Tsui Hark

[therewillbeblus]

Peking Opera Blues (1986)

By turns bawdy, comic, thrilling, and sensitive, the movie’s a gem. Even the broad Cantonese comedy I’ve never been into seems to work. The film combines seamlessly a number of Tsui’s key interests: Chinese history and politics, art and artifice, and gender-bending, as well as his three main modes: comedy, tragedy, and action. The most cohesive and satisfying example of Tsui’s whiplash style of cinema. As entertaining as his grand spectacles, but with more attention to character and theme. There are moments here that are genuinely touching and beautiful, and moments so exciting and outrageous you can hardly believe it. This might well be Tsui’s best film. Why is it so unavailable? A Criterion release would be a dream.

I was genuinely surprised by the tonal shifts here, and how effectively Tsui held space for each approach to his content. He took admirable risks in how far he stretched each piece of his style- and, as if mimicking the balanced narrative of increasing complexity and forward momentum in a sort of methodological dance, I was very amused by how each mood received more isolated and lengthy time during the beginning stages of character introductions, plot weavings, etc. only to become more frenetically paced and culminate in crescendoed setpieces containing every singular tenor explosively mashed together. I can see this being akin to Tati's more complicated works, where revisits yield gags and subtly profound inclusions in mise en scene that I missed the first time. Also, based on the escalating rhythmic process of blending a diverse collection of ideas and tones together, I think fans of this film will also love Everything Everywhere All at Once (in theatres now!)

[Mr Sausage]

Shanghai Blues (1984)

A charming and likeable film. A post-war musical romantic comedy. During an air raid, two young people, Sylvia Chang and Kenny Bee, hide below a bridge; they can’t see each other well, but they promise to meet under the bridge again when the war is over. Ten years later, they both happen to move into the same apartment building, but have no idea who the other is. Meanwhile, the girl has taken in an impoverished girl, Sally Yeh, and her new roommate begins a romance with the man from the bridge. What’s so wonderful about the film is that instead of the classic romantic triangle the plot sets up, the film is more about the relationship between the two very different women, one a romantic dreamer, the other more worldly. Tsui considers this movie a turning point in his artistic life. Originally, there were to be two male leads vying for Sylvia Chang, but Chang encouraged him to make the film about female friendship, arguing the story would be more complex. Tsui was convinced, changed the film accordingly, and ever since has been exploring female relationships and inverting gender roles in film after film. Shanghai Blues is more touching and interesting for this reason.

The comedy, while overbroad and not to my taste, doesn’t rankle like Tsui’s other comedies. Where the film really shines is its visuals. There are moments of perfect beauty, like the couple standing in silhouette against the burning Hong Kong skyline, or Sally Yeh sitting on the balcony listening to the violin as the camera spins around her. Shots like those approach animation in their effects, deliberately I think given Tsui’s interest in the form. It’s a wonderful bit of style. Tho’ working within a precisely observed social realism, the film also pitches itself to a heightened level of romantic artifice. That Tsui can not just navigate but combine these opposites is part of his unique skill as a filmmaker. While not as frenetic and multivariate as Peking Opera Blues, in its quieter way this film is just as much a fusion of contrasting tones.

Like Once Upon a Time in China, Tsui creates a living, vibrant city, crammed with people, markets, clubs, and pedicabs. Tsui’s alive to the economic realities of the era, too, basing much of the plot around the social difficulties of a post-war nation still trying to recover. The characters hustle for money and goods, with many conversations revolving around inflation and breadlines. It’s a rich social portrait.

A wonderful film, Tsui’s best comedy, and one of his best films overall.

