The general consensus by critics and filmmakers at the end of the 1990s was that the two greatest filmmakers of the decade were Iran’s Abbas Kiarostami and Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-Hsien. Some may remember my own end of the decade best of list which mentioned my favorite directors and admitted with much discouragement that films from Kiarostami and Hou which actually get released in the U.S. were few and far between. When I wrote that list, I had seen only one film from each of the directors. Now, six months later, with three film from each filmmaker under my belt, I am in a better position to assess both filmmakers’ work. In part one of this article, I addressed the work of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. In this part I turn to Taiwan’s greatest director.
Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s received a great deal of attention when his 1989 film CITY OF SADNESS won the Venice Gold Lion. Since that time Hou has made THE PUPPETMASTER (93); GOOD MEN, GOOD WOMEN (95); GOODBYE SOUTH, GOODBYE (96), and FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI (98).
Hou Hsiao-Hsien is the most Japanese filmmaker not to come from Japan. His visual style resembles much of the same deliberate, static shots that are found in Japanese cinema. This is ironic since Hou is clearly rooted in his home country. Hou only makes films about Taiwan. His interests paradoxically embraces all while focusing on the local. His films deal with what it means to be Taiwanese. Like Theo Angelopoulos’ Greek history lesson THE TRAVELLING PLAYERS, Hou shows people in troubled times. Like Greece, Taiwan has had almost a century of heartache. Yet, Hou refuses to embrace the negative. Instead, he shows Taiwanese, Chinese, and Japanese co-existing in a restless peace. Hou stresses the individual. The Japanese family forced out in CITY OF SADNESS causes an mourning by their Taiwanese friends. Again, a master of opposites, Hou litters his films with many individuals. Unlike Angelopoulos where individuals often get lost in the group, Hou wants to make an epic about every one of his characters.
CITY OF SADNESS follows one family from Japan’s exiting at the end of WWII to the end of Chen Kai-Shaik’s government. This family consists of three brothers. One (Tony Leung) is a deaf mute photographer. One begins the film as mentally ill but gets better only to fall in with a low level hood in the gang war ridden streets of Taiwan. The third, and oldest, brother feigns responsibility but keeps a mistress and illegitimate child on the side while hiding from his wife. The story arc is a complex one which is easy to get lost in (I did). The gangland subplots and how it draws in two of the brothers is a bit vague. Also, the film often skips transition scenes. Hou’s storytelling here is to withhold information. At one point a character is in prison. Executions are going on outside. His name is called. The viewer watches as he tenderly says goodbye to his fellow inmates and then leaves presumably to be executed. He isn’t because the character shows up at a later point.
If Hou the storyteller is vague, Hou the image maker remains nothing short of brilliant. The camera work stuns the viewer in its formal compositions and rich color schemes. At two and three quarter hours, CITY OF SADNESS is at least a half-hour too long. Still, one cannot understate the overall canvas as presented by Hou Hsiao-Hsien in this movie.
CITY OF SADNESS was considered the first of a trilogy of films dealing with Taiwanese history. The third, GOOD MEN, GOOD WOMEN, remains unavailable to me. However, the second comes the most highly touted of all in terms of critical appeal: THE PUPPETMASTER.
Li Tien-Lui was, up until his death in 1994, considered one of the world’s greatest puppeteers. Superficially, THE PUPPETMASTER is a biopic, but on another level the film uses Li (played by Lim Giong) as a stand in for all of the persistent Taiwanese people who survive much struggle. The film celebrates art above war and the simple moment over the dramatic one. Often, the biggest moments in Li’s life are left out of the film. They get narrated, but not filmed. Instead, Hou lets his camera focus on a stairwell, a quiet room in a house, washing clothes in a river, and the presenting of children with new belts. Hou understands that it is the everyday that make or break a person, not the big events. Some of the interior scenes do drag. However, at their best, they have a force that is seldom rivaled by epics (though one long shot of travelers on a ever so tiny bridge is worthy of David Lean). There is a great scene where Li comes to his now estranged home to retrieve his puppets. No one his family seems to have respect for him or use for puppets. It’s a heartbreaking scene, even harder than the father’s funeral a few scenes ahead. It is played without the slightest of melodrama.
