Death meets Judgment

David Carradine died yesterday.

He was found in a hotel room closet with a rope tied to his neck and genitals.

First it was reported as suicide. I wondered, why genitals?

Today it is reported that his death might be an accident from attempting auto-erotic asphyxiation.

Film people are trying to divert public attention from the cause of his death to the fact that he's dead.

Death collides with judgment, who wins?

Something I learnt about Jean-Pierre Melville

Parts of several interviews with Jean-Pierre Melville.

I think it was the day I was given a Pathe Baby camera, a hand-cranked model, for my sixth birthday, so it was in 1923 that I made my debut as a filmmaker and decided on my path. my love for cinema started with the talkies, around 1929/30s. the first time I heard a word coming from a screen was in White Shadows in the South Seas by Van Dyke and Flaherty, when Monte Blue suddenly said, "civilization, civilization." it was the first time I'd heard talking cinema. at that very moment, I fell madly in love.

What did you do?

I produced and directed Le Silence de La Mer.
I think your first film should be made with your own blood.

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Do you enjoy editing?
Very much. It's without a doubt what I enjoy the most, that and writing. Writing and editing. In other words, the inspiration and the finishing touches.

Do you like filmming?
Not at all. Filming is absolutely horrible. I call it "tedious formality." I hate shooting. My only relief in the whole tiresome business are the wonderful moments when i am directing actors.

Are you hard on your actors, the people you work with?

No, not with the actors, that would be foolish. You can't be hard on any actor, of any kind. It is a fragile thing. It is hard to be in front of a camera and still look natural. I am much more demanding of those behind the camera.

How do you rate yourself as an actor?

Awful, like any amateur trying to do a job that is not his.

Did that make your mise-en-scene more difficult?

Not in terms of mise-en-scene, but in terms of where to place myself. In certain scenes, i am looking at the actors speaking to me, and it is obvious i am watching if they are doing what i asked.

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I think the greatest difficulty is portraying sexulity.

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I represent virtue.

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In terms of censorship, I am a puritan. That said, I can forgive anything as long as it has quality.

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what do gangsters represent for you?

Nothing at all. I think they are pathetic losers. but it so happens that the gangster story is a very suitable vehicle for the particular form of modern tragedy called film noir, which was born from american detective novels. It is a flexible genre. You can put whatever u want into it, good or bad. and it is a fairly easy vehicle to use to tell stories that matter to you, about individual freedom, friendship, or rather human relationships, because they're not always friendly. Or betrayal, one of the driving forces in american crime novels.

Do you know any gangsters?
yes, i knew quite a few, but they are nothing like the gangsters in my films.

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I assure you, alone in my room at 3:00am, i am not only modest but humble.

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I like to take risks.

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My films never follow the current trend.

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It's a film's duty to be commercial. Above all, it's a product.

It is the honest point of view of an artist: you have to please.

I recently finished Akira Kurosawa's autobiography Something Like An Autobiography. The Chinese title is The Oil of Toads. Kurosawa probably didn't get a chance to decide how to name the foreign versions of his autobiography, but the editor' choice certainly reflect the taste of a culture. The Oil of Toads comes from a Japanese folk tale about a special kind of toad in the mountains in Japan. Those toads are uglier than the usual ones and they have a couple more legs. People catch them and put them in front of a mirror or into a glass tank. Once the toads see from the reflection how ugly they are, they sweat oil all over their body. This oil is a precious medicine used to heal burn wounds. It's said when Kurosawa looked back at his past, he felt like one of those toads, discovering all the awkwardness and unbearableness of himself and sweating oil all over, and the essence of the oil forms this book. I am not sure if the American editor is aware of this story and how Kurosawa compared himself to a fictional toad, but I do think The Oil of Toads might be a little elusive for American readers. Something Like An Autobiography is more direct, simpler, yet still retains a taste of Kurosawa's humbleness, which can be found everywhere in this book. On the notion of hunbleness, the American title and the Chinese one do agree. Personally I prefer The Oil of Toads. It's more intriguing.

