Taiwan's dialogue with the gods

Hou Hsiao-hsien has been one of my favorite directors since I saw a retrospective of his films at the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Art in 2000. A press release put out at the time by Taiwan's U.S. 'embassy' said:

Hou Hsiao-Hsien, from Taiwan, was named best director of the 1990s by film critics writing for the Village Voice, Le Monde, and Vogue. Nevertheless, his films are impossible to find in commercial release in the United States. Drawing on traditions from Chinese landscape painting and theater, Hou explores oblique staging devices, long takes, deep perspective, distanced and zig-zagged action. As a consequence, his films are densely textured, stylized, rich in detail, and emotionally nuanced.

Hou's often referred to as the favorite director working today of other directors, and is a darling of some film critics (others hate his slow pace and tend to not understand his non-Western sensibilities). So I was looking forward to watching on DVD one of his more recent works, Millennium Mambo.

But I found it only okay. I didn't really get it, in the sense that half the movie I had to work to keep straight what was happening, and afterwards I sat there and wondered if what I understood was all there was. If it were a film by a no-name director I wouldn't even have bothered, and would've just dismissed it as an impressionistic look at two relationships in the life of an amazingly cute woman, played by Shu Qi.

The two best reviews I could find were by Manohla Dargis, when she worked for the L.A. Times, and a review in Slant. Dargis' review reads:

A story about getting lost in a dream, Hou Hsiao-hsien's "Millennium Mambo" opens with a vision of the sublime. With the camera trained on a woman walking in slow motion, a voice-over explains that once upon a time this dazzling creature was a slave to love. The woman tried to escape her lover, but she kept returning to the scene of her sadness "as if under a spell or hypnotized." She returned only to have her heart broken again and again. As we discover, she also came back to give us the gift of her story.

The woman on screen is called Vicky (Shu Qi) and, although it's never stated explicitly, this is her story. That story, which unfolds entirely in flashback, mainly involves Vicky's unhappy relationship with two men 10 years earlier just as the world was moving from the second millennium into the third. Then in her mid-20s, Vicky feebly tried to extricate herself from a long-term relationship with a boyfriend her own age, Hao-Hao (Tuan Chun-hao), even as she was entering a new romance with an older man named Jack (Kao Jack). Along the way with each man, there were fights, a little lovemaking and a lot of hanging out; mostly, though, in a story about the seductions and perils of memory, there were moments in time.

In "Millennium Mambo," men and women drift from moment to moment unmoored from the here and the now. Unlike the characters in director Hou's previous films — including his masterpieces "The Puppetmaster" and "Flowers of Shanghai" — Vicky and her friends don't have strong connections to specific places, to a home or a history. It's telling that her story goes back only as far as the startof her relationship with Hao-Hao as if she had been born the first time he saw her. Maybe she was. Once a bystander to her own life, Vicki floated in a narcissistic haze. She had burned as brightly as the colors that light up every scene — the film pulses with hot purples, electric greens and violent reds — and with equally useless beauty.

"Millennium Mambo" is the 15th film from Hou, a leader in Taiwan's cinematic new wave of the 1980s. Although widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers working today, with each new movie considered a major event (everywhere but here, that is), "Millennium Mambo" is the first of Hou's features to secure a U.S. release.

That pathetic fact partly speaks to the impoverished state of foreign-language distribution in this country, where French trifles command more attention than the greatest movies from Taiwan or China. There are all sorts of reasons for this type of cinematic prejudice, including the unpleasant reality that many of this country's cultural gatekeepers seem more comfortable when a filmmaker is named Jones or Smith rather than Chow or Kim.

Given the magnificence of Hou's previous films, I wish I loved "Millennium Mambo" more. There's wonderful promise in Hou's attempt to make a movie about the kind of woman who's usually part of the scenery, standing prettily off to the side while the action swirls around her. Yet perhaps because Vicky is that kind of disposable ornament, Hou never manages to turn this beautiful conceit into a woman. Yet as always with this filmmaker, the visual pleasures are enormous and often deeply touching. One of the most ravishing images in a film filled with ravishing images is of Vicky gently lowering her face into some freshly fallen snow. As she raises her head laughing, the camera lingers on the impression she's left behind. In the snow, we see the traces of a self already melting into a memory.

I'm glad Dargis, like me, was left slightly disappointed; most of the other reviews talked about how great the film was, an accessible masterpiece, etc.--sometimes mindless praise is damning, especially when there's a faintly PC-air to the once-over-lightly-now-let's-get-to-the-real-films reviews.

And although Dargis's review is one of the best ones she, like everyone else, generally talks around the film, filling out her review with padding about Hou and speaking in generalities about the film's atmosphere, without being clear about what the film's plot is and therefore being unable to explain what the film's really about.

It's a common technique critics use--they fling words and concepts around about the film's atmosphere, technical details and the director's body of work so as to come across as knowing without saying anything and risk being wrong, and rather than providing a close reading and grappling with what actually happens in the film under review. Critics hope the reader wind up with too much dust in their eyes to notice.

