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FILM COMMENT
September/October 2004
JOURNAL: HONG KONG
The former colony's recent cinema continues to reflect its uneasy relationship with Mainland China and its uncertain future.By Li Cheuk-to
Above: Infernal Affairs
In 2001, filmgoers flocked to Shaolin Soccer, the dazzling comeback from Stephen Chow, a local hero regarded by many as personifying Hong Kong's adaptability and resourcefulness. The film's vision of embracing Mainland China's economy as a way out of Hong Kong's dead end resonated with audiences, and the film became the top-grossing homegrown film of all time.
A year later, Infernal Affairs (02) almost broke Shaolin Soccer's record. While its success can be attributed to smart marketing, its basic metaphor - everyone trapped in purgatory, with "no choice but nonstop suffering" - unmistakably struck a chord with the HK audience. The film ends with Andy Lau's triad mole renouncing his past and embracing his identity as a cop ("I want to be a good person!") in search of a brighter future - again, something with which HK natives could readily identify. Andrew Lau and Alan Mak's film was lauded for reinvigorating HK cinema at the end of a year in which production levels had reached a new low - that is, until 2003, when the SARS epidemic almost completely shut down production for four months, resulting in only 54 films being produced and released last year.
More than just a public-health crisis, SARS plunged the whole territory into a state of fear and despair. That the international spread of the virus was largely due to China's cover-up of the outbreak, and that the epidemic spread so easily to Hong Kong, brought home the tenuousness of the Special Administrative Region's autonomous status. Suddenly it was as if all the apocalyptic anxieties regarding the post-1997 transfer of power had come true. Then Leslie Cheung committed suicide in April and Anita Mui died in December. In short, it was 2003, not 1997, that marked the end of an era - both for Hong Kong and its cinema.
Conceived before the epidemic, the second and third parts of the Infernal Affairs trilogy are imbued with a sense of fin de si¸cle. A prequel, Infernal Affairs II (03), is set during the years leading up to the 1997 handover. As with the "nostalgia films" that had been in fashion during the late Eighties and early Nineties (typified by Stanley Kwan's Rouge), the impulse to retreat into the past inevitably implies a disillusion with the present. Its protagonist, Ngai Wing-hau (Francis Ng), is modeled on Michael Corleone in The Godfather, to which the film pays homage. Ngai's betrayal by his "brothers" and subsequent death are inseparable from his commitment to his triad family and its burden of guilt, which elevate him to the status of tragic hero.
Infernal Affairs III (03) was widely regarded as a disappointing and pessimistic collection of strong moments in search of a dramatically satisfying whole. Audiences weren't prepared to identify with the schizophrenic main character's worsening identity crisis when faced with a Mainland arms trafficker/undercover cop. If the first film is the tangled story of two moles in opposing camps, the third is the story of Lau Kin-ming alone. The irony lies in how Lau gradually comes to identify with the now dead Chan Wing-yan (Tony Leung) as he discovers more about his former foe through Chan's psychiatrist (Kelly Chan).
By the end of 2003 there were already signs of an upturn in the territory's outlook. This was partly due to the signing of CEPA (Closer Economic Partnership Agreement), which gave HK companies preferential access to the Mainland markets, and partly to the July half-million-man march, which protested against proposed anti-subversion laws and demanded the resignation of SAR Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa. And, despite the near collapse of film production, there were signs of hope: the box-office take for local films went up 11 percent last year.
But the opportunities created by CEPA for the local film industry have proven a mixed blessing. Although access to the Mainland market is easier, filmmakers now face an unprecedented curb on creative freedom. Take Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai's Running on Karma (03), an ambitious meditation on global suffering ranging from SARS to the Iraq war. Andy Lau plays a renegade monk who, while struggling with his own demons, can see into peoples' pasts and futures; he uses his power to help a female detective (Cecilia Cheung) solve a macabre murder case - but then foresees her sticky end due to her seriously bad karma. The Chinese censors considered even this simplified notion of samsara (i.e., reincarnation) as likely to promote "feudal superstition," so the film's Mainland version was shorn of eight minutes.
What's more, the majority of recent HK co-productions have flopped in China, usually because of their poor production values and opportunistic mentality, and despite the fact that most of them readily disavowed those qualities which gave them their specific local character - some to the point where they were barely recognizable as HK films. On the other hand, recent major Mainland productions, like Zhang Yimou's two martial arts epics, Hero (02) and House of Flying Daggers, draw heavily on HK cinema, particularly in terms of creative talent on both sides of the camera. In fact, Hero is so removed from the genre as defined by HK films that it might actually be seen as an anti-martial arts film.