[Mr Sausage]

Missing (2008)

A late supernatural thriller from Tsui. A therapist goes scuba diving with her new boyfriend, the brother of a patient, around an underwater city off the coast of Japan where he plans to propose. Smash cut to his funeral, where his headless corpse lies in a coffin and his girlfriend has no memory of what happened. A fine premise for a mystery, but the biggest detective work required from the viewer is figuring out what is even happening at a basic plot level. The film is has a casual indifference to conveying narrative information. In the past Tsui was fond of excising connective tissue to get his movies racing along, but while this particular movie skips between scenes with bizarre swiftness, the scenes themselves have the deliberate pace befitting an atmospheric thriller. You get the annoying sensation of a movie moving both too quickly and too slowly at the same time. On top of which, the sudden jumps, abrupt scene changes, and laconic exposition leave you with maybe a general idea of what’s happening but a poor grasp of the specifics. The effect is somewhat like the feeling of a dream, but not in a productive way, and is as likely to occur in scenes where it’s inappropriate as otherwise.

SpoilerShow

Much of the movie is a hallucination, which explains (away) the ludicrous plot contrivances, but not why the structural disconnects, illogical transitions, and magical coincidences also occur in the bookending sections which are explicitly not fantasies. I'd guess this stylistic effect is accidental.

On top of the abrupt transitions and impatience with explanation, the movie's stuffed with competing story ideas that are at odds with each other, creating a scattered and unfocused narrative that's unsure of what it even wants to be--thriller, ghost story, medical drama, romantic elegy. Every twenty minutes it's like stepping into a brand new story, literally in one case, as the movie wraps up conclusively at 90 minutes and then starts over again with a brand new plot. In the 80s Tsui could make this kind of thing exciting, but as with Flying Swords of Dragon Gate and Seven Swords, all I felt was enervated. At one point I looked at the clock expecting the movie to be wrapping up soon only to discover it had only been fifty minutes with another seventy to go.

I think this is the first time Tsui has gotten to play around in the horror genre since his first two films, at least as a director (he did produce the Chinese Ghost Story films). He constructs a few tense scenes and lends some others an air of menace or dread--but however successful, these scenes have no style of their own but borrow it from other directors, especially Kiyoshi Kurosawa and the Pang Brothers. I got no sense of how Tsui as an artist conceives of the genre. Indeed few scenes feel recognizably Tsui. If the movie feels like Tsui at all, it’s in the over-abundance of narrative and genre, just without that crazy spark to transform it into a delirious and satisfying experience. If there's any solace to this artistic failure, it's that Tsui has made worse films before and better films after.

[therewillbeblus]

So is the message that I shouldn't go scuba diving or date patients' siblings, or that doing both is just tempting fate too much?

[Mr Sausage]

So is the message that I shouldn't go scuba diving or date patients' siblings, or that doing both is just tempting fate too much?

You know that philosophy some people have of not breaking bad news, like the death of a family member, to people when they’re on vacation or something so as not to ruin the experience or the memory or whatever? The message is that, except applied to life as a whole.

Also, pro tip: when your newly goth best friend brings her brother’s frozen head over in a box and insists that you look at it, definitely don’t go throw the head off the balcony. You’re welcome.

[therewillbeblus]

Oh man, that sounds deeply ironic and perversely anti-therapy for a therapist to learn a lesson to not transparently confront uncomfortable subjects with others!

[Mr Sausage]

The “therapy” in this movie would give you a fit.

[therewillbeblus]

I didn’t think a country’s cinematic therapists could be worse than France’s, but now I’m curious. Might have to touch the stove

[Calvin]

Novamedia will be releasing Green Snake

[andyli]

There's a brand-new 4K resto up for grabs. But it's got some crazy CGI snake shit.

[Calvin]

There's a brand-new 4K resto up for grabs. But it's got some crazy CGI snake shit.

Have you got any more info on that, Andy?

Though through a cursory Google, I have found that a 2K restoration of The Butterfly Murders was also screened at the Hong Kong Classic Film Festival.

[andyli]

The 4K DCP was screened back in December, 2021 in Shanghai as part of a Hong Kong Classic Film Retrospective. The Butterfly Murders was also screened in a 2K DCP there.

[Calvin]

I can't seem to find anything about the CGI revisionism though. Is there an article somewhere?