Like CITY OF SADNESS portrayal of the Japanese, THE PUPPETMASTER strives for a balance. There are moments of racism like when the Japanese demand the Taiwanese males to cut their hair. Nonetheless, the film includes at least one very positive Japanese official, a police chief. His scenes with Li play with an delightful honesty. The biggest asset of the film is Li Tien-lu who appears as on film narrator of his life. He is a delightfully, crustily elderly gentlemen, not one who makes either apologies or hesitations for any facet of his life. He lived his life fully, and for that he is proud. He is often more interesting than anything that Hou reenacts. Sadly, Li would die just after the completion of this film, so Hou’s timing is impeccable. Once again Hou demands total attention from his audience. He will often omit details or scenes which connect other scenes. One needs to watch the film closely. A couple times a scene would seem out of place and its importance would only come clear only later on. Hou keeps the audience on their toes.
GOODBYE SOUTH, GOODBYE is a Hou Hsiao-Hsien film for those who don’t like Hou Hsiao-Hsien films. The setting is modern (bright lights of urban Taiwan), the characters are modern (small time hoods), and the music is modern (techno-dance). All of this combined with the numerous shots of vehicular movement (trains, motorcycles, cars) makes the film resemble a Wong Kar Wai movie on depressants. The story is yet another variation on Scorsese’s MEAN STREETS. Small time hood Kao (screenwriter Jack Kao) deals with the usual bull: hot head best friend Flatty (Lim Giong), Flatty’s high strung/gambling addicted girlfriend Pretzel, and his own somewhat distant love affair with Ying. Almost the first half of the film focuses on the character’s interaction. Then, Kao gets a mission. He is to go to a smaller city in the south to work out a money making deal. The focus of this deal is not drugs, guns, or gambling; it is swine. Some stud pigs have came on the market and a higher up wants to make a quick profit. Kao gets Flatty and Pretzel to accompany him on the job. As usual, Hou is unwilling to fill in the details: What exactly do the hoods do? Are the girls hookers? Is Kao the father of Ying’s child? What about Pretzel’s gambling debt?
The most interesting aspect about the film is the way it constantly pits its characters in the conflict between familial concerns and business ones. Kao’s father falls ill the day before he is to leave for the south. Kao has to go through with the job anyway. On the other hand, Kao cannot shake off his family’s demand that he run the family restaurant, even if it means giving up his girl. For a change, it is Flatty’s family (and not business partners) which will cause the conflict in the film’s climax.
There is truly one great sequence in GOODBYE SOUTH, GOODBYE. As Flatty frantically searches for a gun for an ill-advised confrontation, the camera constantly observes him and Kao separated by glass. The audience either observes from inside the car windshield Flatty on the outside (in the background) trying to get information or the audience’s view is from inside a hotel with Flatty in foreground and Kao a small figure through the car’s windshield outside the hotel. The separation and loneliness of the camera angles speak volumes for the hopelessness of the planned confrontation. In addition, there are also many good moments: Pretzel and Flatty working (in a lackluster fashion) in the Kao family restaurant; cars zooming by over a green tint sky; organizing the swine deal with the locals; an incredibly long take of a motorcycle track up a hill; Ying coming to visit Kao in the south. These make for a good film.
Nonetheless, GOODBYE SOUTH, GOODBYE is a disappointment for Hou. While no one could call GOODBYE a commercial film, it does follow a far more conventional path than Hou’s other films, even if the style is still the same somewhat obtrusive one. The badly realized coda scene feels tacked as well.
Hou Hsiao-Hsien makes films that need time to grow on the viewer. After a while, one not only comes to love Hou’s past films, but one also begins to look forward anxiously to another one.
The general consensus by critics and filmmakers at the end of the 1990s is that the two greatest filmmakers of the decade are Iran’s Abbas Kiarostami and Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-Hsien. Some may remember my own end of the decade best list (see archives) which mentions my favorite directors and admits with discouragement that films from Kiarostami and Hou which get released in the U.S. are few and far between. When I wrote that list, I had only seen one film from each of the directors. Now, six months later, with three film from each filmmaker under my belt, I am in a better position to assess both filmmakers’ work.
Abbas Kiarostami’s reputation is made because of his films starting from 1987's HOMEWORK (also known as WHERE IS MY FRIEND’S HOUSE) and following with CLOSE-UP (90), AND LIFE GOES ON (92), THROUGH THE OLIVE TREES (94), A TASTE OF CHERRY, and THE WIND WILL CARRY US (99), which is considered his best work to date.
Although his style may appear neo-realistic, Abbas Kiarostami makes puzzle box movies that constantly break the distance between the movie and its viewer. It is impossible to watch a Kiarostami film and not realize one is watching a movie. Actors come out and say “I am playing the role of __________.” The camera can pull back to reveal Kiarostami himself setting up for one more shot. A complaint that one can make is that Kiarostami’s interest in “form” robs his films of what effective “content” they might have had.
