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Review
by Kozo: |
The Sun Also Rises
is a wondrous and beautiful film that exceeds expectations
while also curiously sidestepping them. Actor-director
Jiang Wen (Devils on the Doorstep) adapts from
the novel "Velvet" by Ye Mi, delivering a film that
doesn't exactly fit standard genre classification.
The film tells four interrelated China-set stories,
three of them taking place right around the end of
the Cultural Revolution, though not explicitly stated
as such. There's no hand-wringing or overwrought histrionics
going on like in, say, Farewell My Concubine.
Instead, the film concentrates on eccentric characters
and unusual and quirky situations, sometimes tiptoeing
on the edge of fantasy, but remaining grounded in
a recognizable emotional and even political reality.
The film also looks and sounds wonderful, though not
so much that it entirely distracts the audience from
its borderline unfathomable messages. Simply put,
The Sun Also Rises enchants and entertains,
but never quite adds up to something that concrete.
However, that may be its ultimate strength.
The film opens in 1976 in
a rural village in Eastern China, where a graying
widow (Zhou Yun) dreams of a pair of embroidered shoes,
and manages to purchase the exact pair the next morning
from a local seller. However, she promptly loses them
and subsequently seems to go mad. She spends her days
uprooting a local tree, collecting large rocks, and
generally acting like a village idiot with severe
attitude. This is a problem for her son (Jaycee Chan),
who has to constantly leave his job to prevent her
from causing even more trouble, including possibly
hurting herself. The conflict yields little overt
resolution and lots of repetition, but somewhere in
there, the mother makes her character and issues known,
and her son subtly and quietly ages. Jaycee Chan is
solid as the young man, and Zhou Yun is commanding
and charismatic, demonstrating her character's madness
with an odd combination of opaque charm and regal
grace. The discoveries in this segment are major and
yet not explicitly discussed, and the tone is lively,
refreshingly comic, and ultimately bittersweet.
Segment two moves to Southern
China in the same year, where college teacher Liang
(Anthony Wong) comes under suspicion of perversion.
Supposedly he groped some women at an outdoor movie,
leading to an inspired flashlight-lit footchase and
the sight of Anthony Wong injured, bedridden, and
bizarrely beset by numerous women desiring his affections.
Joan Chen is Dr.Lin, who desires to jump Liang's bones,
and her wanton performance is dripping with palpable,
possibly disturbing sexuality. Meanwhile, Liang turns
to pal Tang (Jiang Wen) for some counsel, while silently
coping with the possibility that the accusation against
him may have set in motion events that will ruin him.
This second segment features the most overt reference
to the Cultural Revolution, referencing the time's
"mob rule" mentality in a brazenly comic, but no less
effective fashion. The segment is alive with song
and character, delivering memorable moments and audio
images that last long past the segment's surprising,
affecting, and appropriate close.
Segment three moves back
to Eastern China, where Tang meets up with the widow's
son. The young man is now a brigade leader in the
village, where Tang has been sent along with his wife
(Kong Wei). The newcomers fit into their new environs
in differing fashion. Tang becomes fast friends with
the local kids thanks to the frequent pheasant hunts
that he organizes, with his bugle providing the hunting
calls, and his monstrous shotgun providing the means
of execution. However, without his attentions, his
wife begins to stray. Meanwhile, Tang discovers a
mysterious stone cottage filled with crumbling monuments
to memory, and the young man demonstrates an innocent,
almost cheerful death wish. This third segment is
given to the film's most evocative environments, and
Jiang Wen anchors the entire segment with commanding
presence. The film's plot - or what remains of it
- finds its greatest suspense here, but that suspense
is mitigated by a deliberate, inevitable outcome that
bewilders as much as it affects.
The final story is the big
payoff. Maybe. The film backtracks in time to 1958,
where we finally learn how all these characters and
events connect - or perhaps not. The Sun Also Rises doesn't deliver a discernible cause-and-effect that
links its stories together, as the characters don't
connect in the past as much as they just happen by
one another via chance or coincidence. This is where
the film's expectations fail, as the film's conclusion
doesn't overtly reveal more than just the seeds of
each character's eventual fate. The result is a movie
that's a bit of a head scratcher, as it cannot deliver
a conclusive point. For those seeking full understanding, The Sun Also Rises may be tough going, as it's
clearly a film that's about something, but not one
that presents its conclusions on clear, perfectly-lettered
cue cards. When the film finally reaches its Gobi
desert-set denouement, there's still the sense that
the filmmakers need to dispense something - anything
- that pulls the whole thing together. Willing cinema
readers, cultural theorists, history buffs, or some
combination of the above will likely find whole acres
to chew on, but Joe Q. Moviegoer? They could be completely
lost.
That's not to say that The
Sun Also Rises fails, because it doesn't. Indeed,
Jiang Wen takes his elliptical narrative and weaves
something involving and even mesmerizing. Technically,
the film is gorgeous, possessing sublime cinematography
and art direction; Cultural Revolution-era China has
probably never been more attractive than here. The
film's sometimes fantastic feel extends beyond its
events; the settings, colors, and atmosphere bleed
a sort of idealized, glorious reality. The film's
subtle tone is another key, sometimes implying the
dramatic or tragic, but also seeming whimsical or
lyrical. The acting and narrative, while potentially
frustrating in their opacity, are nevertheless affecting
in their unpredictable, immediate emotions. The music
and sound are also top-notch; the film makes frequent
use of song and poetry, ace composer Joe Hisaishi
provides a trademark distinctive score, and the film's
sound design has a powerful presence all its own.
The lively tone and enchanting details easily carry
the film. This is a movie that can end with meaning
or purpose possibly escaping one's grasp. However,
Jiang Wen makes acute, admirable use of every other
power that cinema possesses, such that a complete
story need not be told. It only has to happen, like
a flower blooming, or perhaps the sun rising in the
East. As a clear narrative journey, The Sun Also
Rises doesn't quite click, but as cinema, the
film absolutely soars. (Kozo 2007) |
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