[andyli]

No articles that I know of. Just people's responses on social media to the 4k restoration. But I did find some posted pictures for comparison.

old vs. new

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

Are there more comparison shots? That’s a real shame they chose to do this with this film as I think the very early CGI (is it Tsui’s first film with it?) and mixture of practical effects is part of the charm.

[Mr Sausage]

I don't think Tsui was working with CGI back in 1993 (that was still pretty early even for Hollywood to be using it). I don't remember any CGI in the movie nor Lisa Morton mentioning it in her book (and she's a huge fan of the film).

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

There are two occurances of CGI in this film and it’s very clear when it happens as the effect is pretty unadvanced. I believe one of the shots is a CGI crane. I just looked up the scene on YouTube. It’s harder to tell on that non-anamorphic, interlaced clip, but it was clear when I saw my laserdisc of it. It looks like that scene features a few CGI shots.

[Mr Sausage]

There are two occurances of CGI in this film and it’s very clear when it happens as the effect is pretty unadvanced. I believe one of the shots is a CGI crane. I just looked up the scene on YouTube. It’s harder to tell on that non-anamorphic, interlaced clip, but it was clear when I saw my laserdisc of it. It looks like that scene features a few CGI shots.

No kidding. Can you link to the scene?

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

There are two occurances of CGI in this film and it’s very clear when it happens as the effect is pretty unadvanced. I believe one of the shots is a CGI crane. I just looked up the scene on YouTube. It’s harder to tell on that non-anamorphic, interlaced clip, but it was clear when I saw my laserdisc of it. It looks like that scene features a few CGI shots.

No kidding. Can you link to the scene?

It’s right at the 01:00:40 mark and is throughout this brief sequence. It’s so brief and fast that it’s easy to miss, but look at the shot where the crane moves at a right angle for the clearest example. I also swear it’s more noticable on my laserdisc. Not surprised if Tsui was the first HK director to experiment with the technology considering the western effects talent he used on Zu Warriors.

[Mr Sausage]

There are two occurances of CGI in this film and it’s very clear when it happens as the effect is pretty unadvanced. I believe one of the shots is a CGI crane. I just looked up the scene on YouTube. It’s harder to tell on that non-anamorphic, interlaced clip, but it was clear when I saw my laserdisc of it. It looks like that scene features a few CGI shots.

No kidding. Can you link to the scene?

It’s right at the 01:00:40 mark and is throughout this brief sequence. It’s so brief and fast that it’s easy to miss, but look at the shot where the crane moves at a right angle for the clearest example. I also swear it’s more noticable on my laserdisc. Not surprised if Tsui was the first HK director to experiment with the technology considering the western effects talent he used on Zu Warriors.

You mean the shot of the crane here? I honestly can't tell if it's CGI or a model, but I'll take your word for it.

[bad future]

I assume Elegant Dandy Fop meant the shot a little later at 1:01:13. Also check the animation at 1:25:18-1:25-22 on that video! It really stands out to me now that they mention it; I'm surprised it never did before now.

It'll be disappointing if we never get an HD restoration without the CGI revisionism, but if not, at least it would feel kind of right to me for Tsui to have that in common with George Lucas. (In a way Tsui feels like a model for what Lucas's filmography might look like if he hadn't chained himself to such a massive success so quickly, and let his various competing interests and impulses manifest across a greater number of quicker, cheaper projects. The populism vs subversiveness vs loftier aspirations; the interest in tech, in classic cinema, in mythology; all-around inability to be normal...)

[Mr Sausage]

Yeah, those are all clearly CGI. Thanks.

[andyli]

Yes, there's definitely CGI involved in the original film albeit very minimal. Another instance I can think of is the golden magical dragon when the monk does his martial art stuff. I believe the current revisionism, however, is the result of the request from Ng See-yuen, the film's co-producer.

As for an HD transfer of the original version, it does exist on certain streaming services in South Korea (of all places). But the chances that Nova Media stick to that transfer are slim.