I am not an expert on Kurosawa. I have only seen some of the most famous ones. Like many Chinese "cultural youth", my viewing experience of Japanese cinema started with more contemporary filmmakers such as Shunji Iwai and Takeshi Kitano. Films like Kids Return, April Story deeply marked our youthhood. While we received the very much needed sex education in western movies like 91/2 Weeks, we identified our depressed growing pains and emotions with those characters in Japanese movies. As for filmmakers like Nagisa Oshima and Akira Kurosawa that are probably considered national treasure in Japan, I labeled them as antiques from the history of civilization and shelved them for a long time before I could put my hands on them.

Luckily my entrance into Kurosawa's world was a serious one. It was in a theatre theory class for which we all needed to write a paper comparing one stylistic factor among 3 Shakespearean productions. In addition to two theatrical productions, I picked Throne of Blood, which is an adaptation of Macbeth. The stylistic factor I picked was the different portrayal of Lady Macbeth. I studied the film very closely. Although I haven't seen that many adaptation movies of Shakespearean theatre, I stronglyly agree with what's been widely believed that Throne of Blood is the best cinematic adaptation of Shakespear. It is simply one of the best filmes ever made. What amazed me the most is how Kurosawa perfectly combined the Japanese Noh theatre with a western story. Neither did the style of Noh theatre become an obstacle in delivering the story, nor did the story look awkward in a Japanese costume. The more I studied it, the more I was excited about it and the more I believed Kurosawa was a genius.

I love how Kurosawa called making a sequel for any movie is a wait-for-windfalls behavior. Of course, in Chinese it's called "waiting beside a tree for more hares to come". It's such a precise description of its nature and motive and stupidity.

Second Wajda Double Feature Night

Last thursday, it was the first double-feature screening of Andrzej Wajda's films: Pokolenie (A Generation) and Kanal (Canal). Throughout the screening I was thinking to myself: Why did I think I could possibly find Wajda's movies interesting? When Jake said they were boring, why wouldn't I believe him? Next time when someone who is capable of enjoying Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles tells me something is boring, I am gonna believe him.

A Generation

Kanal

Yesterday, it was another double-feature screening of Andrzej Wajda. Though exhausted last week, I still went. Hoping there is more to Wajda than drainy war movies, I decided not to forfeit the theatre.

The two films screened last night were Popiol i diament (Ashes and Diamonds) and Wszystko na sprzedaz (Everything for Sale). Ashes and Diamonds, with Pokolenie (A Generation) and Kanal (Canal), completed Wajda's unintended WWII triology. Ashes is my favorite among the three. Both Chris and Cassey expressed that they liked Kanal too. I could see how Kanal is a great film, but it is definitely a more demanding movie. I was not at all in the mood or at the energy level to enjoy it. As for A Generation, the most interesting thing for me is the brief appearance of Roman Polanski. He is in the second A-Generation picture above. His character is the most naughty soldier of that small underground Communist group. The way he played the character is quite playful, which is not very far from his interesting personality and experience in real life. Ashes is a more mature "Polish New Waver". There was a French New Wave, a Czech New Wave...a Polish New Wave too. Editing and cinematography were unconventional and playful, and this is especially discernible in Ashes. Fast editing delivers the result quickly enough to eliminate the process. Always ending with a strong and interesting image/perspective, it is the result that stands out, not process. Quite Godardesque.

Ashes and Diamonds

I was not very impressed with Everything for Sale. There are some really beautiful images, but the story and overal structure of the film are not strong. It's a film about filmmaking. Films about filmmaking always present a challenge to filmmakers on whether the sophisticated psychological relationships among all actors/actresses/characters can be played well. It's a test of a director's ability to handle psychoanalysis and parallel universes: filmic reality and afilmic reality. François Truffaut did well in his La Nuit américaine (Day for Night), and Robert Altman did even better in The Player. Wajda once said in an interview that he doesn't like love stories, but he's always excited about wars and killings. Obviously, Wajda is more of a alive-or-dead big picture kind of guy, intertwining multi dimensions of human beings is not his forte.

Everything for Sale

-------discussion about movie stops here-------

Seating is always the first question to be answered when we enter a theatre. For movies like Wajda's, I need to sit far from the screen so that the screen frame is within my eyesight limit and I can still enjoy the aesthetic of the film even when I am not getting all the historic background or details.

