Hou's Assassin Caught Between Creed and Conscience

mirror reflection of water

Lady Tang views mirror

Princess Jiacheng plays the zither.  Voiceover follows - The King of Kaphen's bluebird failed to sing for 3 years.  One day the Queen remarked birds sing only to their own kind.    Set the bird before a mirror! The King heeded her advice.  The bluebird saw its own image, and sang of its sadness, and danced, until finally, it expired.

   

Princess-nun Jiaxin delivers Yinniang to her mother Nie Tian

Nie's mother presents jade to Nie

Jade was given to Princess Jiacheng when Nie was betrothed to marry Lord of Weibo, a gift from the Emperor to secure Weibo.

Nie left jade amulet for Lord Tian to discover her identity.  Huji, concubine, at his side.

landscape from Hubei province

Yinniag's mother Nie Tian and father Nie Feng commiserate about exiling daughter

Lord Tian informs Lady Tian not to meddle in exile of Tian Xing

mirror polisher tries to stall melee before Yinniang arrives

Silver birch forest in Inner Mongolia provides extraordinary parallax effect, Lady Ti'an (AKA Jing Jing) sports gold mask.

Tian Xing tends to Yinniang's wounds from the masked assassin

Sorcerer Kong Kong with voodoo dolls in cahoots with Lady Tian, ultimately csasts spell on Huji causing her to miscarry

Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien's 2015 film is certainly beautiful to watch on 35mm film.  It won best director Cannes.  Cinematography by Mark Lee Ping Bing is sublime in places like Shennongjia district in northwestern Hubei province.  But Hou gives away little plot-wise and the impenetrable nature of the film makes even seasoned cinephiles feel like Philistines.  He joins a growing list of filmmakers embracing wuxia, the medieval sword-fighting genre.

During the Tang dynasty, kidnapped at age 10 in the year 809, Nie Yinniang (Shu Qi) is taught to be an assassin by Princess-nun Jiaxin (twin sister of princess Jiacheng), to kill corrupt officials.  Jiacheng sends her on a mission impossible to her hometown Weibo (Hebei province, bordering Inner Mongolia), to kill her cousin the governor Lord Tian Ji'an (first love to whom Nie was once betrothed as her intended husband). It is a case of provincial rebellion against the Tang court imperial authority.  It is interesting to contemplate the relation of Weibo to the Imperial court vs. Taiwan to the PRC.  Her indecision is construed as a mark of power, able to dictate her own destiny.

At the end of the day, Yinniang couldn't do it, empathy cannot be obliterated, the assassin's creed bows to the pangs of conscience.

Let's go back to the bluebird tale.  Yinniang reveals that this applies to Princess Jiacheng , no one like her in all of Weibo.

Deniz Gamze Ergüven's Mustang Channels Truffaut's 400 Blows

Window bars reminiscent of 400 Blows iconic image

Turkish film director Deniz Gamze Ergüven has made a beautiful film reminiscent of Truffaut's 400 Blows.

Gomes's Tabu Challenges Colonial Africa Misgivings

Mario lip syncs (of course, it's silent film !) Joey Ramone poolside

poolside dancing so "Blue is Warmest Color"

local joyous children surround devastated Ventura with tribal "call & response" choir blasting, sublime moment

Murnau's 1931 film

Tabu is a 2012 Portuguese black & white film directed by Miguel Gomes, the title in honor of and  referencing F.W. Murnau's 1931 silent film, which took place in the South Pacific.  Both films have a bifurcated structure.  Tabu is in two parts, with intertitles Paradise Lost, and Paradise, the first part taking place in contemporary Lisbon and the second part a flashback of 1960s Portuguese Africa.  The implication is that life was much better in colonial times.  Murnau's film was also in two parts, but chronological, flipping the chapter headings. Portugal was the last surviving colonialist country in Europe, finally relinquishing Mozambique (and Angola) in 1975, where Tabu was filmed.  The overarching theme is obsessive love and eternal pain that results from its extinction (think Blue is the Warmest Color featuring Lykke Li's song "I Follow Rivers").

The film is wildly inventive in the use of sound (and lack thereof).  Richard Brody, who calls this one of the most original movies in years, brilliantly summarizes Gomes's vision in The New Yorker (my bold):

Gomes’s vision, realized in calmly expansive, keenly perceptive compositions in a charcoal black-and-white, is two-fold. First, he reveals a rational modern Europe of noble yet sterile passions, of moderate pleasure, impotent principle, and economized energy; of an aestheticized dignity that is ever so slightly out of sync with the tawdry mercenary activity of daily life. Several moments leap out—there’s a magnificently sensitive tracking shot that moves in on Pilar during an awkward moment outside a movie theatre, when her suitor wants to offer her a painting; as he dashes off, the chirp of his remote car key is heard, twice. There’s also a delicately sardonic aperçu in a shopping mall, where, at a moment of high emotion, Pilar and two others head for a café through a corridor where Gomes discerns, in jolting centrality, a sad little ride for children. 

