Saturday, June 1, 2013

Film as History

City of Sadness (1989) - Hou
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Hou quietly observes a prominent Lin family in a mountain town as it breaks apart during turbulent times in Taiwan after WWII. Handsomely photographed static interior shots accompanied by naturalistic performances, City of Sadness looks and feels like Ozu. Sung Young Chen is great as boisterous eldest son, so as Jack Kao as the middle child who suffers from PTD who were drafted to fight in a Japanese army and later is tortured by Kuomintang as a collaborator. Young Tony Leung also shines as the youngest, sensitive, deaf (because Leung couldn't speak Taiwanese, I found out, but it works him being as a slient witness) brother of the family. It's he and his long time family friend and later wife Hinomi (Xin Shu Fen) who bear witness to the changing times.

I had a very little knowledge of Taiwanese history going in City of Sadness: didn't know about their 51 year Japanese Occupation (compared to Korea being under 30 year occupation, and we still hold grudges) and the rather unique colonial past (as the first Japanese colony since 1894, taking cues from the Brits, the Japs governed them differently at first and to this day, I hear Taiwanese don't have too much adversarial feelings toward Japs as the rest of Asia do) , didn't know about their diverse ethnic groups, culture and languages, didn't know about Kuomintang's atrocities after the WWII against its own people. It is rather wrong to base your knowledge of a certain people's history solely on one mere film, but knowing Hou and his detached yet humanistic approach, I'd take his film over any dry history textbooks.

Lights! Camera! and Hold!

Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters (2012) - Shapiro
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I like Crewdson's large format, cinematic photographs. I was excited about this documentary coming out but missed the chance to see it in theaters this spring. The native Brooklyn photographer is known for capturing scenarios of lost (white) American dream in the suburban/small town setting that New England writers are so fond of (apparently, Russell Banks and Rick Moody are big fan of his work and are interviewed in the film). As Crewdson talks about Cindy Sherman and David Lynch as inspirations, you can see where he's sensibilities are coming from. Unfortunately, Shapiro's doc is all about the process- how he shoots his massive scale photos working with a DP, production designer, set decorators and editors. It is indeed interesting stuff that he regards his photographic process as a film shoot with same amount of people and equipment as a moderate indie movie set. Instead of 'lights, camera and action!', it's 'lights, camera and hold!'

The doc never delves into how a well to do Brooklynite became photographing suburban decay. Crewdson comes across as a nice enough guy and his meticulousness (shouting from a cherry picker, "move your left hand about 2 inches up and to the right!") is pretty cool. But what motivates him to gravitate toward his subjects? Also, his post-touch up heavy process made me wonder about being an artist in the tech heavy age. Call me old fashioned, but I feel ambivalent about his compositing final product from many different takes, physically removing certain things from the frame and whatnot. I guess what matters at the end is selling your photos of poor folks for upward of one hundred thousand dollars to rich folks.