The film does have a handful of interesting concepts, mostly visual ones. The idea of slavery permeates through the film in various cinematic formations (the female lead, for example, is kept in a giant yellow birdcage by the rival king) and the concept of Snow Wolf, a character who wears the cloak of death and wields a scythe-shaped sword, but who is afraid of death (afraid of himself?). This concept I would've liked more elaboration on, since it was the most original take on death I've seen in a long while. The overall story had a Dickensian feel to it, causing me to time travel back to when I was 16 and sitting on the toilet reading A TALE OF TWO CITIES as part of my summer reading for my English AP course (and the fact that I thought about that and was Tweeting at the same time definitely means that the story just did not do anything good for me.) Despite THE PROMISE's broken vows (mainly my misconception that all of Chen Kaige's work would be works of utter genius!), I'm looking forward to watching some other Kaige films, but I think my opinion of him is that, unlike Zhang Yimou, who has adapted his storytelling wizardry to the CG world beautifully, Kaige doesn't quite cut it.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Broken PROMISE! Director Chen Kaige in the CG World
I've recently become a huge fan of Chen Kaige, one of China's "Fifth Generation" filmmakers and his unique style of filmmaking. When I first saw FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE, I was enamored by the many layers that wrapped around this near three-hour masterpiece; its intertwining story lines (mainly how the opera of the same name acts as a metaphor for the Communist takeover of China that happens later on in the film, and its the characterization. TEMPTRESS MOON produced similar effects, howsoever more subdued because of the heavy moral undertones through the film and it's "revenge isn't always as sweet as we'd like it to be" message by the end. Even one of Kaige's lesser-known works, LIFE ON A STRING, was another fine example of a touching tale that mixes the fantastic (the film's based around the idea that when a blind musician breaks his thousandth string, his sight will be restored) with the real (acceptance one's own flaws and those of his or her society). Well, I just watched THE PROMISE, and my initial thought was "What the f*** is this crap?!" I was dragged out of a world of beautifully shot landscapes and deep character development that takes its time to CGI bulls running after (and eventually trying to keep up with) a slave in the midst of a battle between two rival armies. I was plunged head first into a story that sped through events, relationships, and fight scenes that I thought could've been longer. Needless to say, I was very disappointed by those extra heavy CGI undertones (not so much that they're overused, but they're poorly designed, which took me further away from the story line than the actual story line itself.)
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I think Mr. Trigonis may have channeled the film and his reaction to it in his review. I found myself responding much as he responded to the film: Many worthy ideas, many intriguing flavors and textures, but they could have done with a bit more baking. I also admired and was delighted by "Farewell my Concubine" and "Life on a String" (I haven't seen either "Temptress Moon" or "Promise"). I'm disappointed to hear that Chen Kaige appears to have stumbled in this latest effort, but even the most gifted people do that from time to time. At the risk of being overly existential, I'm always amazed at our need to hierarchically order society by labeling people as Geniuses. People are people; their works may sometimes be "genius" and at other times not. Beethoven was Beethoven when he wrote the divine Ninth Symphony and just as much Beethoven when he wrote the misconceived and thoroughly pedestrian Choral Fantasy. More to the point, although many may disagree, I think Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. created a work of genius in "Slaughterhouse Five" but produced many much lesser works beyond it particularly as he aged. Toward the end, even he acknowledged that he was publishing collections of thought-bytes none of which were well-integrated or satisfying developed. They were probably longer than 140 characters each, but they might just as well have been tweets. On Facebook we are treated on most days to John Patrick Shanley's half-baked (or more often raw) core dumps of his mental notebook. Are we coming to the point where serious film making (and, perhaps, the criticism of it) will be nothing more than a collection of tweets illustrated by careless use of crude technologies?
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