Forever Enthralled (梅兰芳)

Rating: ***1/2 (out of 4)
Director: Chen Kaige
Cast: Leon Lai, Zhang Zhiyi
In Mandarin with English subtitle


Chen Kaige has not made a good film for a long time.

In 1993, his 'Farewell My Concubine' (霸王别姬) won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It is arguably one of the pinnacle achievement in Chinese cinema.

Since then, his films has been uneven, ranging from the middle road, odd, to simply awful. His 1996 'Temptress Moon' (风月) is visually beautiful, but saddled with baffling relationship between its characters. Year 2005's 'The Promise' (无极) is simply awful; a messy and laughable attempt at fantasy epic.

'Forever Enthralled' is a revisiting old material of sort, its subject matter, a biopic of Peking Opera performer Mei Lanfang,
is bound to beg comparison to the masterful 'Farewell My Concubine'. It is on this familiar ground that Chen Kaige rediscovered his form.

I see 'Forever Enthralled' as Chen's homage to artists who have given their life for the art, their sacrifice, their single-minded obsession, the risk they took for artistic innovation, their giving up of true love for career sake.

Indeed, fame comes with a price. 'Mei Lanfang does not belong to you, he does not belong to me either. He belongs to the audience' said Fu Zhifang, Mei's wife, to Meng Xiaodong (Zhang Zhiyi), Mei's lover.

Chen Kaige's homage to artistic sacrifice is told through the eyes of Mei Lanfang, his wife Fu Zhifang and Qiu Rubai, a high ranking government legal officer, who gives up his legal career to become Mei's manager, for the love of Mei's art. Qiu the manager will stop at nothing to protect Mei's artistic career, a symbol that represents obsession to the art.

The first act tells the story of the younger Mei, who launched a painful artistic duel with an old Peking Opera master he admired. Mei took bold risk to reinvent the art, and as a result defeated the old master in the duel to become the new king of the art.

Leon Lai plays the older Mei Lanfang in the next act. Now an established star, he met Meng Xiaodong (Zhang Zhiyi), a lover he eventually had to painfully leave behind for the sake of the art, as she is seen as a distraction to Mei's career. Their affair feels a tad forced and is probably a weaker link in the film.

As in 'Farewell My Concubine', this film crosses decades and plays at the backdrop of major historical events. While 'Farewell My Concubine' made a substantial historical statement with its climatic scenes set at the period of The Cultural Revolution, 'Forever Enthralled', lighter in its political tone, sets its final act during the days of the Japanese occupation of China, focusing on Mei's refusal to perform for the Japanese army.

'Forever Enthralled' is Chen Kaige's tribute to the sacrifice of artists, a fascinating and effective one at that.

* 'Forever Enthralled' is an official selection (in competition) for the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival.

Departures (Okuribito)

Rating: **** (out of 4)
Director: Yojiro Takita
Cast: Masahiro Motoki, Ryoko Hirosue, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Kimiko Yo
Language: In Japanese with English subtitle


What a beautiful film. Watching it, I smiled, I shed tears. Who would have thought that a story about a 'encoffineer', a type of professional who prepares deceased bodies before burial in a traditional Japanese funeral ritual, would be this emotionally involving? The film is sentimental, yet never melodramatic. Its bittersweet story is told in a subtle, sincere and down-to-earth way.

Daigo Kobayashi(Masahiro Motoki) was a aspiring classical musician playing cello in an orchestra in Tokyo. One day, out of a sudden, he found himself out of job as the orchestra was disbanded. Dejected, he decided to leave Tokyo to go back to his hometown. Thank God, he has his loyal, lovely wife Mika(Ryoko Hirosue), who cheerfully ride alongside with him, over this depressing ordeal.

Desperate for a job, Daigo came across a classified ad hiring for 'departures'. Thinking that it may be a travel agency, Daigo promptly turned up for interview at the company. The boss, Mr. Sasaki, wryly pointed out that the Ad is a misprint, it should read as 'The departed', and explained that the job deals with corpses. Before Daigo could reach for the door, Sasaki stuffed a generous sum of salary advance to Daigo. Daigo relented.