Second, Gomes sees the predatory injustices of colonial life as a sort of Wild West of anarchic self-indulgence and self-reinvention, a perfect environment for romance to flower and to grow to monstrous, untenable dimensions. Nothing suggests nostalgia for or ambivalence about Portugal’s colonial empire. The narrator of the second part, an Italian immigrant, is clear-eyed about the indecent inequities that he took advantage of, and it’s among the sins for which the modern Portugal of Pilar’s circle is in lasting penance. But the very vastness of its cavalier moral obliviousness is one of the things that vanishes with the clarity of vision; amour fou comes off inextricably linked to diabolical evil (which is explicitly invoked in the narration), and the humanist’s circumspect, responsible politics appear also to put relationships on an ethical footing and to put a brake on the emotional life—without completely extinguishing the inner spark of spontaneous extremes.

Derek Smith observes (Tiny Mix Tapes):

In Africa, young Aurora lives a carefree life as a spoiled white girl with a caring, successful husband and is known as the most talented big game hunter around. With the entrance of Ventura, a handsome playboy extraordinaire, the flames of illicit love begin to crackle and the two begin a torrid love affair. The aforementioned techniques used in this part of the film, particularly the soundscapes playing against muted dialogue, give the characters a feeling of disembodiment that reflects both the two lovers’ states as they enter and proceed with their obsessive affair and the sense of dislocation and disillusionment as Ventura nostalgically recounts the tale he’s revealed to no one for 50 years.

Soundtrack is excellent:

Variações Pindéricas Sobre a Insensatez by Joana Sá

Cosi Come Viene by Conjunto Oliveira Muge

Baby I Love You by The Ramones (another connection with Blue is the dance sequence)

Tú Serás Mi Baby by Les Surfs

Lonely Wine by Mickey Gilley

The eldest 6 of 12 children were Coco, Pat, Rocky, Dave, Monikya (Monique) and Nicole Rabaraona. Born in Madagascar the four brothers and two sisters performed as the vocal group "Les Surfs" from 1963 to 1971.

Grupo de Canto e Dança do Povoado de Coconhoa (Mozambique) performed the "call & respond" tribal chanting.  This mesmerizing sound takes center stage when Araura's husband fetches her and takes a wack at Ventura.


In an interview with Gomes, he reveals the role music plays in his films:

In fact, when Pilar was going to the cinema—and in the script, she went three times, in the film only two—it was intended that you would never see the screen but would hear a song. Maybe this is my emotional link with cinema, that I wanted to materialize it by not showing whatever Pilar is seeing, only portraying it as a song. For me as a viewer of cinema and a listener to music, I wanted to have the same response to the sequence as I would if I were hearing a great song, not being moved by the lyrics but by a more abstract feeling one has in response to music. It’s the melody, and something that works in your system in a very abstract way. Sometimes you don’t know why the hell you’re so moved. I’ve dreamed of making films that would evoke this kind of emotional response. 

The Gatekeepers Exposes Shin Bet Tactics

This 2012 documentary film by Dror Moreh interviews the last six Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) intelligence chiefs.  Much has been made in Israel that "spooks should not speak." Their revelations are compelling.  Some Israelis gave high praise.  Rafi Gamzu, Israel Foreign Ministry, called film "proof of the highest order of Israeli democracy."  Moreh decided that Netanyahu poses a great threat to the existence of Israel. Politicians prefer binary solutions in the war against terror, but those in charge of eradicating terror deal daily in grey.  The film starts in 1967 with the Six Day War.

The film consists of 7 chapters:

1.  No Strategy, Just Tactics.  After the Six Day War, the terrorists were gone (the dog could no longer chase the rabbit), so the Israelis decided to do a census in the Territories.  Much effort was spent in learning spoken and literary Arabic.  Unfortunately, Jinna nehsikum ("We come to count you") sounds a whole lot like Jinna nekhsikum ("We come to castrate you").  Ultimately, terrorism appeared in Nablus, with many training in Syria (sounds familiar in the modern world of ISIS), but while terrorism was mitigated, the problem of the Occupation remained.  Meir and Begin paid little attention to Palestine.

