What is the meaning to be a human being? There was a boy aged 11 years old asking this, he still asked the same question after 6 years; and there is a documentary about this genius boy asking the same thing. Is it nobody right now would ask this question? This documentary just reminds us why we don’t ask and keep silence to discontent about your own life.
Hong Kong is a so interesting city that can make an interesting story to be totally unknown. Without this documentary, nobody knows there was a 11-year old genius in Hong Kong, Wong Ka-cheng, led a tour concert with an orchestra in Czechoslovakia. While this little boy grown up, he still participated in various kinds of international, local and school competitions. One time, he participated in a quintet competition. He and his team deliberately chose a song which would be overtime. He did not mean to win the competition as he has won it twice and that certificate for him is for wiping ass only. He joined the competition for music only. He joined it for helping the organizer to let Hong Kong student knows what chamber music means. He won it finally.
This too arrogant youngster still asks what is the meaning to be a human being. He even tells us his father should not be a human being as for his extramarital affairs. He keeps on asking and thinking this question as he would never satisfy with the answers. It is pretty Kafkaesque indeed. This documentary shows how powerless of a genius in a Kafkaesque world. But the masterpiece plays by that genius is the evidence how he overcomes it or how he seeks the true meaning to be a human being, at least in his own ways, or how he just doesn’t care all of them.
"It talks little about the true meaning of revolution though presents the pain of it in a rather entertaining way."
Bodyguards and Assassins (十月圍城)
Director: Teddy Chan (陳德森)
Main Cast: Donnie Yen (甄子丹), Wang Xueqi (王學圻), Tony Leung (梁家輝), Nicholas Tse (謝霆鋒), Leon Lai (黎明), Mengke Bateer (巴特爾)
Year: 2009
It is about a little unknown heroic history in Hong Kong. It’s about a group of unknown people who paid for their lives to a finally worldly-known person, namely, Dr. Sun Yat-sen. It talks little about the true meaning of revolution though presents the pain of it in a rather entertaining way.
Film director Teddy Chan does not aim to make a consistent or convincing cinematic stuff, but he has already shown masterly manipulation in several scenes. The final Greek Tragedy ending comprises the staircase in old Hong Kong and what happens in the staircase in Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin. But such a masterly manipulative ending would be still less impressive than what Leon Lai sees in his deadly dream sequence.
"I gave you the wrong address. But you went to the right one."
The Departed
Director: Martin Scorsese
Main Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, Vera Farmiga
Year: 2006
I should not be the only one finds Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon are pretty look alike, but it is until Martin Scorsese finally brings them together in The Departed as Ingmar Bergman comes up a new face in Persona with half of Liv Ullman’s face and half of Bibi Andersson’s. Martin Scorsese has no way to make a shock, but he presents a Persona-story to be understood more easily.
Every Hong Kong people knows The Departedis adapted from Hong Kong’s Infernal Affairs. Martin Scorsese keeps almost the same original story but deletes the approach as a Buddhist fable, and quotes Sigmund Freud to say Irish is a race that cannot be analyzed by psychoanalysis. Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon both share similar appearance, always act like Talented Mr. Ripley and finally fall in love with the same psychiatrist. Such story development becomes a bit more sensible with the backup of Freud’s Oedipus Complex. Meanwhile, Martin Scorsese plays down the role of psychoanalysis, minimizes melodramatic moments but focuses the charisma of typical American gangster or police as what happened in Goodfellas. Martin Scorsese almost makes no change on the original story, but already makes The Departed as one of the trademark films of the director.
In this film about a policeman pretends a gangster and vice versa, there is one very paradoxical line - "I gave you the wrong address. But you went to the right one." In such a simple line but we already don’t know what is right or wrong. While Mark Wahlberg meets Matt Damon again in the final scene, right or wrong is really something nobody knows.
The Conformist is about repressed memory. For the character, it’s about memory of pedophilia and homosexuality; for Italy, it’s about memory of Fascism. Bernardo Bertolucci bridges queer and dictatorship in one of the most complicated films I’ve ever watched.
I would like to compare the ending of Bertoucci’s The Dreamers with The Conformist. In The Dreamers, Michael Pitt finally reveals himself that his identity as a stranger from USA in May 68 march happened in Paris. His cinematic dream is awaken; the ending of The Conformist is the fall of Fascist regime led by Mussolini. Jean-Louis Trintignant, a former fascist spy, denounces his friend who is blind but also a fascist member publicly. Then a group of marching people celebrating the fall of Mussolini divides Jean-Louis Trintignant and his blind friend, who disappeared with the marching people.
Such incident actually happened beside a RomanTheatre. At the very end, Jean-Louis Trintignant turned back to gaze at a male prostitute under the arch of the theatre. For Italy, it seems like a moment tracing back the ancient history; for the character, it is a moment merging with pedophilia memory at past and identity crisis at the present. The Conformist by Bernardo Bertolucci is such a masterpiece that I would like to keep thinking and questioning about how repressed memory is, and whether my sensual experience for The Conformistwould internalize to be my personal repressed memory.