Despite a difficult beginning, Daigo grew steadily in his new career. He gradually saw the dignity of his new job, as the family of the deceased were grateful to his trade. However, his friends looked down at him, for doing a job nobody else want to do. Even his wife, Mika, disapproved of his strange job.

The director, Yojiro Takita, made a life affirming statement, ironically through a story dealing a lot with death. Death, as visualized in this film, is inevitable. Through the meticulously executed ritual of 'encoffinment', death looked dignified, as opposed to our common perception of horror and fear. If you are not dead, then you are living the life, with its ups and downs, with its unpredictability, and you should live it with dignity as well.

As a comparison, David Fincher's 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button', too, is a film dealing with the subject of life and death, but I found it gimmicky with its premise. 'Departures' is a sincere counterpart to that, and it is masterfully crafted, lending it with a mood and tone that is touching and engaging. Even when Takita risked sentimentality to extreme level, such as the scene having Daigo playing the cello in a lush paddy field countryside, it felt so appropriate.

Some may have criticized the predictability in its story. Indeed. With a story this plain, simple and predictable, it affects us emotionally, it moves us to tears, it brings out the smiles from our heart. Isn't that incredible?

* 'Departures' won the best foreign language film Oscar in the 2009 Academy Awards

Drag Me to Hell

Rating: *** (out of 4)
Cast: Alison Lohman, Justin Long
Director: Sam Raimi

Sam Raimi's 'Drag Me to Hell' is an interesting entry to the horror genre. It has repeated loud shock that I'll often dismiss as cheap scare tactics in lesser horror films. It has special effects so over-the-top that it is physically impossible. It has relentless gore and splatter that is puke inducing, and it has a story so simple that it is essentially a B-grade material; read: Christine (Alison Lohman), a loan officer, has offended an old gypsy woman by denying her an extension to her home loan. In revenge, the gypsy woman places a curse on Christine that tranforms her life into a living hell.

Attributes as such would often be critisized as flaws in mediocre forror films. However, you know what? All these somehow works in 'Drag Me to Hell'.

Yes, I know I have an explanation to do, and I'll do that using an analogy. Let's say you go to a Chinese restaurant and order stir-fried beef. The beef dish, when it is served, must be fully cooked. Anything less than fully cooked, you are perfectly entitled to ask for a refund and curse the chef.

On the other hand, if you go to a western steakhouse and order steak done medium rare, you can't say that the beef dish is bad just because it is not fully cooked. Someone with a mature understanding of cuisine will understand that a Chinese stir-fried beef and a steak done medium rare are two different types of cuisine, and hence they should be judged differently. You can't use the same 'not fully cooked' argument to judge them.

Likewise, someone with a mature understanding of cinema would know that 'Drag Me to Hell' as compared to, say 'The Exorcist', are different type of horror films. 'The Exorcist', a classic in its own right, is the kind of horror that works on realism and mood. Unrealistic over-the-top visual effects and repeated loud shock would have spoilt it.

'Drag Me to Hell', on the other hand, is an exercise in irony. It is sometimes scary, yet funny at the same time. Scare and humour are like fire and water, totally opposite. Yet, Sam Raimi makes the two opposing elements works in the film. Watching it, I was genuinely scared in some of its moments. Even the repeated loud shock which I often find annoying in lesser horror films, genuinely jolted me from my seat for a few times. Yet, right after I recover from the shock, I realized the absurdity of it all and started laughing. My fellow audience must have felt the same as their emotional reaction sensed by my ear takes the form of scream, followed by yikes (disgust), and finally followed by giggles.

'Drag Me to Hell' isn't that kind of horror that takes itself too seriously, it is meant to be a campy thrill ride. So, complaining that its visual effect is unrealistic or its gore and repeated loud shock is 'cheap' will be akin to complaining that your medium rare steak is not fully cooked.

