Snowpiercer – a film by a Hollywood-influenced Korean director

Snowpiercer – a blockbuster appeared on many film critic’s top ten film lists of 2014 – is a product of successful transnational collaboration and international distribution. It’s a English-language South Korean-Czech sciene-fiction thriller film. The co-productions of the film involved talents from many countries, from the East to the West: French graphic novel Le Transperceneige by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette; South Korean director Bong Joon-ho, American scriptwriter Kelly Masterson, producers, filmmaking crew, German VFX crew, starring A-list cast from around the world (Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, John Hurt from UK; Chris Evans, Octavia Spencer, Ed Harris from USA; Song Kang-ho, Go Ah-sung from South Korean; EUR, etc), Czech filmmaking crew and shooting location. The collaboration made biggest box office returns in South Korea, China, France.

Snowpiercer is a remarkable film of Bong Joon-ho in his relationship with American filmmaking style. Throughout Bong’s career, his films including Memories of Murder (2003), The Host (2006) have dealt with American pervasiveness in diverse ways. However it was not until Snowpiercer (2014). Snowpiercer is counted as a conclude transaction of this transaction with American actors, Hollywood-level budget and English language (Taylor 2016, p.44). Talking historically, America has always been a big cultural influencer of South Korean with long ties in the past between the two countries. With the advent of Snowpiercer, Bong has extricated himself from Korean national approach and enter a dimension in which Snowpiercer can’t be clearly defined as a Korean or a American film as its operation in transnational discourse makes it culturally illegible to audience in both countries (Taylor 2016, p.45). Snowpiercer is claimed to be utterly saturated with the cultural residue of Hollywood. However, he has cleverly used American blockbuster filmmaking techniques to articulate the Korean-ness in his films. Because of that, Snowpiercer represents his pivot toward subverting rather than emulating America filmic language. According to a cultural materialist analysis, Bong Joon-ho added a new definition to the term ‘transnationalism’ in dictionary in order not to follow a certain style – either Korean or American – to create a peculiar hybrid form that uniquely merges both styles.

“I feel I’m a genre filmmaker in Asia,” said Bong of how he envisions himself. “I love the conventions of genre cinema, and I also love to destroy those conventions, to create my own unique genres within the genres.”

(Los Angeles Times, 2014)

Figure 1. Produced by Los Angeles Times 2014

Comment:

On Ronnie Tran’s blog: https://s3562677.wordpress.com/2017/10/16/week-13-snowpiercer-an-allegory-of-society/comment-page-1/#comment-17

On Trang Le’s blog: https://leetawng.wordpress.com/2017/10/16/why-the-female-ghost-always-in-white-maybe-because-it-is-their-wedding/comment-page-1/#comment-25

Hana-bi: Violence in a non-gangster movie

Every yakuza film directed by Takeshi Kitano or not would commonly has most of bloody scenes performed by the yakuza, but Hana-bi is an odd. In Hana-bi, it is Nishi – a policeman, a man of justice who commits most of the violent scenes. At the small restaurant, he stabs a man in his eye with a chopstick, then turns around to kick another one. Near the beach, he beats a man until his face is full of blood when that stranger tries to make joke on his wife as she waters a bunch of dead flowers. We see him comes in a car full of yakuza and shoot them all without saying even a word (Jones & Kate 2013). And even with the last scene which we don’t actually see it but all know that Nishi shots his wife, then shot himself.

Figure 1. Image by Metrograph n.d.

Violence is not highlighted but instead a convincible part of the characters’ life. As what Aaron Gerow notes that ‘the reason violence does not stand out is because the everyday is so cruel and violent’. Nishi never fights for himself but instead to protect his loved ones. He fights for his colleagues and for his wife. However, this explanation might be absurd to the last scene. The only reason that I could use as a reason for the last haunting violent scene is that Nishi and Miyuki know from the start for their journey to historical sites together, both of them know in the top of their mind that they will not return and they don’t wish to live a life without each other (Jones & Kate 2013).

Figure 2. Image by The Art Shelf 2015.

“I intentionally shoot violence to make the audience feel real pain. I have never and will never shoot violence as it’s some kind of action video game.”

Takeshi Kitano

 

Unlike any gangster or action movie when the camera zoom in different angle and focus on violence, Hana-bi tries to get its audience away from those furious acts. In Hana-bi, violent scenes are sharp, quick and brutal with no warning as Kitano suggested us to pay close attention to every film shot because: “If you don’t expect it, a little firecracker can scare you” (Takeshi Kitano). The silence and stillness of the movement help honing those firecrackers. Nishi is a quiet man who let his thick shapes of violent action speaks rather than his mouth. It is very common in Kitano’s film that actors are required emotionless and expressionless when performing violence or having inactive responses or silent to violent events (Redmond  2012).