This complaint is highly viable in Kiarostami’s most award winning film: A TASTE OF CHERRY. The film shared (with Shohei Imamura’s THE EEL) the Golden Palm at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. The film, which was almost banned in Iran, addresses the subject of suicide. A man drives the course of the movie looking for someone to help him kill himself. He picks up three men. The first two turn him down. The last one talks him out of the suicide. The movie ends with Kiarostami setting up the last shot which is of course the shot we are watching. What does the third passenger say to change the potential suicide victim’s mind? I can’t remember, and the viewing is less than a year old. What does stay in mind are the constant shots of the car ambling down the road and the static shots of two people inside the car. The scenery is gorgeous, but even at ninety minutes the film is tiring.
I have not had a chance to see the first two films in Kiarostami’s trilogy of movies dealing with the small village of Koker. The location holds significance with Kiarostami since HOMEWORK was filmed there. After an earthquake hit the village, Kiarostami made AND LIFE GOES ON which has the director (played by an actor) going to see how his friends and former cast members are holding up. THROUGH THE OLIVE TREES, the last in the series, is a somewhat fictionalized account of the making of AND LIFE GOES ON.
THROUGH THE OLIVE TREES is difficult and slow moving but somewhat rewarding if one can make it through. This is the film that begins with an actor saying who he is and that he will be playing the role of the director. From there, the film begins with the director and his assistant casting their film from the local young people. A young boy playing one role falls for a young girl playing his scene partner. But, there are complications, and she pretends not to notice him. Then, the director must shoot a scene between the two actors. The young actress proves difficult, not wanting to interact with the young actor. The director keeps shooting the scene until he gets what he wants. By the end of the day (and the wrapping of that scene), the young actress has accepted the young actor. That is pretty much all that happens in this hour and fifty minute feature. It is certainly not for those with short attention spans, but if one can get into the mood and pace, THROUGH THE OLIVE TREES offers many great moments. The best of these moments is the last shot, the most unique lovers meeting scene in film history. Kiarostami shoots his lovers from an extreme long shot. He renders his characters little dots in the horizon. The audience can only guess that the meeting was a success. Kiarostami does provide evidence for this interpretation by the jubilation that one dot seems to be having as it moves back toward the camera after the parting.
CLOSE-UP represents Kiarostami’s best work to date. As the title makes clear, this film will be an examination of cinema. Ironically, it is also Kiarostami’s most emotional film.
CLOSE-UP takes its story from a page of Iranian true crime. Hossain Sabzian, a die hard movie fan, passed himself off as Iranian film director Mohsen Makmalbaf to a middle class family. As a result, he got treated well and some mild gifts. More importantly, he got to feel like a director, which is the ultimate goal for every film fan. Then he was arrested for fraud. Kiarostami uses every person from the real event to play themselves. All of the family persons, the judge, the impersonator, and even Makmalbaf himself get to be stars. To put this in perspective, imagine how odd it would be to see a Martin Scorsese film where Steven Spielberg appears with his stalker, and both men play themselves.
One leaves CLOSE-UP unsure of how much they have watched is real and how much isn’t. Obviously, the reenactments between Sabzian and the family were filmed after the trial. However, the trial itself appears to be real and not a reenactment. In fact, it may have been the first thing Kiarostami shot in the film. Yet, this is the section where a slate appears. With this one shot Kiarostami makes the viewer question whether they are watching reality or a reenactment. During the beautiful finale where the movie fan gets a motorcycle ride from his idol, the viewer can hear Kiarostami claim that they will have “only one chance” to get this scene on film. The sound becomes distorted. What we are watching would seem authentic, yet there are changes in camera angles and the film itself looks too polished to be shot on the sly the way Kiarostami claims on the soundtrack. Thus, truth (the courtroom) is played as fiction and fiction (the motorcycle ride) is presented as truth. Whatever else one can say about CLOSE-UP (the slow pace or the often static camera work), it is a work of deconstructionist genius.
Abbas Kiarostami is not one of my favorite directors. I liked CLOSE-UP a great deal and somewhat admired THROUGH THE OLIVE TREES. One must work to like his films. His films are two cinematic styles in one. The first, a naturalistic approach, deals with the everyday, so one should be prepared for little in the way of action. However, underneath the realist’s gaze is the formalist who is concerned with the nature of cinema and the way it interacts (and intersects) with real life. The films are seldom “fun” (the motorcycle ride that ends CLOSE-UP is a delirious exception). While he is slow and tedious at times, Kiarostami is worth the investment. For one thing, no one else makes movies like these.