In this light, it's no coincidence that three films this year revisit the familiar conceit of a Mainland Chinese criminal or gang wreaking havoc in Hong Kong - echoing Johnny Mak's Long Arm of the Law, made in 1984, the year HK's post-97 fate was sealed. In Johnnie To's Breaking News, a heavily armed gang of robbers and two hit men, all speaking Mandarin, hole up in an apartment complex and play out a media-spectacle-driven game of cat and mouse with the HK police. The protagonist of Derek Yee's One Nite in Mongkok, a Chinese villager whose brother is an assassin, is hired to sneak into Hong Kong to carry out a contract killing. Cheang Pou-soi's Love Battlefield features a male nurse who is kidnapped to serve a gang of robbers "from Malaysia" (but who all speak Mandarin and are played by Mainland actors).
Each film is quite different, encompassing their respective director's visions and concerns - To's insistence on professionalism and male camaraderie (in this case among criminals) and Yee's sympathetic view of the oppressed and exploited on society's fringes (the killer with no choice, the hooker from the Mainland). But by and large the Mainland criminals are portrayed as an unambiguous threat to HK's social order. To overcome them, the police must resort to manipulation and dirty tricks to cover up their mistakes - reflecting the public's loss of confidence in the competence of the SAR government. If the audience identifies with anyone in Breaking News it's probably the family held hostage by the Mainland gangsters - although the father (To regular Lam Suet), comically eager to placate and cooperate with the intruders, is a clear reference to SAR Chief Executive Tung.
Much of HK cinema now walks a tightrope between the desire to appeal to Mainland audiences (with the compromises that implies) and the need to express contemporary Hong Kong consciousness. Peter Ho-sun Chan's Applause Pictures has found a third way. Chan aims his films primarily at the Pan-Asian market, yet manages to avoid diluting their distinctive HK traits. Though its directors, the Pang Brothers, are from Thailand, The Eye (02) is still every inch a local horror film. While Three (02) is an omnibus film with Korean and Thai episodes, the most successful contribution is the Hong Kong segment directed by Chan himself. Finally, Samson Chiu's satirical comedy Golden Chicken (02) recounts 30 years of HK history through the story of a prostitute with a Heart of gold. All three were hits, and each has spawned a sequel.
The breakthrough animation My Life as McDull (01) and its sequel, McDull, Prince de la Bun, represent another small but unique example of what HK cinema can offer at its best. Thanks to the original's box-office success and the popularity of its comic-book hero, a good-natured piglet called McDull, writer-producer Brian Tse and his cottage industry team of animators have pulled out all the creative stops for the sequel. The result is resolutely local in flavor and appeal and pays no regard whatsoever to the international or Mainland market. The retelling of his father's life story by McDull's mother interweaves nostalgia and fantasy into an allegory about postwar HK history. The narrative is layered with multiple textures and points of view, while the visuals are often embellished with stunning images, such as the neighborhood buildings slowly crumbling one by one, as if the entire city were falling apart. McDull's words encapsulate HK's existential agony: "My father wants to go back to the past, God knows where. My mother only cares about the future nobody knows. And I am all alone, left behind in the present."
Finally, there's Wong Kar-wai. As the sole truly international HK director, he's in the unique position of being able to work without having to pay any heed to the Mainland market. But given the popularity of In the Mood for Love (00) in China, he's unlikely to disregard it completely. The title of Wong's 2046, which has had additional shooting and editing done since Cannes, refers to the expiration date for Deng Xiaoping's "guarantee" that Hong Kong would remain "unchanged" for 50 years after 1997. Before 2003, everyone in HK believed this promise - a kind of wishful thinking. The protagonist of 2046, played by Tony Leung, says, "Everyone who goes to 2046 has the same intent - to recapture their lost memories. Because in 2046, nothing ever changes. Nobody can be sure that this is true, because nobody who goes there has ever come back. Except for me, because I do need to change." But after SARS and the July 1 protest, everyone realizes that change is not only inevitable but also necessary.
Li Cheuk-to is the artistic director of the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society.
© 2004 by Li Cheuk-to