Last night after I seated myself in the very last row, a mid-age man passed me and found a seat two rows in fromt of me. I realized it's not A guy. It's THE guy. I know this guy. I used to see him all the time on #7 bus when I was living in University Village. He's Asian, possibly Chinese. He has a weird face. There's something like a big tumor sticking out on his forehead. He's short. Although he always wears a boyish jean overall, I know he's not young. I have always wondered what he does. I see him on campus a lot, but obviously he's not a student or teacher because he never shows his buckeye ID and always pays for bus fare. As frequently as he takes bus, almost daily, he never uses a pass, always pays cash. He never has anything with him, no bag of any kind. He's like this sad weird-looking puzzle to me. While I went down the memory lane, he turned around and smiled at me. I politely smiled back but immediately regretted, because he started talking to me, obviously a person who doesn't have much chance to showcase his knowledge in anything. Do you know this movie? Have you seen it before? You should pay attention to the actress. Do you know the historical background? Oh, you have to know something about the background to understand the movie. Are you an art student? What do you study? I thought you have to be an art student of some kind to... Not bothering to finish the sentence, he turned back. Throughout the one-speaker conversation, I just kept smiling and nodding politely. I said I didn't know much about the history and I told him I am not a student...any more. I didn't say "art student" and I gave it a long pause between "student" and "any more", trying to get out of this conversation yet remain honest at the same time. It worked. I knew why he stopped talking to me. He was probably thinking why someone who is ignorant in both the history and art come to see this movie? He stopped talking to me. That's all I wanted.

I felt sad for him, for why he started talking to me and why he stopped as well. His enthusiasm about a converstaion was lit in a second by a mere chance of human contact and was killed in half a second by a quick judgment. I am glad I don't look like an artist or art student. As puzzling as this guy is, I hope this is my first and last contact with him.

Striking Hunger

The screening of Steve McQueen's Hunger brought a full house to Wexner Wednesday night. I knew Steve McQueen was a big deal, but I didn't know he was such a big deal. Admission was special priced; Sherri, Wexner's Director, was there for the introduction; and everybody was there, film studies people, college of arts people, all those artsy and filmsy faces.


When you see this poster, what do you think this beautiful pattern is? Would you have a better clue if you were told first that the film is about a famous hunter strike in the prison of Northern Ireland? It is shit, poop, human discharge...however you name it. It's the trace of shit on the wall after a prison guard cleaned it, or tried to, with high-pressure water. There is no toilet in the prison cells, so prisoners pour their urine out through the gap between the cell door and floor, and they paint their poop on the wall, with their bare hands.

Steve McQueen is an extremely normal looking African-British. If you don't know who he is, you probably would assume he is one of those cleaners with a broom, paper towels and detergent waiting outside a lady's bathroom. No racial profiling here I swear to god, but the way he dresses and his look are just not artsy or schorlarly or nerdy or weird in any way.

The movie will definitely make one of the top 10 movies I see in 2009. It is filled with control, power, and defiance. The tension never stops. I could barely remember to blink my eyes or to breath. I could feel vividly how my body was being electrified again and again and again. It's different from the kind of shock created by fast editing or huge explosion. The tension of the movie runs under the skin, constantly. I would want to watch the movie for a second time or even more, not to appreciate the art of it, but just to experience the movie.

The tension of the movie is created by extremities. The violent and appalling imagery counters the rigorous image composition and patient construction of pace and rhythm. Good movies are not the perfect ones. Good movies teach you how to watch them. Like Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, Hunger trains you to be observative. Hunger leads you through a maze of daily rituals of prisoners and prison guards with great patience. Movie starts with a man soaking his hands in the water. The knuckles are seriously wounded, red. Why? The way he puts on his rings and his clothes are neatly folded and placed, you know it must have been like this for however many years in his adult life. Before he leaves his house, he looks around and checks if anyone has placed any bomb under his car. Again, you know he does it everyday. But why? Only after a quarter of the movie has gone by, the movie reveals that he is a prison guard whose job is to beat up prisoners, which explains his wound and precaution.

