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Cinema, Reality and History in Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Flowers of Shanghai

May 25, 2003

FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI: "How do you see it examining the nature of cinema, reality, and history?" I think it's easy to see the flower house as a kind of theatrical venue on which a grand and sumptous production is played by the flower girls to give an illusory experience for audience, both onscreen (the patrons) and offscreen (us). The illusion is comprised of many things: Love and Romance, Power and Pleasure, History and Reality. The flower girls have to do their best to convince their patrons that they love them and are worthy of being loved in return, and so they must play their part in gratifying these men and their romantic ideals (just as we the audience seek our ideal understanding of life when we watch our favorite movies). Like moviemaking itself, this grand spectacle is produced for the purpose of material gain -- it is, like the movies, a business first and foremost. But somehow the distinction between reality and illusion, between spontaneous words of love and scripted words of commerce gets utterly warped, and neither we nor some of the ill-fated characters can tell which is which.

I love the scene when Master Wang spies on Crimson, when he looks underneath the door and sees a man's feet. It's worth noting that this is the only time during Hou's film of masterfully choreographed long-takes that he resorts to a cutaway insert shot which is also a point of view shot from an onscreen character -- Hou has yanked our "objective" view of this world and thrust Wang's subjective state upon us so that we share his dis-illusionment when he sees what might be proof of a betrayal. And then distraught, Wang gives a mean impression of Charles Foster Kane, tearing down the world of illusion that engulfs him, and that he himself helped to build with his patronage. Later his peers try to resolve the problem by setting him up with another girl, but it's of no avail -- the world of illusory love and fulfillment meant so much to him that it's exposure as a sham leaves him a shell of a human.

As for history, one thing worth noting is how Time passes in this film -- there are no markers at all to tell us how much time has passed from one scene to the next. This is significant because this world (not just the world of the flower house but the world of the movies) seems to exist independently of the "real world" (for the patrons, the world of nagging wives and daily business,which are hardly commented on in their conversations probably for fear of despoiling their utopian bliss), and when we enter this world of illusion time seems to stand still or else take on a whole new quality, in the best illusions time even ceases to exist. It calls for a new understanding of what history is, if we have no concrete sense of exactly when this happened in relation to that, then what markers do we use to measure our history? Especially when it seems that the meaning of life for everyone on screen is to pretend that the present will last forever, that both future and past are an illusion, which is astounding considering that the world they presently live in is every bit as much of one.

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3-26

It just occurred to me that I could have made my points much more succinctly and evocatively by simply saying: FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI basically shows us the equivalent of "going to the movies" for 19th century Chinese men (and I'd also say that their movies were much more "satisfying" and "interactive" than what we have!)

Also, going back to the terms of movie-watching you've espoused in the past, the tradition and the value of storytelling. You can see this flower house as a "house of fiction" -- a place where these men and women converge to "tell a story", the story of their own wonderful time together, their fantasy life of love and luxury. And within this overall story you get mini-stories inserted: how patron A loves flower girl B and how their little soap opera unfolds. Everyone in this movie seems careful to play their roles the right way and keep the story humming along for everyone's enjoyment. So when something does go wrong in this pursuit of fictional happiness, we have to not only ask why, but what that failure has to say about the powers and limitations of storytelling. Why isn't this story of love with Crimson enough to satisfy Master Wang, or Crimson for that matter? Is it because there is too much reality peeking through to keep up appearances?

It should also be mentioned that we the audience are not excluded form the onscreen "storytelling" either: Hou gives you a seat at the table (you see this in the way he positions his shots, guiding your point of view as a fly on the wall), and that yes, you too are involved in the storytelling -- because Hou presents the events without a strict point-by-point summary of what's going on -- he leaves a lot of it in your hands to sort out, so that the story is as much yours to summarize and tell than it is his. Like Master Wang, we too become aware of how much of this world exists beyond our reach, and we are shaken from our indulgence in the illusion of so much beauty and satisfaction. It's a way of seeing that, at its best, causes us to see the veneers of contented reality in our own lives, and cause us to wonder what factors (economic, political, social, cultural) may be involved in creating the walls of reality within which we pursue our happiness.