Talking about cinematography of these scenes, Kitano often uses daring cuts between long shots and mid shots when the violence of the cut matches the sudden violence in the shot. He prefers blue as the basement color as its speak the feeling and produces sensation (Redmond 2012). Moreover, as for the end, scenes with violet humans are more intertwined with scenes of peaceful landscape as an explanation that Hana-bi is all about ordinary flow of real life, reflect nature of human and life. There are iconic Japanese images of Mount Fuji, cherry blossoms, Hokkaido snowfields, etc and more in Horibe’s paintings which work together to soothe the anxieties of traumatized protagonists.

Yes, Hana-bi is an odd with many reasons and how it presents violent in such a Kitano-ic way is one.

Figure 3,4,5: Image by Senses of Cinema 2003.

 

References:

Jones T, Kate E 2013. Rising Sun, Divided Land, Columbia University Press.

Redmond S 2012. Time, Space, Whatever. The Cinema of Takeshi Kitano, Columbia University Press. Pp.24-45.

Images references:

David, B 2003, “Takeshi Kitano”, image, Sensesofcinema, July, viewed 28 September 2017, <http://sensesofcinema.com/2003/great-directors/kitano/&gt;

The Arts Shelf 2011, “Third window films to release ‘ 3 films from Takeshi Kitano: Hana-bi/Kikujiro/Dolls’ on Blu-ray”, 15 November, viewed 28 September 2017, <http://www.theartsshelf.com/2015/11/20/third-window-films-to-release-3-films-from-takeshi-kitano-hana-bi-kikujiro-dolls-on-blu-ray/&gt;

Metrograph, n.d., “Hana-bi”, viewed 28 September 2017, <http://metrograph.com/film/film/533/hana-bi&gt;

Comments:

On Tra Nhu’s blog: https://s3575424asian.wordpress.com/2017/09/27/hana-bi-and-infernal-affairs-the-good-the-bad-the-fateful/comment-page-1/#comment-14

On Anh Dinh’s blog: https://anhdinhblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/27/nationalism-in-hana-bi-and-infernal-affairs/comment-page-1/#comment-17

 

Offside

Offside is the first Iranian film I have ever seen and it was not mind-blowing nor aesthetic-appealing, but it did leave me some thoughts with the social issue on gender it comes up with, through an international football match between Iran-Bahrain.

Offside is a football-based theme which isn’t really about football. However so, it is concerned with how this sport speaks to on gender in both Iranian society and its international reception. Take it back to the context of football in Iran back then when in the late 1990s, there was a football fever across the whole nation which all Iranian regardless of their religious, gender and location united in their support for the national team, followed its uneven fortunes with joy and anxiety, The football-enthusiasm was also shared by the Iranian diaspora, whose relations with their home country have not always been free of tension. Broader than that, in the late 1980s, after World Cup 1998, many top Iranian players started to play for European football team, where Iranian residents began acting as middlemen and agents (Toffoletti 2014). The whole Iranian community then had an emotional stake in the fortunes in both Iranian and European football teams, their love for football then become international. As football can be followed via media and the local goes global, Iranian’s experiences of sports fandom extend across the interconnected local, national, and global aspects of the game. Offside therefore alludes to the multiple social problems afforded through sporting encounters as gender experiences.

Offside proposes transnational feminism as a conceptual framework for analyzing the representation of Iranian female sport fans. There are moments in the film when the captured female fans complain about their unequal treatment compare to Japanese female spectators (Danks 2007). They have to try to circumvent the rule that forbid women spectators of Iranian football by dressing persuasively as men, hiding their femininity under Iranian’s male clothing which speaks of Western youth culture – blue jeans, shirts, sneakers, cap. All that small details describe an unfair society with bizarre laws, where the love for football, a non-gender factor, is hampered by gender issue. Panahi created Offside as an alternative voice of women in Iran in mediated form and emphasizing the fact that minority media reflects the status of potilical-social minorities – who are considered secondary status in Iran. As Offside’s imaginary where female football fandom is rather a bargain between cultural intersections of both local and global spheres than a consequence of rejecting any religious protocol, the film is a suggestion of Jafar Panahi on an alternative concept of women’s engagement in sporting rituals and in term of building possibilities of a broader community evoked through sporting community construction (Maruf 2006, Toffoletti 2014).