It's only the amateurs who are naive enough to actually try to to pin down what a film's about, and to give a straightforward opinion of good or bad (the only consistent exception to this is Jonathan Rosenabaum of the Chicago Reader, who in his only published comment about MM contracted the interviewer's effusive praise and said: "I've seen it at least three times, and didn't like it any better the third time than I did the first. Apart from the beginning and ending, I don't much like it at all, I'm afraid.")

The other review I thought was decent was byEd Gonzalez in Slant magazine, who wrote:

"Looking at the youthful friends around me, I find that their cycle and rhythm of 'birth, age, illness and death' are moving several times faster than those of my generation," says auteur Hou Hsiao-hsien about his sexy and transfixing Millennium Mambo, a departure (read: more techno music) of sorts for a director known for less youthful pictures like The Flowers of Shanghai and The Puppetmaster. The film is an ethereal, opiate-induced chronicle of a young girl (a flower of Shanghai if you will) whose life is preciously unexamined. Vicki (Shu Qi) lives with her abusive disc jockey boyfriend Hao-Hao (Tuan Chung-Hao); when she finally leaves him, she befriends a mobster, Jack (Kao Jack), who doesn't bring her any closer to joy. The film begins at the end, with a noticeably free Vicki walking down a footbridge before she disappears into the dark shadows of a staircase below. The camera stops—or, more accurately, it lets go. Very little happens in the film (hence the Hollywood Reporter's frustration) because Hou's subject is (once again) stasis. Just as the forward momentum of Hou's images seemingly summons Vicki toward a life of transcendence, the girl's elegiac voice-over (positioned 10 years in the future) suggests that she did persevere the ennui and doping of her young life. Some of the most beautiful passages in the film evoke the paralysis of modern living and the promise of change: Vicki leaves an imprint of her face on the snow and an 80-year-old grandmother yearns for another 20 years (so she can see how much the world around her has changed). The second-person perspective of Vicki's voice-over ravishingly intensifies Hou's fixation with the disconnect between our past and present lives—that inexplicable, instantaneous moment in time when we leave a ghostly self behind.

I agree with his point that MM centers around time/change/pace of life, and I find the snyposis to at least not be misleading or downright wrong.

The snow scene is great, as is a scene where the camera stays in front of Vicky as she stands up out of the sunroof of Jack's car as they drive down the road at night, with her white shirt flapping around her in the wind and a look of glee on her face.

But I think the opening scene is the movie's best. I'd describe it as a long take lasting minutes of Shu/Vicky from the back as she walks down--bounces, really--a pedestrian bridge, hair flying and every so often looking back through the camera, as a techno beat plays in the background. The passageway is lit with row after row of horizontal fluroscent tubes which slowly scroll by as the camera follows her vertically forward. The angle makes it seem like the walk goes on forever; after a bit she starts to narrate over the scene, in the third person, a few lines about her and her boyfriend; how she keeps trying to break away and how he somehow keeps getting her to come back.

This scene is where Vicky first describes herself as "under a spell, or hypnotized" and it's a key line I think (Hou thinks so too, she repeats her opening lines verbatim near the end of the film, where you really feel the truth of it).

In my experience Hou's interested in two things that American critics underestimate or are blind to: human obsession/longing that's simultaneously destructive and the only way to pass time; and Taiwan's place in the world. I think the former helps explain why in MM the characters are always smoking, drinking or doing drugs; and why Vicky is unable to break away from the abusive Hao-hao.

The film unfolds in a series of flashbacks that's not always sequential; the conceit is that the events take place in the months bridging the new millennium, and Vicky's narrating from 2009. It's interesting to me that Hou does that--he chooses not to show any scenes from 2009, so it's literally just a disembodied voice from the future, almost like God narrating over the lives of these confused humans; it's a voice that could just as easily have been set in 2002 or 2004 or 2006--so I assume he deliberately chooses 10 years to accentuate the fact that what the narrator says isn't always going to be accurate, memory being what it is.

And it isn't. The narrator breaks in like every 20 minutes or so for like a minute to recount something while the on-screen action shows the aftermath of what she's describing. The action on screen then goes back to show what she started narrating a minute ago, and unfolds from that point forward, usually stopping before getting to the last thing she narrates, which then is never shown (he threw a thermos at me; or the cops then arrested me).

The action always more or less follows what she says, but usually of course it's more complicated than how she flatly recounts it. Further, sometimes as she's narrating the scene that's playing out seamlessly shifts forward in time to match her recollection, so one theme of MM is definitely how time and memory mix.

Actually, it's like a mambo--one step forward (as she speaks the scene often shows the aftermath of what she's narrating), one step back (she stops narrating, the scene flashes back to show what she just said).

