Good Men, Good Women

viewed January 8, 2000 at the Asian Art Museum

For more information about this film, click here.

My initiation to the films of Hou Hsiao Hsien was bewildering, like learning a new language, like going at it with a professor during a two-hour senior seminar.  While watching it I wasn't sure what I saw; people who had read about the film couldn't make much of their actual viewing experience.  And yet, like in the hours following a seminar, the mind is visited by a succession of realizations, though a final understanding remains elusive.  It challenges the notion that film is a language simpler than literature, and that its impact is visceral and immediate.  This is a film that refuses to be forgotten or put away.  

This film was originally intended as the biography of Chiang Bi-Yu and Chung Hao-Tung, a married couple who, during World War II, left Taiwan to join the anti-Japanese campaign on the Mainland.  It was only after a series of bewildering interrogations that their Mainland compatriots allowed them to join their ranks.  However, upon their return to Taiwan the couple was persecuted as suspected Communists.  Their experience in Taiwan echoes that of thousands of Taiwanese who were targeted as subversives to the Nationalist regime and summarily harrassed, imprisoned or executed during the "White Terror" period that followed the war.   

In the decades following the "White Terror" the Nationalist government exerted stifling control of both the people and the media; the grip loosened only a decade ago. For example, films could not even feature native Taiwanese dialects -- only Mandarin was allowed to be spoken. Hou was one of the first directors to break this code, and since then he has used local dialects almost exclusively, as if making up for lost time.

Lost time seems to be exactly what Hou's filmmaking is about.  Prior to making Good Men, Good Women, his films were almost all set in the 50s and 60s.  His subjects were all in some way disadvantaged by social and language barriers as they tried to carve an existence in post-war Taiwan.  In Good Men, Good Women he brings in a new level of self-reflexivity, calling into question his own attempts at capturing Taiwan's suppressed history.  

He does this by alternating scenes from the biography of Chiang and Chung with scenes of the actress playing Chiang and her own history before her acting career, as well as scenes of the actress, years after, rehearsing for her part, while mysteriously receiving faxed pages of her missing diary.  Previously, she had been a gangster's moll, a drug addict devoid of direction and dependent on her man for financial and emotional support.  Her scenes shacked up with her boyfriend in their small apartment are static and languid (evoking the vacuousness of their existence) but also playful and beautifully lit -- there is a genuine sense of affection between the lovers, and the static camera positioning allows for long takes in which the viewer to appreciate Hou's masterful composition.  There is one scene where the lovers embrace each other before a mirror, and it seems that there is a different lighting scheme going on in each of several different areas on the screen.

In contrast to these luridly colored moments, the scenes of the actress playing Chiang are shot in a sober black and white.  It is amazing to see this former druggie playing a political activist of integrity and determination.  Where the actress and the figure she plays intersect is a matter not easily resolved -- and therein lies the question Hou raises about what Taiwan's history means to its people today, especially when the so many Taiwanese are preoccupied with their material present.  

What the link is exactly betwedn the actress and her role is left for the viewer to determine. One way that Hou links the woman's past with her acting future is with scenes of her preparing for her role (in what may be construed as the film's narrative present).  As she meditates over "how will I become Chiang Bi-Yu" she mysteriously receives faxed pages of her missing diary, in which her thoughts on her lover (who has since been murdered) are exposed.  These scenes open her up to her history, leading to the series of flashbacks to the past.  

The sordidness of her personal history (she was somewhat of an accomplice in her lover's murder) contrasts with the piousness in which she portrays Chiang Bi-Yu.  In this way performing the past becomes a kind of redemptive act for her, of retrieving a sense of dignity through the experience of her forebears.  This also renders Chiang and Chung into purified ideals, which is a somewhat problematic take on history.  But perhaps what Hou is concerned about (and this is evident in his unique approach to historical filmmaking) is not so much the reality of history as what people can gain through awareness of history.  There is no question that the actress has gained something through playing Chiang: she has come to terms with both the history of her country, and of herself.

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