 

Figure 1. Image by Cottey 2011.

Nevertheless, there is a clever gender balance in which no gender is totally manipulating nor being manipulated by one another. Instead, both genders are subjected to social difficulties that they being harsh on each other. The male characters is not demonized in the film but instead they are portrayed as normal people who also subject to rules and regulations of society. There are priceless beautiful sequences when a soldier protect one of the detainees  from seeing sensible graffiti in the men’s restroom or protect another one when confronted by her older male family member. Therefore, the film highlights male privilege in sport while creating critical moments through which gender order is dismantled in sport.

Figure 2. Image by Gonzalez 2006.

Through Offside, Jafar Panahi brought up a social issue to government to persuade them that “there are more rational ways of tackling and dealing with these problems than sheer restriction or ignoring them”. Offside with aspects of transnationalism and gender created under the view of a nostalgic Jafar Panahi with the idea of giving thought to the government for them to change Iranian society and bring back Iran before 1970 – when women and men could sit together in a match and when the Iranian could “reclaim their traditions” and to say that they are “cultured people”, and “live together under those shared cultural value” (Maruf 2006, Mondello 2007).

 

References:

Danks, A 2007. “The Rules of the Game: Jafar Panahi’s Offside.” Directors Suite: Jafar Panahi – Offside [4,000 word DVD booklet]. Melbourne: Madman Entertainment.

Maruf, M 2006, “Offside rules: an interview with Jafar Panahi”, open Democracy, viewed 5 September 2017, <https://www.opendemocracy.net/arts-Film/offside_3620.jsp>

Mondello, B 2007. “Iran’s Women on the Pitch: ‘Offside'”, npr, viewed 1 September 2017,

<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9112134>

Toffoletti, K 2014. Iranian women’s sports fandom: Gender, resistance, and identity in the football movie Offside. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 38(1), pp.75-92.

Image:

Cottey, T 2011, “Jafar Panahi: Imprisoned for his films”, image, Reflections, 22 March, viewed 2 September 2017, <https://reflectonfilm.co.uk/2011/03/22/feature-jafar-panahi-imprisoned-for-his-films/>

Gonzalez, E 2006,  “Review: Jafar Panahi’s Offside”, image, Slant magazine, 26 September, viewed 2 September 2017, <https://www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/jafar-panahis-offside>

 

Comments:

On Chi Khuat’s blog: https://chikhuat.wordpress.com/2017/09/07/transnationalism-and-gender-analyzing-queen/comment-page-1/#comment-12

On Ronnie’s blog: https://s3562677.wordpress.com/2017/09/05/week7/comment-page-1/#comment-8

 

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Last week, I had a chance to watch Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – an epic sword-drama of Ang Lee. However, the film is quite exotic to me to describe it as a wuxia film with all that transnational aspects that the original wuxia I grow up with, don’t have.

And there are several reasons for that.

What initially really make sense about my strange feel is because Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a product of international collaboration between four film making companies in America, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and their influence in making it more transnational can be seen throughout the film. So this is already far from expecting them to create a simple wuxia film from the start.

Secondly, the film has a transnational cast from all Chinese diaspora cultural zones. Chow Yun-fat from Hong Kong, Chang Chen from Taiwan, Michelle Yeoh from Malaysia and even the crew with Ang Lee who is a Taiwanese-American, cinematographer Peter Pao and martial art director Yuen Wo Ping from Hong Kong, and many more with different Chinese background and accent. This suggested to be ‘a proud collaboration of global Chinese diaspora’. However, unlike typical Chinese film with dubbed Mandarin, Ang Lee refused to do that as he believes it would be more emotional and touching to keep the cast’s original accent. According to many criticism, their ‘broken Chinese’ create inconsistency and distracts Chinese native speakers from enjoying the film. But there should be applause for Lee that even this idea of preserving the original accent seems weird, it showed Ang Lee’s respect for the diasporic Chinese languages and how he did not aimed to promote the film only for Chinese speakers. For me who has to read to subtitle line-by-line, I believe that the film well-transferred emotional power in a lyrical form.