Another instance is the shit on the wall. With the prisoner who first appears in the movie entering his cell, he sees the inside of the space, unevenly browned walls. He looks around, probably trying to figure out what it is as all the audience are. His curiosity and ours, his fear and ours, encounter and merge at this moment through a point-of-view shot. You're so taken over by a desire of wanting to know that you almost forget you're watching a movie. You are no longer watching a movie. You are watching the walls. First I thought it was blood. Then I knew it is not blood from the texture of it, but I still didn't know what it was. As a matter of fact, it was still hard for me to believe what it is when I saw the scene of a prisoner sticking his hands in his pants and his ass. It is just beyond my imagination that any human would want to live in the middle of our own shit, but obviously it was not a matter of choice, and that's probably the best way to dispose it according to prisoner's experience after years.

McQueen comes from a fine art background. When an audience asked him about his poetic imgery, he said it was easy. Compared to the history of painting, that of film is nothing. He gains his inspiration from painting. McQueen speaks through image, so do the characters in his movie. A character who only appears twice, in the form of voice, in the movie is Margaret Thatcher. However, her voice is such an important vehicle in contextualizing the political environment of the hunger strike, virtually the only vehicle. Thatcher's voice is always accompanied with images. The second time, it is the image of the inside of prison. With her voice filling the hallway, her politics takes an invisible existence that haunts every prisoners and prison guards.

The core scene is a 17-minute long negotiation between Sands and a priest. It is seemingly the most laid-back scene of the whole movie: people are communicating, occasionally with a joke, with each other in a non-violence way. Both parties elaborate on their stance, but neither surrender. The encounter of verbalized opinions is violence in another form, and it takes you further in their mind and identity. The moment the priest is convinced, or let's say he gives up, you know it's the end of violence in the movie, but the start of Sands struggling in hunger.

With all the stories told and all the details depicted through a relatively slow pace, it is almost hard to believe that the movie is only 96 minute long. Again it is the extremities. There's no grey area, no neutral zone, no time for a nerve rest. There is very little dialogue in the movie. When prisoners and prison guards are separately portrayed, all of them are leading a life filled with oppressed silence; when they meet, it's explicit violence in the sound of beating and screaming.

It is not a story that many people can associate themselves with. McQueen spent 5 years working on this movie. He interviewed hunger strike survivors and then prison guards. As for history and history-telling, this movie can be only one version of it, but McQueen sure has delivered his vision clearly and beautifully.

A Stranger Not So Close To Me

I made a mistake by reading an article about grandpa this morning. My uncle wrote the article and my mom sent it to me because grandpa's 100th anniversary is coming in April. I read one paragraph and my eyes were filled with tears. I am in the office! Stop it!

The first part is titled "A Stranger Close To Me". That's exactly who grandpa was to me. I knew he was my grandpa; he was always there; he smiled all the time; I knew he was someone great, but I never felt I knew him. Obviously that's not just me, not just because I didn't live close to him. I learnt a lot about grandpa from uncle's writing, his career, his music, his hobbies, his research, and how he survived all the attacks and tortures during the Cultural Revolution. To many, grandpa is considered the third most important Chinese composer in modern Chinese history, next to the two who co-composed the National Anthem of China. To me, for a long time, he was just a name, a face, a biological origin where some of my blood came from. I didn't know how I was supposed to think about him, his fame and all the words and evidence of his greatness until I heard The Nirvana of Pheonix at a concert held by China's Ministry of Culture for his 90th birthday. I was convinced. I started looking up to this small man. I understood why my aunt said there probably would be nobody in the family who will exceed what grandpa had achieved.

The Nirvana of Pheonix is a modern symphony piece. It was later accompanied for chorus with a poem/lyrics written by Guo Moruo (the Chinese writer who was the closest to receiving a Literature Nobel Prize. he committed suicide during the Cultural Revolution before the Nobel Prize was granted, the prize was withdrawn because Nobel Prize only goes to people alive). The Nirvana of Pheonix changed what grandpa meant to me. I could vividly feel my love for him, but he was becoming more of a symbol, a symbol of great talent, and more distant.

When grandpa was sick in hospital, I only visited him once in ICU. I remember I stood in a corner and cried insanely for over half an hour afterwards. Grandpa passed away at the age of 93. It's been 7 years. I have never been back to his apartment since, and I have never visited him at the cemetery after the funeral either, not because I don't miss him but he is the most haunting one among all my passed-away grandparents (all four of them), I am afraid that the physical presence of anything related to him will discharge all of whatever that's been accumulated for 7 years and destroy me. Just like how I have always stayed away from the yard and little street where I spent my childhood. I had a wonderful time there, but memory alone can be too scary.