Sam Raimi and Alison Lohman gave us a main protoganist, Christine, we can believe and relate to. It isn't a soulless cardboard character like in so many of the lesser horror films. We like her and we care for her. In the beginning, Christine wemt against her own conscience in making a tough decision to deny a loan extension to a helpless old woman, driven by her desperation to impress her boss in order to gain a promotion. In the end, Christine was in a moral dillema when she was told that she could easily pass on her suffering to another person by giving the cursed button away as a gift to that person. To whom she should give it to? Was it the right thing to do? How humane, how nicely done, and how we can't help but to connect to her emotionally, however B-grade or simple her story may be.

Sam, good to see you back at your 'The Evil Dead' roots.

Solaris

Rating: ***1/2 (out of 4)
Cast: George Clooney, Natascha McElhone, Jeremy Davies
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Year of release: 2002



Something has gone terribly wrong to a space mission to planet Solaris. The crew of 4 has cut off communication with Earth, and although the space station is equipped with advanced AI that will send them back to Earth automatically, they refused to come back.

Back on Earth, psychologist Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) received a SOS call from Gibarian, the crew's commander, who is also Chris' close friend. In his video message to Chris, Gibarian pleaded to Chris to come to planet Solaris, saying that Chris is the best candidate to be able to help them. What has happened? the commander wouldn't say, except that it is totally bizarre, and Chris will know for himself upon arriving there.

As Chris arrived at the space station orbiting planet Solaris, he's shocked to find that Gibarian, the commander has committed suicide, along with another crew. The 2 surviving crew, Snow (Jeremy Davies) and Dr Gordon (Viola Davis) exhibits severe distress, as if something has scared the hell out of them.

What has happened? Still, Chris got no meaningful answers from the 2 surviving crew, but he is about to find out for himself on his first night on the space station, when he fall asleep. He dreamed of his dead wife, how they first met, and the tender moments they shared together. Chris awoke from his dream when a familiar soft hand stroked his face gently, and to his great bewilderment, there she is, Rheya (Natascha McElhone), his dead wife, lying besides him.

Apparently, all the crews, and now Chris, has had strange 'visitor' like this, someone dearest to them, someone they missed. There seems to be a strange force from planet Solaris, that resurrects or create a copy of that 'someone'. But there's a catch: in Rheya's (or her copy) own words, she has memories, but she doesn't remember experiencing these things.

The 'copy' is a physical flesh-and-blood manifestation of of what the other person know about them, in Chris case, the Rheya copy is the materialization of his perception of his dead wife. We came to know that in real life, Chris's relationship with Rheya ended tragically with Rheya committed suicide. And here it is, the Rheya's copy is just as suicidal, because in Chris mind, his dead wife is suicidal.

But the real Rheya in real life may not be suicidal, the copy behaved that way precisely because that's Chris' perception on Rheya.

Steven Soderbergh's 'Solaris' has the kind of intelligent science fiction premise that does not have to resort to portraying extra-terrestrial being as ugly monsters. Having said that, the sci-fi element is just a premise, though an intriguing and essential one. Soderbergh is more interested about human psychology, that makes his version of 'Solaris' a psychological drama set in a intriguing sci-fi premise.

It delves into the very nature of human emotion, how we can fall in love to not only the real someone, but also to our idea, perception of someone. We fall in love to characters in novels, films. We can also be emotionally connected to some famous great people that we do not know personally, apart from what we do know about them based on information from news and writing. In our rational mind, We know that the film and novel characters are not real, but emotionally we develop love and adoration towards them. In our rational mind, we are aware that the 'real' famous great people may not be what we perceive them to be, but that doesn't stop us from connecting to them emotionally.