Thirdly, although the materials are authentic, the film is still not made in a Chinese way. The pace, storyline which made the main content, somehow create inauthentic wu-xia feeling. The pace of Crouching Tiger is also unlike typical wu-xia film when Chinese audience have to longing for the first martial art performance in over 15 minutes. Taking this view from Maria Wong, a post-production film executive in Hong Kong criticized that to her who grew up with this kind of film, Crouching Tiger is ‘so slow, it’s a bit like listening to grandma telling stories’. However, this pace is suitable for Western audience, especially with those who not engaged with Chinese accent movie by gradually get them to understand martial spirit instead of overwhelming them with huge martial performances. The storyline promoted feminism and celebrated Western-style individualism. Noted that it is not new for feminism to leading an action Chinese movie, but it is uncommon to give the lead roles for not only one but two woman warriors – Jen and Shu Lien. The way Lee build Jen’s story is also Westernized, by telling story of a girl who want to live the life of a wanderer – a fantasy that she read from books. Whether she is daughter of a noble family, or whether her wedding day approaches, the dream of being independent still prompted her to satisfy itself. When she has a chance, she tries that kind of living with a bandit – Lo, on a desert. This recall me to The English Patient, where a forbidden love happens in Sahara desert, with a man ‘comes from nowhere’ and a nurse.

These renewal elements however does not make the film deviate from Asian values. By incorporating cleverly different filmmaking techniques as well as transnational cultural elements between ‘all Chinas’ and East-West, Director Lee has successfully refashioned a classic Chinese genre and generated its cosmopolitan popularity. Lee created a global blockbuster under his vision of the kind of action film captured Taiwanese public fantasy back then, a movie with ‘the storytelling, the melodrama and the morality…the nostalgic feeling…’ but instead, for worldwide audience. In order to do that, Lee – as a cultural mediator – tried to balance Eastern and Western aesthetics. Balance between action and romance. Balance between high-art aesthetic and storytelling. The yin and the yang go together.

With all that cultural hybridization and transnational aspects come at once, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon tells an oriental tale which characterizes an idealistic China – ‘the China that is fading away in our heads’, as Lee called.  And because of that, I would highly recommend this film to just everyone. But if you are a wuxia fan, be alert that this is a transnational sword-drama, not a traditional wuxia movie!

 

References:

-Text:

Crothers Dilley, W 2014. Wuxia Narrative and Transnational Chinese Identity in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. In The Cinema of Ang Lee (p. The Cinema of Ang Lee, Chapter 9). Columbia University Press.

Klein, C 2002. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. A Transnational Reading. New Global History: Articles,< ht tp://web. mit. edu/newglobalhistory/docs/crouchingtiger-hidden-dragon. pdf>(September, 2002).

Lee, V 2011. ’Hollywood’s Global Strategy and the Future of Chinese Cinema’ . East Asian Cinemas : Regional Flows and Global Transformations. Palgrave Macmillan.

Steve, R 2001, “The film is so slow – it’s like grandma telling stories’, The Guardian, viewed 7 August 2017, <https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2001/feb/13/artsfeatures2>

Wu, C 2002. “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” Is Not a Chinese Film. Spectator – The University of Southern California Journal of Film and Television, 22(1), 65-79.

-Image:

Borromeo, EL 2015, ”Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny’ Trailer Released’, image, En.yibada, 11 December, viewed 7 August 2017, <http://en.yibada.com/articles/93939/20151211/crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon-sword-destiny-trailer-released.htm&gt;

Russell, A, n.d, ‘Worst best picture: Is The English Patient Better or worse than Crash?’, WordPress, viewed 7 August 2017, <https://readingatrecess.com/2014/12/22/worst-best-picture-is-the-english-patient-better-or-worse-than-crash/&gt;

Unknown, n.d, ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)’, image, BasementRejects, viewed 6 August 2017, <http://basementrejects.com/review/crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon-2000/&gt;

Comments:

-On Chi Khuat’s blog: Hi Chi, as you mentioned, Bollywood followed Hollywood in making musical films. However, Bollywood songs hold many cultural and spiritual values of a whole nation, not just a factor to express characters’ emotions or to describe scenes as it is in Hollywood songs. I learned that the songs in Om Shanti Om are actually promoted sepately in form of MVs, which is something unusual to any Hollywood movie in the same genre. It seems like Hindu songs have way bigger impacts on social and musical industry of the country. Could you share further thought on this?

-On Trang Le’s blog: Hi Trang, it’s really interesting that we shared the same idea on how Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a ‘not-Chinese-enough’ Chinese film. As you mentioned some understandings on feminism in wuxia films, I would like to learn more on the topic.Do you think that feminism in CTHD is one attractive aspect of the film? As when feminism in Hollywood gradually becomes saturated, could it be that feminism in an Asian film become interesting, especially from oriental look? And did it reduced excitement of Asian wuxia fans as feminism is not a big renewal? Thank you!

<https://leetawng.wordpress.com/2017/08/07/crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon-a-chinese-movie/comment-page-1/#comment-3&gt;