Further, a timeline of the movie's scenes overall is something like, with 1-18 being chronological order from earliest to latest:
18--2009 Vicky narrating
1--2000 Vicky walks (I'm assuming the opening scene is the earliest, she's carefree)
11--Vicky is at a dinner where Jack's friend does magic for a group
12--Vicky comes home, fights with her boyfriend Hao-hao (he threw a thermos at me)
2--Vicky meets Hao-hao, recounts how he said they're from different worlds
3--Vicky and Hao-hao are visited by the police (we were arrested)
5--Vicky hangs out with Jack, a gangster, while working as a bar hostess
6--Vicky meets some half-Japanese bartenders
17--Vicky goes to Japan to hang out with bartenders she met
7--Vicky and Hao-hao fight after one of his parties at their place
8--Vicky's in bed, Hao-hao comes in and says we're from two different worlds
13--Vicky's in a bar with Jack's group, Hao-hao comes and breaks up with her
14--Vicky goes to Jack's place, and he takes care of her, and tries to help her
15--Vicky becomes Jack's girlfriend; he gets a call, the magic trick was a theft
16--Vicky follows Jack to Japan where he's trying to flee the magic trick fallout
17--Vicky hangs out in Japan with the bartenders she met

So time's definitely a big part of the film; I think the millennium comes into play in part because a lot of people thought of it as a chance to do something big in their lives, but like Vicky just wound up doing more of the same. Also, there's an obvious political dimension to it, with a new century being a chance for countries to look back at the old, take stock, and perhaps start a new era.

I haven't read anthing that mentions the political dimension of the film, but I think it's the second key thing Hou is exploring, along with time. In short, I think he's using the character of Vicky to explore Taiwan's place in the world, caught between the West and the East, at a moment in time when we may be transitioning from the American century to the Chinese one.

Taiwan/Vicky has been caught in this abusive relationship with China/Hao-hao, where she keeps trying to break away (but not really) and the jealous and paranoid China/Hao-hao/her past keeps getting her to stay in the status quo relationship. Meanwhile, in response to and then to counter-balance/protect her from the craziness she starts up a relationship with the West/Jack. China/Hao-hao know about it, but in part because of the economic advantages of that relationship China/Hao-hao tolerate it; also, if push came to shove there's not much China/Hao-hao can do about the other relationship (in the movie Jack's a well-to-do gangster/businessman).

Going along with this interpretation, Hou is exploring what happens when the relationship between China and Taiwan self-destructs (in the film, Hao-hao slashes Vicky's clothes up) and Taiwan is left with the decision of finding a new model for the future (Vicky finding a real job), or continuing its dysfunctional pattern.

In the film, from my sense in the pivotal scene at Jack's apartment he less wants her to be his girlfriend (he knows he'd always have to take care of her if she stays the way she is) and more wants her to clean up her act for her own sake. It's actually a pretty apt metaphor for the U.S. view on Taiwan--we're a reluctant protector (American boys dying for Quemoy and Matsu?!) and it's obviously nowhere near an equitable partner. If it could become a normal country in a normal world we'd be happy.

Further, if you want to read the film literally, Vicky winds up (perhaps) finding a different and happier life in Japan with someone who's half-Japanese, half-Taiwanese. The scenes in the snow in Japan have a dreamy, fairy-land quality; maybe Hou is saying if Taiwan wants a model and partner it needs the third path of developing its relationship with Japan, rather than the U.S. or China as the two factions on the island want.

Alternately, depending on your politics, you could see the abusive Hao-hao being the U.S., and the gentlemanly Jack being China (despite the backwardness of the names in that case).... One thing that would support this view is Hao-hao wearing a pullover that reads "Army" in English (Vicky wears a similar shirt)... on the other hand, maybe American military gear is just in in Taiwan right now, in a scene in a bar the back of some bystander's shirt reads U.S. Navy Seals.

Hmm, all this makes me think the film was better than I initially thought.... Come to think of it, with a few other of Hou's films I've left the theater feeling disappointed, but upon further reflection found myself thinking about things for hours and 'figuring' things out that made me want to watch the film again.

He's a hard director to love, unlike his countryman and fellow genius Edward Yang. (Incidentally, my favorite Yang film--one of my favorite films period--prompted my favorite critic Jonathan Rosenbaum to write in a seminal article in the Chicago Reader: "I have no doubt that the 230-minute version of A Brighter Summer Day--which I was lucky enough to see in Taipei, and which will play at the Film Center on November 15 and 20--belongs in the company of key works of our era: Kira Muratova's The Asthenic Syndrome; Bela Tarr's Satantango; Kiarostami's Close -up, Life and Nothing More, and The Taste of Cherry; and Hou's trilogy--City of Sadness, The Puppet Master, and Good Men, Good Women.")

Interestingly, a quick Google search turns up the fact that in the Bantu language of West Africa, the word 'mambo' means conversation with the gods. It's too bad that for the most part film critics, and American audiences, are missing from the discussion when it comes to Hou and his peers.

Uncredited photo of Shu Qi as Vicky on a variety of sites.

Uncredited photo of Hou Hsiao-hsien from CinaOggi