I published an essay about grandpa on an art magazine when I was in college working for Beijing Concert Hall. I felt proud when I saw people reading my article. My family was proud too, I think. At a family gathering after the essay was published, my aunt read the article to the whole family. Mom told me that everybody cried, then she said she hopes I can write something like that about her someday. I thought to myself, luckily I was not at the family gathering.

I saw on a famous Chinese cultural critic's blog a list of artists banned by the Ministry of Culture of China. I was shocked at first, because I thought the reason they got banned was the content of their works, and a bunch of names in there are rarely associated with sex or violence or whatever unhealthy. Then I figured, politics is probably the bigger bitch here. Most of them probably have made some sort of statement, or have participated some activities or concerts that advocated for the independence or Tibet, the independence of Taiwan, the freedom of Fa Lun Gong (a group considered cult by Chinese government), or against Beijing Olympics 2008. I don't know how he got access to this list. As he works for one of the biggest commentary magazines in China, he might have got this as part of the policy package from the Ministry of Culture. I am sure this is not the ultimate list of all the artists that will get banned, but on the other hand, I also believe that if some agency wants to include some of the black-listed artist, there's a way to work it.

Here we go:

A Tribe Called Quest
Alanis Morissette
Ben Harper
Beck
Biz Markie
Blur
Bjork
Beastie Boys
Buddy Guy
Buffalo Daughter
Blues Traveler
Blackalicious
Blondie
Celibate Rifles
Cibo Matto
Dadon
De La Soul
Dave Matthews Band
Eskimo Joe
Eddie Vedder & Mike McCready
Foo Fighters
Fugees
Garpa
Gerling
Garbage
Herbie Hancock
Jon Spencer
John Lee Hooker
Jebediah
Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros
KRS-ONE
Kraftwerk
Live
Luscious Jackson
Lee Perry
Mighty Mighty Bosstones
Mad Professor
Michael Stipe & Mike Mills
Mutabaruka
Money Mark
Nawang Khechog
Not From There
Noel Gallagher
Neil Finn
Otis Rush
Pavement
Porno for Pyros
Pearl Jam
Pulp
Patti Smith
R.E.M.
Radiohead
Rage Against The Machine
Richie Havens
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Rancid
Regurgitator
Run DMC
Sonic Youth
Sean Lennon
Spiderbait
Taj Mahal
The Smashing Pumpkins
The Skatalites
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
The Wallflowers
The Cult
Tracy Chapman
The Roots
The Mavis’s
The Avalanches
The Living End
Urban Dance Squad
U2
Wyclef Jean
Wu-Tang Clan
You Am I
Thom Yorke
Trans Am
Yoko Ono
Yungchen Lhamo

The whole thing is stupid.

First, all of these artists, or most of them, need education. Do they really know what the issue at root is of those subjects? They simply can't resist the sexy appeal of the name "protecting the freedom of religion" or something like that.

Second, instead of giving credit for what these artists said, Chinese government could have been smarter and just ignored them. I highly doubt any of these artists would be shouting "Free Tibet!" in their concert in China. Once they're in China, their eyeballs and their mind will be too busy looking around learning and getting their new brain-wash from this country to remember their never-has-been-firm stance on those issues. Plus people in the cities, those that could be possible performing destinations, are educated well enough to hold their always-has-been-firm stance on those issues. The government should have more faith in the people that they won't change their political opinion just because some pop singer says so and so.

Deep down it is the rivalry of two ideologies, which might never be resolved, with many many people like me caught in between.

Recently a friend who is going back to China told me that when she was booking her plane ticket, because it was a single trip, the ticket agent asked whether she's a U.S. citizen. The ticket agent said right now Chinese government does not allow U.S. citizens to buy single-trip tickets to China. Our speculation is that this is partly a job market protection policy. While the unemployment rate in the U.S. has flown up over 8%, China is working on maintaining an economic growth of 8%. If what that ticket agent said was true, basically Chinese government has said no to the U.S. labor export and no to U.S. emigration. Not that either is necessarily going to happen on a large or visible scale, but the translation of power shifting has never manifested faster.