Memory takes us where we want to go—Waltz with Bashir

These days, a “humanist” quest is what it takes, in most cases, to collect awards in various international film festivals. I gather that is because the audience is so much in need of proofs that show they are after all human beings despite the atrocities committed.

We know that cinema has a power that can alter, construct meaning, a power that was much envied by Joseph Goebbels when he saw Potemkin. A less subtle way of doing this is called identification.

Waltz with Bashir is such a case.

In wars people get killed; in wars people suffer. So if we say all right, both sides suffer, does that mean they are even? Is having nightmares as bad as being killed?

Some people want to say yes, and that it is even worse.

The formula I see is this: in order to elicit the sympathy you need for your causes, you show your protagonists under fear, under anguish, pain and last but not least, under confusion and ignorance. In other words, they were scared; they didn’t know anything; they didn’t do it.

Of course they didn’t. The Pharisees/ Phalangists did it.

And what is the purpose of this journey? To sleep better.

To settle your conscience, to be pardoned.

And that is easy. Because the soldiers are human beings. They all have names, faces. Two decades later, they all become harmless and hardworking[1] middle aged fellows. They become respectable family heads.

The Palestinians, on the other hand, are anonymous; They live anonymously; they die anonymously.

How could you sympathize a creature that has no name, that you don’t feel for?

“Sympathy” is by definition “feel the same thing”.

The end of the film does present a brief footage of Palestinian women screaming.

What they said is not subtitled.

The version I watch has Chinese subtitle and it says “the Arabs did it.”

How ridiculous! Was this translator just ignorant or has he another nationality?

I checked it online and according to another review (http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10322.shtml):

She shouts "my son, my son" in Arabic. She repeats again and again in Arabic "take photos, take photos," "where are the Arabs, where are the Arabs."

Now people might object that I don’t know anything about the Palestine/Israel conflict. That is true. I don’t.

Being a Chinese, I don’t know anything about the massacre in Nanjing either.

When I check the estimated number of victims in Sabra and Shatila —it says 2000—I feel myself noticeably relieved.

If 300000 died in Nanjing doesn’t mean anything, how can you make a big fuss on 2000?

I can perfectly imagine a Japanese film telling the story of a veteran (respectable family head, no doubt) trying to rediscover what he did in 1937—and he just “lit the flares.”

How convenient! If only the Nazis and the Japanese could find a way not to do the dirty work by themselves!

There are other places where the film reminds me of a possible Japanese remake. For example, in Waltz the Israeli soldiers report that “they're shooting at us from all directions,” “we are attacked, we retaliate.”

A Japanese soldier actually said, we did what we did in Nanjing because they resisted.

Resisted what? As the Japanese never wants to say they invaded China—they entered China; or these hapless fellows just found themselves there in media res—in the film there is a clear avoidance of saying that Israel invaded Lebanon.

I am aware of the fact that by saying all this I become in some ways a “nationalist”. These days being a nationalist means being narrow, being uneducated—two exceptions can be made: one for Jewish people, one for American, they are good—I don’t want to be like that. And I knew too well from my thirty years in the country that Chinese are no saint. I wish I could afford being a humanist.

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[1] One episode tells us the protagonist’s visit to his friend in Holland. This guy made his fortune (he is now a ten-acres landowner) after three years of selling falafel, which happens to be “both healthy and middle eastern”.

On national cinema or, all you want to know about India, but are afraid to ask the tourist bureau

 

Any nation can have a national cinema, even those without a national film industry. But what makes the study of a national cinema valuable is its contribution to cinema as a global phenomenon, whether economically, technologically or stylistically. We study the classical Hollywood cinema because it initiates and perfects a series of conventions that prevail the last century; we study Italian Neorealism since it constitutes a radical yet valid revision of the Hollywood convention, both in form and content. But we are less interested in pre-war Italian cinema from Quo Vadis to La Corona di ferro, since it is, as Bazin said, “a poor taste for sets, idealization of the principal actors, childish emphasis on acting, atrophy of mise-en-scene, the dragging in of the traditional paraphernalia of bel canto and opera, conventional scripts influenced by the theater, the romantic melodrama and the chanson de geste reduced to an adventure story.” (II, 18) (see note 1)

I image similar things, mutatis mutandis, can be found for Indian cinema. But these days such an observation seems obsolete, if not only politically incorrect. Now the study of national cinemas mainly serves to question, and ultimately to assert, I imagine, the national identity. And along this line one has sub-national (Basque), pan-national (China, Hongkong and Taiwan) cinema and trans-national cinema (anything starts with trans is good). What divides or unites here is the issue of identity and cultural heritage. Simply put, such groupings no longer maintain much interest in the issue of style.