[Mr Sausage]

Battle at Lake Changjin II (2022)

Filmed at the same time as the first, this cannot be called a movie in its own right. It has at best a pretense of a beginning; otherwise, starting it is like walking into a movie half-way through. There you are, in the middle of a scene full of characters you’re already expected to know. This is the rest of the first film, 2.5 more hours of action and propaganda. It’s common for propaganda to have a certain amount of contempt for its audience. The contempt reveals itself here as inadvertent comedy. I can’t adequately convey the unintentional hilarity of some of the stuff, but you have moments like an exterior shot of a Chinese soldier charging into a bunker, and you just hear the twangiest American accent of your life exclaim, “Who in the Sam Hill are you?”, followed by a gunshot. Or General MacArthur screaming into the phone in the middle of a party: “Retreating is treason! Retreating is treason!” over and over while everyone else cringes. The lack of restraint in the attempts to ridicule and minimize coupled with an equal lack of restraint in the attempts to valourize makes for an awful lot off silliness.

I haven’t done enough to emphasize what an impressive technical achievement the whole 5.5 hour thing is, tho’. It took a monumental amount of energy and resources to put this all together. The battle scenes are immense in scope and relentless in their intensity. They go on for astonishing, punishing lengths. A single battle in part II runs a full hour. It’s so consistently intense you become disengaged at a point. And the intensity of the battle scenes goes unrelieved, too, because the quiet moments between battles drive so intently at a single emotion or effect that they become stifling. That single-mindedness in pursuing a limited range of significance, in or out of the battles, squeezes the life out of the movie. There isn’t a real moment in here; it’s all emblematic gestures and symbolic emotions. There are some effective visuals, like American firebombs turning a snowy mountainside into hell on earth, or a reverse Michael Bay shot of an American flag being blown apart in slow motion. But then amid the computer effects you’ll have weird and unconvincing stuff like a POV binocular shot of what is unmistakeably a model complete with little model people lying around stiff.

My final opinion of the full five and a half hour experience is that the movie is grotesque.

[Mr Sausage]

Looking around the internet, tho' no one's sure how the directorial duties were shared between the three directors, people seem to find a lot more about the second Battle at Lake Changjin that's recognizably Tsui. And I'd agree--there's stuff that, even if Tsui didn't actually handle it, feels very much his style. Just manic, outrageous bits like a guy sliding down the mountain on a butt pan and careening onto the roof of a barracks is pure Tsui madness, or when a soldier is blasted off a bridge and in his last moments nabs a mid-air bullseye on a fallen explosive, or even a late scene where two men frozen together on a hill after a battle are lit up with a flamethrower as a precaution, and the heat melts the snow and sends them sliding slowly down the hill. Or some interesting scene transitions, like an optical effect where the Washington Monument is wiped off the screen by a Korean mountain. You see something of his imagination at work.

But the question is: why didn't I enjoy any of this? Why didn't I cheer at some old Hong Kong craziness rearing its head amid the treacle? The crazier Tsui's The Taking of Tiger Mountain got, the more I liked it, and in many ways that was a similar film. I don't know. I'd guess that, in part, everything was at such a fever pitch that these crazy moments seemed less breaths of fresh air than more nonsensical additions to an overripe action film. Another part is that these moments either had an unpleasant tone, like tragic melancholy, or were intercut with lugubrious scenes showing once again the heroic valour and self-sacrifice of the Chinese common soldier, so that the Tsui nuttiness was weighed down by the propagandistic spirit. Plus there's the grotesque push and pull in the tone between the treacly paeon to the valour, spirit, and sheer goodness of the Chinese common soldier, and the movie's unending glee in seeing these soldiers get mulched, pulped, burned, blasted, and everything else. These movies revel in horror and gore while wanting you to find it tragic while also wanting you to find it holy and beautiful. The layers of grotesquerie ruined for me those small bits of fun that one would like to think Tsui had a hand in.