Cinematic Concerns

In some territories the film is also titled The Children Of Huang Shi, which I always thought odd as either title would have worked and there is no real difference as far as marketing to audiences is concerned.

It took me some time before I saw this, as it seems to be on limited release on most parts of the world - I don't think the film registered in the US - and when it was released here in Malaysia it didn't seem to make much fanfare, a consequence of not having much promotion (did they even show the trailer in the cinema?) despite the presence of Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun-Fat as well as not-so-good reviews in the local newspapers.

And once more I'd like to declare that Malaysian film reviews are ... retarded. (They are currently giving full praise to the Malay film Kami. I'll have to check it out before giving a less prejudiced answer but experience has led me to be highly skeptical of those sentiments.)


This is a solid historical adventure story based on real events (with some modifications, as usual, based on what I read in Wikipedia - but I would say the spirit of the actual historical incidents were adhered to in the film). It revolves around George Hogg, a young Oxford-educated Englishman with an adventuring spirit (having toured the US and landed in Japan for some months) who arrives in China with a view to report about the Japanese invasion of China. Of all places, he smuggles into Nanjing (if you don't know, the worst massacre record in the history of the 20th century) and the experience leaves him haunted and half-dead. A series of chance meetings plants him at the orphanage operating at a former school at an isolated place called Huang Shi - where more than 60 ragged, flea-infested, severely depressed Chinese kids reside, without any adult caretaker save for the old maid who cooks and an Australian nurse named Lee Pearson who drops by with food every few months. As the title indicates, it is inevitable that the Japs would approach and it is then that George leads a recklessly ambitious march over 1,100 kilometres across the mountains and deserts of China to get the children to relative safety. That's the story.


Production-wise, I thought the editing was a bit flawed, though mostly in the beginning, when the scenes seem to move on before we are properly settled into the story. It gets better as we go along, and in fact quite a lot of story is packed into 110 minutes. Director Roger Spottiswoode, whom I thought made one of the lesser Pierce Brosnan Bond films (even though it did have Michelle Yeoh in it), has to juggle two different cultures - that of the Westerners and the Orientals - in this film, and I'd say he did an excellent job. You see, I always pay attention to how filmmakers deal with stories that contain people of widely different cultures interacting with each other - how much of their original language do they use, how accurate are the behaviour and mannerisms, etc.

And I'm happy to report that it basically survives all the usual nitpickings I have with most such films. Radha Mitchell and Jonathan Rhys Meyers speak in heavily-accented Mandarin for half the film, and while it is not always easy to understand exactly what they are saying in Chinese, I would imagine it's accurate enough considering these people did not learn Mandarin from lessons but did so ad hoc. (Just like how I'm picking up Turkish from phone conversations at my current job.) And there is almost no occasion when the Westerners speak to the Chinese kids in English when the kids obviously could not understand it. (For that matter, The Last Samurai was pretty faithful to this rule and this is one of the reasons I hold that film in high regard.) Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh speak in English most of the time but that is never contrived.


Also, the plot isn't forced into Hollywood three-act conventions. While George Hogg is our protagonist and for most of the film we experience the events through his eyes, other characters weave in and out according to what the character does, rather than what the plot structure would dictate. For example, Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun-Fat's characters are not present in the film a lot - but they are there for just enough to serve their purpose in the story. I emphasise this because it always seems more natural to me when historical films try their best not to pigeonhole their plots into more familiar structures.

The music helps a lot. It's a little bit over-grand at times, but David Hirschfelder (Australian, never heard his work before, but he will soon be heard scoring Baz Luhrmann's much anticipated Australia) does a good job in assimilating Chinese musical motifs into the Western-style score. At certain times it's even touching.


For me personally, the appeal of the film has a lot to do with the settings. The children travel vast distances crossing mountains and then the desert in the interior regions of China including Gansu, and desolate, harsh places with impossible terrains always fascinate me to no end. Then there is the garments (more Muslim-like once they arrive at Gansu), the camels which only appear in Western China, sandstorms, bands of nomad tribes, etc.

The other is the idea of the travelling adventurer finding himself in an alien place. It takes great courage and stoicism to just go to a place that one has no idea about, and it takes a certain je ne sais quoi (which is slightly different for every person) to desire such a life. Something I share, except that I find enough reasons not to go - such as, there is no longer any place left unknown in this world. George Hogg was such a person, and the characteristics I see are: the capacity to take on languages and quickly, to adapt to other's cultures, to do things that one would never do at home, to find peace away from home. The most heartfelt, heartbreaking and emotional moment of the film comes towards the end when George declares with his every being, "I have been so lucky". (It was also the high point of Jonathan Rhys Meyers' performance in the film.)