In 'Solaris', Chris knows that Rheya in the space station is not real, but emotionally he can't help but to accept her, seeing that as his chance for a redemption, an atonement to his deep guilt and regret, for what he has done to the real her in real life. Is it real or fake? Are we alive or dead? It doesn't matter anymore, as long as our mind believes it to be real.

In the closing moment of the film:
Chris: 'Am I alive, or dead?'
Rheya: 'We don't have to think like that anymore'

Based on a Stanislaw Lem's novel, it was first filmed by Russian master filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972. I haven't seen the Tarkovsky's version, it is said to be a sci-fi classic. Now Soderbergh has remade it in his own version, into a film that challenges his viewers, a films that lingers on your mind for days after you have watched it. It is paced slowly, a wise decision that offers its viewers with rooms and spaces to ponder upon the profound idea in the film. Its tone is quiet, again a wise decision as it fits the introspective nature of the film. It is ambiguous, perhaps a tad overly so, many will find the urge to see it again for a second time after the first viewing.

Slow, quiet, ambiguous, not a recipe that will sell a lot of tickets. But Soderbergh's 'Solaris' is after all, a niche offering that appeals to the more intellectually inclined viewers. Steven Soderbergh is a very talented filmmaker whoose projects alternates between the more mainstream ('Erin Brokovich', the 'Ocean Eleven' franchise) and the more obscure and challenging ('Traffic', 'Solaris', 'Sex, lies, and videotape', 'Out of Sight'). I highly appreciate a film like 'Solaris' where he is in a mood for challenges, and refused to succumb to commercial demand.

* Note: Steven Soderbergh's Solaris was a official selection (in competition) for the 2003 Berlin International Film Festival

Angels and Demons

Rating: *** (out of 4)
Director: Ron Howard

'Angels and Demons' is the kind of fast-paced thriller with a plot loaded with twist and turns, that if you care to think about the plot more deeply after the film ends, you are bound to realize about its implausibility and discover plot holes.

But while you are watching it, it's unlikely that you will notice it and you will in fact be, glued to your seat and enjoy the ride.

There's no time to think, a time bomb is ticking, and we need to save the world...ooops, the Vatican.

The Catholic Church has just lost a respected and beloved Pope. In the interim period while the Cardinals are electing the next Pope, an ancient secret organization, the Illuminati resurfaced, with a vengeance.

The Illuminati was once a church faction who was pro-science. The church leadership at that time, did not like that, probably see them as a political threat and so persecuted them, and drove them underground.

The Illuminati has now resurfaced for revenge, and their game plan is over-the-top: kidnap the 4 favourite candidates to succeed the Pope, threaten to execute them one-by-one by 8,9,10 and 11pm, and finally blow off the Vatican with a time bomb by 12 mid night.

So, how do the Vatican cope with that? Reluctantly, they turned to someone they don't really like, Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), renowned symbollogist of Harvard University.

Poor Professor Langdon was dragged into a cat-and-mouse chase again as a innocent third party, this time racing against time to prevent 4 separate murders at 8,9,10,11 pm respectively, at 4 separate locations, and a time bomb to be defused at 12 mid night. Well, at least he had a companion of the beautiful Vitorria (Ayelet Zurer), the Italian scientist whose research material was stolen to be used as the time bomb.

While we are thrown into frantic chase, we sense that something fishy is going on in the Vatican church. Conspiracy? Insider Jobs? Sorry, I can't reveal any further about the plot or else I will be shot at for giving away spoilers.

The whole production is competently executed, something we have come to expect from a partnership of director Ron Howard and Tom Hanks. Fast-paced, taut, intriguing, occasional funny moments, and I actually appreciate the action sequence and explosion in the film, the very things which I have said some not-so-pleasant things about in my review on 'X-men Origins' and 'Star Trek'. Here, the explosion and action sequence felt necessary in the context of the plot.

The pace is simply so fast that you can't help but to simply ride along with the adventure, with no time to notice some of the film's flaws, like Professor Langdon's lack of personality and the plot holes.