2. Forget About Morality. Shin Bet recruited informants in the 1982 Lebanon War, under leadership of Avraham Shalom, who basically did whatever he wanted.  The No. 300 bus incident is recounted (1984) in which 4 terrorists hijacked the bus en route from Tel Aviv to Gaza, in which the Army beat to death two of the hijackers.  Shin Bet had no such concept as illegal order, when the killings were made public Shin Bet was accused of operating above the law.  Yet Shamir gave Shin Bet authority to kill.  It was Avraham Shalom, who resigned in disgrace in 1986.

3.  One Man's Terrorist is Another Man's Freedom Fighter. The First Intafada was insurrection with no precedent.  The Oslo Accords recognized Israel's right to exist by the PLO.  Tel Aviv bus bombing in 1995 was start of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

4.  Our Own Flesh and Blood.  Illegal West Bank settlements began in 1974 in reaction to the Government policies under Rabin.  Moreover the Government ignored the settlements.  In 1980, a Fatah cell blew up a synagogue in Hebron.  The Jews responded with revenge attacks on the Nablus mayor Bassam Shaka'a and Ramallah mayor Kasim Halaf.  Everyone knew the Jews were instigators.  Shin Bet had no records on Jews, it was a wake up call to identify the Jewish Underground. Shin Bet foiled an attempt to bomb 250 Arabs on Arab buses in Jerusalem, they caught them in the act.  They also foiled a plan to blow up the Dome of the Rock with Semtex.  The entire Islamic world, including Iran and Indonesia would have waged war against Israel.  Nevertheless, Shamir signed the Clemency Law for the Underground.  Yigal Amir (Israeli extremist, Jew) assassinates Rabin on Nov 4, 1995 - a punk can eliminate entire peace process.

5.  Victory is to See You Suffer. Shin Bet was in crisis after Rabin's death.  Protecting against terror no longer enough.  Relying on force rather than brains a poor strategy.  Shift from field operations to computer monitors (see film poster).  Meetings with Palestinian intelligence improved terror rate.  After Rabin, Israeli leadership lost interest in peace initiatives.  Israel wanted more security and got terror.  Palestine wanted a State and got more settlements.  After 50 years, Palestinians achieved a balance of power.  Israel's F-16s vs. the suicide bomber. 

6.  Collateral Damage.  Yahya Ayyash was brilliant improvised explosive expert and most wanted man in Israel.  Shin Bet arranged for his execution through a smuggled cell phone laden with explosives (Jan 5, 1996).  Two months later, the whole country exploded.  Collateral damage or inevitable ?  Banality of Evil issues relevant to collateral damage.

7.  The Old Man at the End of the Corridor. This phrase refers to Ben-Gurion.  Avraham Shalom refers to Israel as modern day Germany occupying territories.  Final film thought - Israel is winning most battles but losing the war.

Rudoren (NYT) opines:  The Occupation is immoral and ineffective.  Israel should withdraw from West Bank as it did from Gaza in 2005.  The prospect of a 2-state solution diminishes daily, threatening the future of Israel as a Jewish democracy.

Les Quatre Cents Coups is Wonderful Collision Betweem Bazin's Realism and Truffaut's New Wave Launch

Released in 1959, Les Quatre Cents Coups (The 400 Blows), is one of the greatest films of all time.  Marilyn Fabe, UC Berkeley Lecturer in Film Studies, captures the subtle cinematographic details in her book Closely Watched Films (2004).  It is 27-year-old Francois Truffaut's autobiographical first feature film. It launched the French New Wave from 1959-1963.  Other New Wave directors included Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, and Eric Rohmer, all of whom wrote polemical articles in the film journal Cahiers du Cinema.  Their cinematic innovations were influenced by their film theories and the nature of the film medium.

Since the inception of motion pictures, the author of the screenplay was felt to be the
'auteur" of the film, as the directors were merely attempting to create a film faithful to the screen writer's vision.  New Wave directors embraced the theories of Alexandre Astruc that cinema was a language in which an artist can express his thoughts in a powerful form, like literature.  New Wave theorists thought the director was the auteur, in control of images, actors, and screenplay revisions.  Auteur theory was challenged by Marx and Freud, who were interested in understanding the process by which a culture's ideology, be it capitalist consumer values or patriarchal ideas about gender, were reproduced and maintained through mass media.  Roland Barthes also invoked a challenge, announcing the death of the author and birth of the reader.  Meaning is determined not by the intent of the author, but by the reader of the text.

In The 400 Blows, Truffaut demonstrates that film can be as emotionally and intellectually evocative and complex as literature.   The story of the film was based on Truffaut's own childhood.  The "400 blows" of the film's title comes from the French idiom "faire les quatre cents coups" which means "to raise hell."  The title has a double meaning.  It also alludes to the blows dealt by insensitive neglectful parents and the bullying school and state authorities.  An unwanted child neglected by his parents, Truffaut took refuge in film.  Antoine Doinel, played by Jean-Pierre Leaud, has the same life history as Truffaut.  Also born out of wedlock, his parents find him a burden.  This is given poignant visual expression when Antoine takes out the garbage.  In a sense, his mother wanted to throw him away in an abortion.