[Oh yes, Meyers is really good in shaking in fear or anxiety. He has to do it twice in this film - but he did it once in Match Point and boy did it sell the emotions of the character then, a moment which I thought elevated the film's quality.]

Surprisingly affecting film.

No. 1
Better know your Korean. Those buggers ... I mean, PIFF volunteers, all of whom are university students, cannot speak more than 5 words of English. (About the only effort they make is to do an English version of the announcements at the beginning of every screening.)



No. 2
Buy or book your tickets early - online. They are released a week before the film festival. If you wait till you get to the film festival to get your tickets, you can only buy tickets for that day's screenings. (You cannot buy tickets for all the movies you want to see in the whole week of the film festival.)


No. 3
Here's the problem - the online ticket booking website is only in Korean. So have a Korean-speaking friend handy.


But let's say you don't have a Korean-speaking friend. So you have to buy tickets every morning, as I did. (Box office at any cinema opens at 8.30 am. Also, note that you can buy tickets for screenings at other cinemas, at whichever box office you choose to go.) Continue reading ...


No. 4
For the first three screening days of the festival (not inclusive of Opening Day), you have to queue up at the cinema (any cinema) by 6 am in the morning. Even though tickets only start selling 8.30 am. This is because a few crazy ones camp out at the box offices from midnight.



No. 5
For the first three screening days of the festival, AVOID BUYING TICKETS AT MEGABOX HAEUNDAE CINEMAS.



No. 6
If you go to PIFF to watch Korean, Japanese or animated films, you are fucked for sell-out screening days. If on the other hand you go there for Western films, even for films that won the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival or Silver Bear at Berlinale, you'll probably get your tickets.


No. 7
For the first three screening days of the festival, 90% of the tickets will sell out. (On the first day, they will sell out probably before the morning turns into afternoon.)



No. 8
Now the good news. For the rest of the film festival days, virtually NONE of the films will sell out.


No. 9
Unless you can book online (i.e. you can speak Korean, or you have a Korean-speaking friend you can bribe), you can kiss the Opening Film and Closing Film goodbye. In 2008, tickets to the Opening Film, "The Gift To Stalin" (Kazakhstan), sold out in 1.5 minutes. All 5000 of them. The Closing Film sold out in less than 8 minutes.


No. 10
You will want to watch AT LEAST ONE film at the 5,000-seat Outdoor Screening Theatre. It's the best part of the PIFF. Oh, and bring a fleece/jacket.



Attending the film festival ...


No. 11
When attending the Outdoor Theater Screening at the Busan Yachting Center, please buy some sushi from the Korean ladies who make and sell them on the spot. They cost 2000 KRW, makes you full, is surprisingly tasty - and also because every time I walk past those simple-minded old ladies it breaks my heart.



No. 12
Q&A sessions are useless - unless it's for an English screening with an English-speaking director, because they only translate to Korean for the audience.



No. 13
Taking the subway. (There is a PIFF Shuttle. Not once did I use it.) Buy day-passes. (Cost: 3,500 KRW.)

For 2008, the films played at two main areas: Haeundae and Nampo-Dong, with 6 cinemas between them.

For the 4 cinemas at the Haeundae area:
Megabox Haeundae - take Line 2, Haeundae station (해운대), exit 1. Then walk straight about 100m.
Lotte Centum Cinemas - take Line 2, Centum City station (센텀시티), exit 8.
Primus Cinemas - take Line 2, Jangsan station (장산), exit 7.
Busan Yachting Center (Outdoor Screening) - take Line 2, Dongbaek station (동백), exit 3. Then walk straight about 200m, then turn left and go all the way to the end of the road, crossing the main road.

For the 2 cinemas at the Nampo-Dong area, you have Busan Cinema and Daeyoung Cinema. They are situated facing each other at the PIFF Square. To get to the PIFF Square, you take Line 1 - which, by the way, interchanges with Line 2 at Seomyeon (서면) - to Jagalchi station (자갈치). NOT Nampo-Dong station. Then take the PIFF Square exit, and walk straight less than 100 metres, and PIFF Square will be on your left.