Is Satyajit Ray representative of Indian cinema? Of course not. But the reason we appreciate him in a film history course is not because he serves as a spokesman for Bollywood. Bollywood has its value and raison d’être, but it has not yet find its way into a general survey of aesthetics of cinema. The issue, obviously, is that we mistakenly believe that we are studying national cinemas while we are actually looking at auteurs whose position is not defined by the culture, the nation, but rather the stylistics. The textbook has not been clear on this.

My theory is that a film can have three dimensions; on the plane it shows its cultural and political coordinates, but only in the third dimension, one upward, you see how much the film qualifies as art. Today much of the film studies sticks to the plane and ignore this third dimension. I guess this is a karma for that we have been ignoring the film as cultural artifact in the past and it is taking its revenge.

Now for a film that is set in India, with all India cast, but not Indian cinema. I remember someone says La Roue is a film that is stylistically innovative, but the story is somewhat maudlin (she is not happy that the story is not like Anna Karina). But that is perfectly all right for one occasion—the Oscar. One important note though: Slumdog Millionaire is not stylistically innovative. This is nothing new for Danny Boyle. He happens to be the kind of director who “seems to think that we need to see even the simplest action from every conceivable angle.”

Whenever there is a choice, it is hard to decide which of the following,“what presentation” or “who presents”, is a more important question. A British director and writer use British and American money to make a film about Mumbai life, and go on to win the Oscar, isn’t that perverse? If what Boyle  says can be true to Indian life, Indian culture, Indian cinema—of which I know practically nothing, would that put him on the same level of Salaam Bombay?  

 

1. It is quite understandable Bazin fails to see anything of artistic value of this period--for someone who is so overwhelmed by neorealism. It is meant to be a generalization, which is never entirely true. Among white telephone films there are la Signora di tutti; Fabrizi's dialect comedies look forward to neorealism; and last but not least, Blasetti.

Griffith's Legacy

 

A few days ago we had in the film studies center a program called “pictures and sounds”. What they do is to provide a sound for a silent picture in any way but conventional. They did The Adventures of Dollie (1908) with Kouji, which basically means a man supplies everything you hear by his mouth. This film is our great Griffith’s directorial debut. Incidentally the gypsy who is selling his baskets immediately reminds me of Thoreau (whose basket nobody wants to buy). But this little short that I have never seen before again brings back this American provinciality that Eisenstein talks about.

Eisenstein, because he is not an American, sees this eternal return of the father a Victorian morality. In fact, Griffith films are so charged with morality that one wonders what could be the cause? After all, is not the audience of this nickelodeon era seeking entertainment? But what Eisenstein accuses Griffith is not this laughable morality—which is rendered clownish by our vocal artist, exactly what it deserves—but his sensibility. And for Eisenstein this sensibility directly leads to—montage. Griffith began to cut not only between scenes, but also in the midst of actions. This sort of frame cut eventually leads to that the patterning of cutting overrides the profilmic integrity. On this basis Bordwell says that Hollywood cinema is a cinema of cutting. Obviously, for Eisenstein, the Hollywood type of cutting is only a Dickens type of sensibility which is maybe appropriate to his time, but not in the age of modernism. Isn’t it obvious that in a modern Hollywood we have much faster cutting rate?

Intolerance boasts “12500 men and women, 7500 horses, and endless spectacle”. Now people believe that it is precisely because the film made particular mistakes: excess of spectacle over narrative, theme over character, sentiment over motivation, that is was doomed as a “magnificent failure”. But come to think of it, the fact that the film was advertised as a spectacle, as opposed to say, having a strong story, is a significant fact. It means the main marketing virtue of this film is the spectacle, that the narration, albeit has a strong presence in this film, is probably not more than a pretext as the string supporting all those shiny laundries under the sun. It is important to understand that this kind of “logic of spectacle” is not patently American; there is nothing vulgar in it—unless you believe Fellini is vulgar. The notion of “cinema of attraction” is powerful because it is not only a “primitive” stage of cinema (history), but also a mode of presentation that persists today (psychology).

Spectacle is not a problem. But what is fatal of Intolerance is that not only the central theme does not make much sense to American audience, the stories themselves cannot be said to have exemplified the very notion. The modern story is that of persecution resulted from excessive morality; the story of Jesus is one of religious persecution, this is not a matter of intolerance; the stories of Babylon and France are heavily tainted with political power struggle. In fact, none of the four stories qualify for this abstract theme that is intolerance.

