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Web-only Exclusives November 30, 2000 From Our Correspondent: Hirohito and the War A conversation with biographer Herbert Bix From Our Correspondent: A Rough Road Ahead Bad news for the Philippines - and some others From Our Correspondent: Making Enemies Indonesia needs friends. So why is it picking fights? |
DECEMBER 31, 1999 - JANUARY 7, 2000 VOL. 25 NO. 52
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 In 'Running Out of Time', Andy Lau (left) plays a master of disguise. (Note masterful disguise as shades-clad pop star) Asiaweek Pictures |
While the blockbusters bored, smarter and simpler movies got right to the point
By STUART WHITMORE and RICHARD JAMES HAVIS
This year the competition for most original film was a no-contest. For starters, it stars Buddhist monks from Bhutan. Second, it's about football. In The Cup, a group of Himalayan novices desperately try to raise cash to buy a television set so that they can watch the World Cup final. First-time director Khyentse Norbu's film is as enjoyable as it is unique. All of the actors are real monks from the monastery where Khyentse (a Tibetan lama himself) sets his scene. Without trivializing monastic life, Khyentse uses football to zoom in on the down-to-earth side of being a monk: the novices enjoy a kick-about, are obsessed with the Brazilian team and are handy hagglers when it comes to shopping for the TV. Meanwhile, a monk gently addresses the issue of nationalism as he marvels at "two civilized nations fighting over a cup." Top-league stuff.
| 1999: THE YEAR | |
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China's celebrated Fifth Generation directors, Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, disappointed. Chen's glossy, big-budget period drama The Emperor And The Assassin was a lumbering attempt to emulate the epics of Japanese master Kurosawa Akira. Zhang's Not One Less, a smaller-scale story of a rural schoolmistress, was better, but the saccharin ending opened him to accusations of selling out to the scissor-happy authorities. Both works looked out of touch compared to China's hip new generation of urbanite directors. Zhang Yang's Shower tackles the gulf between China's traditional values and new ideas. City slicker Da Ming has to cope with returning home to an aging father who runs a bath house, and a mentally-challenged brother. As the drama plays out, Da Ming loses some of his urban edge as he takes on the burden of family responsibilities. The cheeky way Zhang frames flashbacks in classic, Fifth Generation style serves to further highlight his own contemporary edge.
But perhaps the surprise of the year in Chinese cinema was that maverick director Zhang Yuan made two films - and neither was banned. In Seventeen Years, sibling rivalry lands a woman in jail for killing her sister. After serving the timespan of the title, she is allowed an emotional visit home. Terse and powerful, but with more than a hint of warmth, the movie is less bleak and more commercial than Zhang's previous offerings. Zhang also weighed in with the wild and watchable documentary Crazy English, about a zealous English teacher on a mission to bring the language to the masses.
Thailand, usually known for cheap and nasty gangster flicks, turned in the quality Nang Nak, a lush retelling of a ghostly legend. A man returns home to his wife after the war. Unknown to him she died in childbirth and has returned as a ghost who murders all that discover the truth. A clean soundtrack and passable special effects keep the viewer focused on the chilling visuals, replete with atmospheric widescreen vistas of tangled forests and flowing rivers.
Kitano "Beat" Takeshi is well known for his violent yakuza fare. But Japan's sometime television comedian has a sensitive side. In Kikujiro, a bored young boy hooks up with the grumpy old man of the film's title (Kitano) and goes in search of his unknown mother. The odd couple hit the road, bound for adventure and the revelation that they can learn a thing or two from each other. Kitano structures the film like a picture book, complete with chapter headings, and isn't afraid to take imaginative diversions into fantasy when the mood takes him.
After the glossy, effects-laden The StormRiders cleaned up at the box office last year, the producers transplanted the aesthetic - and their leading man, Cantopop star Ekin Cheng - to historic Shanghai. Again the moody visuals were a blast. Again the script was a cluttered mess. Hong Kong's other big-budget release suffered from more of the same. Gen-X Cops's posse of young-gun actors hammed it up nicely in a rambunctious cops-versus-terrorists caper, but their exuberance was hamstrung by a patchy plot that leapt from character to character like a series of extended pop promos. Far better were Ann Hui's Ordinary Heroes, which scooped top honors at Taipei's Golden Horse awards, and Johnny To's quirky Running Out Of Time. Hui's examination of political activism in Hong Kong eschewed polemics for good characterization. To's film, pitting a cop against jewel thief and master of disguise Andy Lau Tak-wah, is more lighthearted than his recent hardboiled dramas, but still packs a punch.
Simple ideas don't always make the best films. But Taiwan's one-time critic Chen Kuo-fu turns a smart trick into clever entertainment in The Personals. As a woman looking for love in the newspaper personals column, Rene Liu spends the movie conducting head-to-head interviews with prospective lovers - who include pimps, shoe fetishists and old men who arrive with their sons. The fun comes from how she handles the array of motley suitors. It's not all an act: some of the players were respondents to a personals ad Chen placed himself. Surely another no-contest winner - for casting coup of the year.
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