Really, it is a more than descent piece of entertainment, and all is forgiven (How much do we know about Professor Langdon as a person after seeing the film? Never mind that)

Star Trek

Rating: ** (out of 4)
Director: J.J. Abrams

The annual Hollywood summer releases are not something I particularly looking forward to. Well, I was during my teenage days, but after years of film-viewing, I have grown weary of that. The summer blockbusters often look like they all came from an assembly lines, like a product made from a formulaic template, with lots of compulsory loud and explosive action and special effects.

And Hollywood's lack of idea must have reached an impoverished state when you see sequels and prequels dominated the scene.

I have nothing against commercial movies. They can be skillfully made through sheer craftsmanship. 2008's 'Iron Man' is a good example, it is formulaic but it is fun, we love and care about the characters and it's a great entertainment. 2009's 'The Dark Knight' is on another class of its own, it is a revolutionary entry to its genre.

But those are rather rare occurrence.

2009's summer season began with 'X-men Origins: Wolverine', and I called it 'mediocre at best'. The second blockbuster release of the season is yet(!) another back-to-origin attempt to revive a tired franchise.

I am not a trekkies and have hardly watched any Star Trek movies or TV series before. This material, is more space opera than science fiction. True science fiction films are thought provoking and philosophical, and the science in the films is treated intellectually, at least at a pseudo-science level. Examples of true science fiction films are Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey', Andrei Tarkovsky's 'Solaris' (as well as Steven Soderbergh's remade version), and Danny Boyle's 'Sunshine'.

Materials like Star Wars are no Sci-fi, they are space opera, there is hardly any science in it, they are essentially action movies set in a space background. This is not to say that one is more superior than the other, they are just 2 different types of movies, and they serve different purposes.

I thought the old Star Trek is part sci-fi, and part space opera. But never mind that, I don't know for sure. But I am pretty sure that the new 'Star Trek' is pure space opera.

If 'X-men Origins: Wolverine' was soulless, devoid of humanity, 'Star Trek' actually had potential to score in that area. The initial rivalry between Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto), the former represents instinct, the latter represents rational reasoning, that eventually develops into a formidable partnership, is a potentially fascinating story arc.

Fire vs water, positive vs negative, ying vs yang, and they eventually harmonized into great effect. Hmm...that would have been interesting.

But alas, like so many of the summer blockbusters, director J.J. Abrams is more interested in showcasing loud explosion and expensive special effects. The personality of Kirk and Spock and the development of their relationship was only given a rather superficial treatment, giving way to the 'quota': loud explosion, space ships firing at each other, combat.

Really, what is supposed to be interesting was watered down by all those 'seen it all' action and special effects.

I wish for the film to explore the personality of Kirk and Spock more substantially, perhaps by putting them into situation that challenge the very quality that they represent for: instinct and rational reasoning, and how their eventual partnership complement each other's strength and weakness and thus overcome the challenges.

Anyway, I have to remind myself that this is space opera, after all. So, action rules.


* Note: 'Star Trek' scored an astonishingly good 95% in rottentomatoes.com. The tomato meter is my favourite tool to gauge how good a film is. It is usually reliable. This time though, personally I find it baffling to see such a high score.

Tarantino's 'Inglourious Basterds' opened at Cannes 2009 to mixed reviews

Quentin Tarantino's highly anticipated World War II drama, 'Inglourious Basterds' had its premier in Cannes 2009 just days ago, in what was arguably the most eagerly-awaited event of the festival.
Early reviews had been mixed. It is 148 minutes long and had been described as 'talky', 'mischievous', 'deliberately incoherent'(!?), 'playful', 'distinctive piece of American pop art', 'flirts between comedy and violence'.

It seems like Tarantino has continued his trademark outragesly inventive film making in this latest entry.

Will it be released in Malaysia? I am not overly optimistic on that prospect, given the state of our censorship board who barely understands Tarantino's works. (Kill Bill Vol 1 was banned in Malaysia back in 2003)