The urge to depict Jesus and ancient life is totally justifiable; the idea of narrating in alternation is all the more ingenuous; yet the central idea which is supposed to unite all the fragments is not working. To illustrate this point, let us do compare it to one of its knockoffs, Leaves from Satan's book (1921), by Dreyer. Although the rip off misses what is most important in Griffith's work, the alternating narration, and instead just tells one story after another, it does manage to unite the four stories under a same character (Satan) and a similar logic of procession: evil doing is always evoked by men's declined lust for beautiful woman—what a revelation! The only exception being the Jesus story (one day maybe someone will make a film about Judas betraying Jesus because he was madly in love with Magdalene).

At least from the surface, Michael Haneke's films share a similar theme to some of Griffith's biograph films, made well known for their critical role in making the transition from attraction to narrative. This theme is the intrusion to a bourgeois nuclear family. In both The Londale Operator and The Lonely Villa, we have a series of actions that represents a same routine between the male and the female: from the initial unison, to male's departure, female's danger, female sends the message to male, male comes to rescue of female, and their final reunion. Haneke's revision to this code is that,

a) The early disability of the male, both in The Hour of Wolf and Funny Games.

b) The intention of the intruder or the nature of this intrusion is never made clear.

c) The delay or complete dismissal of reunion.

One can definitely say that Haneke is not promoting the Victorian or bourgeois morality. In fact he appears to hate it so much that in The Seventh Continent, a perfectly respectable nuclei family has to commit suicide and before that, to literally chop their household items to pieces. Much of the shocks produced are based on the audience’s identification with this morality. The money in to the toilette is an example. One feels when watching this endless sequence that if one hates something so bad that usually means one loves it. Destroying is the other side of possessing. What the bourgeoisie is about is not to keep things in good shape, but to know what is ours, what is not—and to respect that distinction. Therefore this family only destroys everything that belongs to them. They do not go out to burn other people’s house. And they sell the car because they don’t want to leave it to the others. It is amazing to see how Haneke is so true to bourgeoisie’s attitude toward material possessions. Griffith, on the other hand, naively plays down this aspect, leaves it to programs such as “how to become a millionaire”.

Ashes of Time Redux, again and forever

 

Recently I got a chance to see the 35mm again. If I had known the Doc would screen it, I would have bothered to go all the way up to music box. Considering the fact that I saw the print (older version of course) only last year (he rented, the professor proudly announced, the best copy of it in North America), this makes three times on print, which is rare to me, especially when I am not a fan!

The most radical change that Wong made in the redux version (in Chinese it becomes “ultimate”) is not its narrative structure—though he does eliminate some fight scenes (Bordwell made a fuss on this) and organize the events into four slots, guided by those titles that traditionally associated with the agriculture but now we see more and more in contemporary Chinese cinema. What he did is a sort of standard practice these days—color grading. People still have qualms about this procedure, as if it damaged the authenticity of the film, as if it were cheating. But the visual quality of this film already varies constantly in its original status, partly due to the fact that shooting of different days look differently, partly due to that some of the footage are rescued (see below Wong’s own account of the situation that he discovers those prints in the basements of Chinatown theaters), whose quality is deteriorating. Digital processing is powerful; it changes the overall visual impression of the film (which is what he intended), but there is a limit of what you do can here. It is fairly obvious that some sequences that are crystal clear; and there are sequences that look like they suffer from heavy post-processing, like the result you get from insufficient exposure and remedy by digital means. And there is quality grades dispersed on the whole spectrum. This by itself is an interesting expressivity. But I doubt that its deployment in this film bears any narrative significance. Of course if you wish, you can make an interpretation. For example, flashbacks of women, especially of Taohua and the horse, are extremely sharp. Exterior scenes, especially those of the desert, the fight, those of Leslie standing there looking at the desert, are extremely grainy. What can you make of that?

I went to the film initially because of the so-called “newly composed” soundtrack. It did not give me any surprise in general, pleasant or unpleasant. And I did not discover much new material either (of course I could be wrong). Some synthesizer pieces are replaced by orchestra and Yoyo Ma’s interpretation brings in a classical feel. But I don’t necessarily think it fares better than what it already had. It also appears to me that new stuff was only used toward the end, when Lichun (spring) comes.

(Curiously, I don't remember seeing this.)

