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SCREENING LOG
- 4/22--4/28, 2002
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I watched Myriad of Lights, Street Angel, Star Wars Episode
I: The Phantom Menace, Donnie Darko and Third Sister
Liu. In order of preference (the first three are included
in Asia WeeklyÕs 100 Greatest Chinese Films list):
Street Angel (1937, Yuan Muzhi)
I haven't seen the 1928 Frank Borzage film of the same name
that inspired this masterpiece, but the Chinese version stands
alone as one of the greatest films of the 1930s. Zhou Xuan,
China's first pop diva, became an overnight sensation with
her naturalistic portrayal of a humble but dignified songstress
in love with a flirtatious tenement dweller. Their playful
scenes together, nestled among a colorful milieu of street-dwellers
and underclass buddies, makes for an experience whose sense
of wonder rivals Vigo's L'ATALANTE. The visual invention throughout
is simply revelatory. Released just weeks before the Japanese
invasion of China shut down the film studios, it captures
an era of social turmoil and sweepingly modern romantic fervor
with cinematic brilliance.
Third Sister Liu (1961, Su Li)
A gorgeous, panoramic musical set in China's Guangxi province,
celebrating a dignified peasant woman who inspires her village
of ethnic minorities to stand up against oppressive landlords
by singing non-stop at unusually high pitched registers until
the feeble feudalists wither and fade. Chinese technicolor
makes the already otherworldly surroundings even more beautifully
surreal. Take the requisite propaganda in stride (or even
as cheeky campy fun) and you're in for a real delight.
Myriad of Lights (1948, Shen Fu)
A struggling office worker in Shanghai is saddled with his
country relatives, who move in with him under the impression
that heÕs affluent. Some amusing city-mice/country-mice scenes
give way to a heavier set of concerns over social justice
and national poverty. The melodrama runs a bit thick at parts
but certain scenes carry the dizzying fever of imminent revolution
(the film was released the year before the Communists took
over China). Well worth watching for its realistic detail
and compelling melodrama. Looking at how Shanghai is 50 years
later, you'd think nothing has changed in the way of pervasive
poverty, corruption and civil unrest.
Donnie Darko (2001, Richard Kelly)
Paranoid schizophrenic teenager starts hallucinating that
the end of the world is nigh, with a menacing bunny rabbit
giving him instruction. Like other young directorial efforts,
it manages to be highly derivative and highly original all
at once, approximating the generic suburban criticism of AMERICAN
BEAUTY, the surreal nostalgic imagery of Fellini, the lame
dialogue of afterschool soap operas, and the hazy, insular
look and feel of 80s cinema, and somehow emerging with a sensibility
that is as strong-voiced as it is confused, possibly because
the former feeds off the latter. Ultimately it crashes and
burns in a mess of half-assed salvation cliche, leading one
to dread that KellyÕs future will go the way of empty stylists
like Darren Aronofsky. But there's a lot of delight to be
had in the interim. As an aside, Jake Gyllenhaal looks like
he'd make a more intriguing Spiderman than Tobey Maguire.
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999, George
Lucas)
My fianc?e wanted to see this to refresh her memory in anticipation
of EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES. Watching this mess, itÕs
easy to see why her memory needed refreshing. As she put it,
what this film sorely lacks are any interesting original characters;
the film tries to get by with breathless pacing, countless
references to established characters, and a lot of CGI razzle
dazzle to compensate for the lack of organic invention, the
very thing that made the original so much fun. We had some
masochistic fun trying to identify which derogatory ethnic
stereotypes were represented by which characters. In other
words, nothing noone already knows by nowÉ Advance reports
say EPISODE II is better (title notwithstanding); frankly,
itÕs hard to see how it canÕt be.
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