No. 14
You come to Busan for the film festival. Please do not feel compelled to set aside some time 'to see the rest of the city' or 'take in some sights'. There is nothing else to do in Busan (except maybe go to Haeundae Beach ... nah, you can skip that too). Absolutely nothing else. You can try taking as many pictures as you like of the city and it'll look like the exact same alley, or main road, and every part of the city looks like any of the others. Stick to watching movies, and shopping at Lotte Department Store(s). Any one of them (they're like Big Brother ... they're everywhere).



Bonus - How To Get To Busan

Once you arrive at Incheon International Airport, after passing through the Immigration section and collected your bags (you're coming for a film festival, I suggest you just pack everything into a backpack and don't check in luggage, like I did), go straight to the KORAIL counter, in the middle of the crescent-shaped terminal. There you can buy a combination of the bus journey to Seoul Station and the Seoul-Busan KTX bullet-train (costing less than 60,000 KRW). The train arrives at Busan Station (부산역) on Line 1 of the Busan subway.

Or, take the Incheon Airport-Busan express bus, which will cost a little over 40,000 KRW. You will need to check the times. And do not mix up Incheon (city) with Incheon Airport. The bus will take you to Nopo-Dong (노포동) on the northernmost terminal of the Busan subway (Line 1). Actually I took the Busan-Incheon Airport night express back, which starts at 11.30 pm and arrives at the airport 5 am the next day.

Links to all 31 reviews of the films seen at the film festival, and other articles.

TINA FEY AND THE REAL SARAH PALIN



Alec Baldwin to Sarah Palin: "I feel I must say this ... you are way hotter in person!"
Sarah Palin to Alec Baldwin: "And I must say your brother Stephen is my favourite Baldwin brother."


THE SARAH PALIN RAP



And all I kept thinking was, "Can Amy Poehler really rap like that with a baby inside her???"


ANNE HATHAWAY AS MARY POPPINS



Mary Poppins explains what 'supercalifragilisticexpialadocious' really means. To morbid consequences.


KATIE COURIC INTERVIEWS SARAH PALIN



"Like every American I'm speaking with, we are ill about this. We're saying, "Hey, why bail out Fannie and Freddie and not me?" But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those that are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. To help, um -- it's gotta be about job creation, too. Also, about shoring up our economy, and putting Fannie and Freddie back on the right track. And, so, health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending, coz, Barack Obama, you know? You know, we've got to accompany tax reduction, and tax relief for Americans. Also, having a dollar value meal at restaurants -- that's gonna help. But, one in five jobs being created today, under the umbrella of job creation. That, you know, also."


WEEKEND UPDATE WITH SETH MYERS AND AMY POEHLER



"Chicago declares gay-friendly high schools. In fact, there is already a gay high school." Cue upcoming musical film about high school.


C-SPAN BAILOUT PLAN ANNOUNCEMENT



Nancy Pelosi: "President, you are welcome to stay. ... Back there would be better."


MARK WAHLBERG FINDS ANDY SAMBERG BACKSTAGE



"Say hi to your mother for me."


ENGAGEMENT SURPRISE



Kristen Wiig is, as ever, brilliant at totally wacky and neurotic roles.


VP DEBATE OPEN: PALIN VS BIDEN



"Due to the historically low expectations of Gov. Palin, were she simply to do an adequate job tonight, and at no point cry, faint, run out of the building or vomit, you should consider the debate ... a tie."

The following are links to the reviews of all the films I saw at the 13th Pusan International Film Festival, in the order I saw them.

1. Muallaf | The Convert (Malaysia)

2. FrontRunners (United States)

3. La Buena Nueva | The Good News (Spain)

4. Nordwand | North Face (Germany)

5. Stone Of Destiny (United Kingdom - Scotland)

6. Colpo D'Occhio | At First Glance (Italy)

7. Arn - Tempelridderen | Arn - The Knight Templar (Scandinavia)

8. The Escapist (United Kingdom)

9. Песнь Южных Морей | Songs From The Southern Seas (Kazakhstan)

10. Tahaan - A Boy With A Grenade (India - Kashmir)

11. $εll.0u7! | Sell Out! (Malaysia)

12. Un Conte De Nöel | A Christmas Tale (France)

13. Maria Larssons Eviga Ögonblick | Everlasting Moments (Sweden)

14. Sveitabrúðkaup | Country Wedding (Iceland)

15. Adoration (Canada)

16. Afterschool (United States)

17. Dean Spanley (United Kingdom - England)

18. Happy-Go-Lucky (United Kingdom - England)

19. Un Autre Homme | Another Man (Switzerland)

20. Occident (Romania)

21. 十分鍾情 | A Decade Of Love (Hong Kong)