Truffaut ran away from home at age 11 after an excuse for playing hooky backfired.  He claimed he was not in school because his father was taken away by the Germans.  Antoine claims his mother died.  Both Truffaut's and Antoine's adoptive fathers turn them over to the police.  He ends up in the Center for Delinquent Minors where he makes a mad dash for the beach.  Truffaut films Antoine in his moments of freedom in wide angle exaggerating the distance between foreground and background, making the world seem expansive.  At the times when he is caught, Truffaut films him in tightly framed close shots.  His images of Antoine through the grillwork of a holding cell are iconic.  In one shot his face is framed by the grid pattern, resembling a noose around his neck. 

At the ocean's edge, he is trapped.  For his part, Truffaut was rescued by Andre Bazin, who became his substitute father. Since many of the New Wave directors wrote for Bazin's Cahiers du Cinema, the style of their films was influenced by his realist aesthetic.  Antoine's escape from the soccer game and his run to the sea are an homage to Bazin. The 75-second tracking shot in which Antoine runs to the sea demonstrates Bazin's idea that some actions need to be represented in real time in order too be dramatically effective.  We are able to experience the adrenaline-filled exhilaration of his run for freedom.

Finally, Truffaut shocked audiences in 1959 by use of a freeze frame technique to end the film.  The sudden freezing of the frame foregrounds the film medium.  Classic films always hid any awareness of the medium.  Truffaut was willing to expose the artifice of the medium, in effect abandoning Bazinian realism, acting as a metaphor for Antoine's entrapment.  Even the word of the title (FIN) functions not just as a word but as an image.  The letters F-I-N resemble the bars that obscured our view of him in the prison scenes, signaling that Antoine's hope for escape are finished too.

Indian Helicopter Parents over the Top

Kaavya Viswanathan wrote How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life while at Harvard (2006) about Opal's obsession with getting into the big H.  It is a LOL comedy about her parents' effort to make her more interesting and ultimately how she falls for a classmate who is not an object of desire (life's what happens while your busy making plans).  BTW, the title says it all, there's nothing more than the first kiss !  But she captures the high school moment perfectly.  The doting parents create HOWGAL (How Opal Will Get a Life) and have regular strategy sessions with their daughter. 

Funniest line - "he had been very impressed by my familiarity with emerging markets in nanotechnology"  (183). 

One problem - she was caught plagiarizing, including passages from Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories, as well as books by Megan McCafferty, Sophie Kinsella, Meg Cabot, and Tanuja Desai Hidier.  Little, Brown & Co. recalled all copies of the book.

Meet the Patels is a real life documentary directed and filmed by Geeta Patel, who makes a brief appearance towards the end of the film. Here the helicopter parents seek a wife for their son Ravi.  But he has secretly been living with a redhead.  Just like Opal, life (the redhead) is what happens while busy making plans (for "real" partner).  Most Patels derive from Gujarat state.  Ravi's parents, Champa and Vasant, turn out to have an extraordinary relationship and are a testimonial to arranged marriages, much to everyone's chagrin !!

Director Desiree Akhavan Plays Herself in Appropriate Behaviour

Appropriate Behaviour (2014) is a British comedy film, written and directed by Desiree Akhavan, the film stars Akhavan as Shirin, a bisexual Persian American woman in hipster Brooklyn struggling to rebuild her life after breaking up with her girlfriend.  Shirin is struggling to be an ideal Persian daughter (of well-to-do expats), a politically correct bisexual, and a hip young Brooklynite but fails miserably in her attempt at all identities.

Hard to believe she was voted ugliest person at Horace Mann (she commuted from Rockland County). This is a woman who has electric beauty.  I'm always fascinated by young women directors who have the courage to act in their own films.  Akhavan is candid about sex, and she has a great scene when a three-way she’s involved in after a couple pick her up in a bar goes weirdly wrong because the man suspects his partner is into her in ways he doesn’t like. There is also a great moment when she is given self-esteem coaching by the assistant in a lingerie store who says she deserves a great bra: “Just because your breasts are small, it doesn’t mean they’re not legitimate.”  Akhavan has a loopy lampooning spirit, ultimately, and at one point she clocks the deadpan tone of her own film when Shirin lambasts one of her dates, "What's up with your passive disinterest in everything? What happened at Wesleyan that did this to you?"