"The physical feats they are able to accomplish with relative ease seem inhumanly impossible for the rest of us who have to deal with gravity and lower back pain. Still, when I watch the eloquent fight sequences, I want to be Zhang Ziyi, swinging effortlessly from tree to tree, making the bamboo forest yield to me by doing the splits. Yet, when her garment gets torn from her neck, her ivory shoulder is revealed to the audience, and I come crashing to the ground and get impaled by the bamboo spears, because if it were my shoulder, my driver's tan would be rudely exposed, along with my mortality, and my desperate inability to shed the reality of who I am. Not Zhang Ziyi. Not living in feudal China. Not a warrior. Not able to do the splits. Not really Asian. ... We don't see Asians in film unless they have super powers, and I certainly don't have them, so where does that leave this erstwhile actor?"
I finally saw Shi mian mai fu this evening. Friends who had already seen it warned me to treat it as a straightforward blockbuster, a spectacle, and not worry over the risible plot. I've (horror) not seen Crouching Tiger or Hero, therefore I had few expectations. Instead, I sank into my seat and gave myself up to the sensory assault.
From richly-textured fabrics to natural entities, the screen pulsated. Bright blood reds, buttercup yellows, ocean blues and vivid violets bled into autumnal russets, wheat golds and bamboo greens, and finally into icy cold silvers and greys. To describe the film as visually sumptuous is an understatement.
Sometimes, I also closed my eyes and wallowed in the film's aural vocabulary: the ribbons of silk whispering through the air, the rustling curtain of beads, the echoing drums and the haunting whistles of bamboo spears. The soundscapes merged silence and sound with nerve-tingling effect.
The script is so sappy and melodramatic that we laughed out loud at a few "poignant" (translation: cheesy) moments. I also stifled several yawns. The film's attention to detail, however, was so astonishing, I could forgive it all its sins. Go see this film if you're suffering from painter's block.
One thing: why, since The Matrix, does time need to stop during all movie fight scenes? Enough already!
One more thing: after making mental notes to buy a China Rough Guide, I discovered that it was actually the Ukraine's epic landscape we had been gorging on. Astounding. Need to add it to my dream destinations list (which includes Japan, Mongolia, Senegal, Iceland, New Zealand, Canada, Louisiana and Vienna).
Other links today:
+ Sugar 'N Spicy. An art blog with a difference.
+ De Grouchy Owl. A funny and wonderfully-descriptive blog on life in Pakistan.
+ Subvertise gallery. 'Subvertise! Exposing the Corporation' is a poke in the eye for corporate advertising.
+ How to explain the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster to children. The National Youth Agency's list of resources.
+ "NASA scientists using data from the Indonesian earthquake calculated it affected Earth's rotation, decreased the length of day, slightly changed the planet's shape, and shifted the North Pole by centimeters. The earthquake that created the huge tsunami also changed the Earth's rotation." NASA press release on the Indian Ocean tsunami.
+ Meditation gives brain a charge. "Brain research is beginning to produce concrete evidence for something that Buddhist practitioners of meditation have maintained for centuries: Mental discipline and meditative practice can change the workings of the brain and allow people to achieve different levels of awareness."
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