The more I see this film, the more I understand what it is about. People would say of course. But what I mean by this is that, like many Chinese who know the book & characters by heart, I take the novel as a point of departure for the film. Therefore I used to think Wang revises the genre. Wang’s statement curiously confirms this. And this is what we normally do when an adaptation is concerned. But actually the film is better understood with no previous knowledge of the martial arts tradition at all; it is effectively the same kind of film Wang made in Hong Kong, where his loosely connected stories take place. The film originates from a perversely amorphous form of desire which generates, by coupling with its own reflection, a multitude of gestures. Then we have the characters that would actualize these gestures. Then we have the time and space, along with every bit of its concrete detail, where these characters emerge. Seriously, these stories take place at nowhere. If we divide what we see in cinema by the skin of people: the internal and the external. It should go from inside to outside. And I see Wang truly accomplishes this idea; he frees his ideas from any concrete setting. What he borrows from the martial art tradition is only what he sees fit: the costume, the always heroic presentation, the stage. But the kernel remains his. I wonder what would Bazin said to this—oh where is my piece of humanist reality?

Wang’s own words:

As we launched into the work, we discovered that the original negatives and sound materials were in danger: the laboratory in Hong Kong where they were stored was suddenly shut down, without warning. We retrieved as much as we could, but the negatives were in pieces. As if we were searching for a long-lost family, we began looking for duplicate materials from various distributors and even the storage vaults of overseas Chinatown cinemas. As this went on, we came to realize that there are hundreds of prints locked up in Chinatown warehouses in those cities which used to show Hong Kong movies. Looking through all this material felt like uncovering the saga of the ups and downs of Hong Kong cinema in the last few decades. And this history, of course, included ASHES OF TIME.

P.S. the fact that Bridgett Lin speaks mandarin and all the others speak Cantonese seem to have bothered no one. This shows that, as I have seen many times in Chinese cinema, spontaneity overrides linguistic authenticity. On the other hand, Hongqi's wife, the only non-star in the cast, does speak dialect.  

Watch it again, Sam

This is a follow-up of my last post, in which I question the necessity of going to concerts. Well, I just came back from one which shed new light on the issue for me.

Today’s chamber concert is a mixture of European (Brahms, Ysaye, Bartok) and American (Ives), romanticism and modernism (Ives is alone again). It is mostly violin solo but sometimes accompanied by piano (I hate those parts). The violinist’s name is Hilary Hahn. What her performance strikes me is the way she moves. Of course all violinists move. But I don’t remember seeing anybody move with such an elegance, as if she was dancing with the music. I believe most of her movements are of practical needs, that is, to balance the sometime rather vehement and sometime delicate exertion on the upper body. But it is hard to tell to which extent they are practical and to which extent they become independently expressive. It is as if the practical needs themselves constitute the expressivity, as in architecture. The correspondences are not entirely predictable, as in Disney’s Silly Symphonies; nevertheless it is always anticipated, therefore I venture to propose it is a true case of audio-visual counterpoint. Also it rhythms with our natural motor reaction to music—finger movements, for example. It does this through our perception of the music, naturally, but also through our visual perception of her interpretive movements. Watching her playing I guess I am 75% aural and 25% visual, contrary to our normal mode of perception. And this 25% of visual soon fades into reveries where my attention follows her figure but somehow manages to blur the rest of the stage as if they were out of focus. And I do this partly because I find the piano’s bulky presence awkward and disturbing—and the girl who is there just to turn the pages! This emotional judgment comes first from the visual, and then tries to find support in the realm of the aural.

Here is how great she looks (Google yourself, there are plenty):

So much for how fantastic is Miss Hahn. I really should have waited in line for her to sign my copy of her recent DG recording. But I was in a hurry. Today classical music performers are also stars. Open CSO’s offering for this season you see how they promote their product. It is faces, faces. One gets to know only a tiny bit of the music itself but takes a huge amount of biographical information home. Such a strong desire to know who is that that is performing tonight! And where he/she went to high school! I wonder how many percentage of the audience is equipped with a connoisseurship to tell the difference—I mean, whether a piece sounds great because it is composed so or played so. But that doesn’t matter. We go to concert to see real people, instead of the abstract music. Human being naturally attributes anything artistic to his likes. So the presence of performer/artists has an assuring effect that is purely psychological. The presence of human figures is an ideal place to project one’s emotional investment. This happens in cinema, where we often recall a movie by who plays in it. I wonder if in the future we would recall a symphony by who conducts it—well I do remember the Bayreuth Ring circle in the way Boulez conducts it. And I am sure many would remember a piece of piano by the way Lang lang plays it.