambers. And besides his overwhelming physical presence, Rhames brings a certain amount of desperation to his character (Chambers is 35, is serving a 6 to 8 year sentence, and is going broke, he has to get out and regain his titles), as well as intelligence, though he is ill-equipped for his new environment. Now Peter Falk, as the Jewish mobster Mendy Ripstein, is a hoot; an unshaven, mumbling, almost senile ex-gangster, he staggers around with two canes, and with the help of his "assistant," a member of the Mexican Mafia, named Chuy (who was hired to protect and help Mendy); Ripstein is pretty out of it most of the time, and is a big-time boxing aficionado, he constantly talks about fighters of the past (Hill cuts in documentary footage of boxing history, glimpses of such fighters as Joe Lewis and Rocky Marciano), and it is he, using his mob connections, that sets up the fight between Hutchen and Chambers, which will use archaic boxing rules. Falk particulary shines in two moments: after the fight is cancelled due to a prison riot, Falk curses up a storm, over a wide-range of topics, in a funny, and profane rant, which manages to use the word "fuck" every other time. The other is when Falk, in a rare of moment of lucidity, tells the warden about the time when a Cuban mayor got in the way of a mob casino; it's a nice moment of quiet menace, and Michael Rooker, another boxing aficionado, and head prison guard, gets a funny one-liner off at the end of this scene. (needless to say, the warden caves in, as he has already done; Mendy's mob connections are pulling all of the strings behind the scenes).
The narrative is as economical as possible; it ranges over a few months, going from short scene to short scene, culminating in the relatively long climatic bout (the boxing in the film is realistic, fast, brutal, hard-hitting stuff, very good). The fighters fight in a cage, and use London Prizefighting rules, with a slight modification, and are surrounded by hundreds of screaming inmates. Ed Lover plays the MC, and they have a rap-group (headed by Master P, I guess) for pre-fight entertainment, and who, before the bout, sing the National Anthem. I actually liked all of these touches, there are lots of details and backstory contained in the various scenes, for instance, it seems like almost every character, no matter how minor, or how long they get on screen, get a B&W freeze-frame, as titles appear on screen describing their incarceration dates, crimes, and a little-bit of personal history; the film doesn't allow you to forget, that even these seemingly sympathetic characters are career criminals who are in prison for a reason. It is these types of details, as well as the great characterizations, the infusion of moral ambiguity, the direction of Walter Hill, and the exciting boxing matches that enliven the film, especially one that has an almost pre-ordained conclusion. I think Undisputed is up there with such great boxing films as Gentleman Jim, Body and Soul, and Raging Bull.
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