22. 강출중:공공의적1-1 | Public Enemy Returns (South Korea)

23. Entre Les Murs | The Class (France)

24. A Moment In June (Thailand)

25. Il Divo - La Straordinaria Vita Di Giulio Andreotti (Italy)

26. 그 남자의 책 198쪽 | Heartbreak Library (South Korea)

27. ปืนใหญ่จอมสลัด | Queens Of Langkasuka (Thailand)

28. 流氓的盛宴 | Feast Of Villains (China)

29. Баксы | Native Dancer (Kazakhstan)

30. Hunger (United Kingdom - Northern Ireland)

31. Исчезнувшая Империя | The Vanished Empire (Russia)


Of these, the three films that I liked the most were Sell Out!, FrontRunners and The Vanished Empire.


And the following are links to articles about my experiences during the film festival, and other personal thoughts.

Pusan International Film Festival, Day One - And It Is Already Turning Out To Be My Least Favourite Film Festival Ever

Pusan International Film Festival, Day 2 to Day 3 - Twelve Movies In Thirty Six Hours

Pusan International Film Festival, Day 4 to Day 5

Pusan International Film Festival - In Conclusion ...

Tips On Attending The Pusan International Film Festival

I didn't write about the last few of my days at the Pusan International Film Festival, because it became routine then - every day I was to watch 4 films starting around 10 am and finishing 12 hours later. In between I try to grab a chance to eat some distinct Korean meal, or shop for certain things for the family with my surplus won.

The trip cost me (including flights, accommodation, food and lodging) in total less than RM3,000.

After watching the last film, The Vanished Empire, it was off to the bus station, taking the overnight bus back to Incheon Airport, then taking the flight home, and everything happened so smoothly and fairly quickly that it felt like "... suddenly, I'm back home".

The unusual thing about this trip was how quickly I settled down in Busan. (A word on the spelling of the city: it was changed to Busan a few years ago, but the film festival elected to keep the old name of Pusan. For everything else, we use Busan.) I knew about half the things I needed to know to survive in Busan and the film festival before I even set foot in the country. By day three I was completely used to the place, as well as my daily routine. By day four I felt like I had lived there for months. And I'm not exagerrating. Day after day of taking the subway, trying to communicate with the locals with my next-to-nothing Korean and their next-to-nothing English, eating Korean food, using Korean won, watching film after film and discussing film when I got back to the hostel, I was so totally immersed. What I had been doing in Malaysia - a new job I had obtained just 6 weeks before coming to Busan - felt like a distant memory. I'll correct myself - I don't think I even thought about it at all. So much so that coming back to work two days after getting back to Kuala Lumpur was hell.

And I found that slightly disconcerting. How is it that I got used to a foreign, non-English speaking city, where I am completely alone and without a single local contact within a matter of a couple of days? (I could even say I got used within hours.) I wasn't really conscious about it, but because I wasn't it got me thinking and so I was conscious that I was unconscious about it.

Now, I have seen 31 films from 19 countries* speaking 16 languages and spanning a whole millenium from the Crusades to the present day. It is amazing what that does to you. I felt like I had lived a lifetime through this week - try to imagine how significant that is. And honestly I couldn't think of any other activity that allows one to experience this.

* United Kingdom - 5, United States - 2, Malaysia - 2, Italy - 2, Kazakhstan - 2, France - 2, Sweden - 2, South Korea - 2, Thailand - 2, Spain - 1, Germany - 1, India - 1, Iceland - 1, Canada - 1, Switzerland - 1, Romania - 1, Hong Kong - 1, China - 1, Russia - 1.

This is why one attends film festivals, I realised. And more significantly for me, I have seen clearly, for the first time in my life, why it is that films have become the most important part of my life - why I obsess over it and why I want to be part of its creation. It occurred to me some time ago that I was never happy except when I am 'anywhere but here and now'. Meaning I am happiest or at my most content when I arrive at a new place, or when I daydream/imagine the past or the future. Well, films allow me to do just that - without an effort on my part. Good films transport me away from where I am, and allow me to 'live' there, for two hours, which in a good film can seem like an eternity. I live through these characters that I have come to know and love, and get to go through experiences I crave for but never get to experience myself. And these are occasionally dangerous, treacherous life paths or situations, but I don't have to die because of it. The characters die for me instead, and I live on. Through films, I collect a lifetime worth of experiences, even if they are are fake or unrealistic.

It seems unnatural to hate the present, the now, the here. Maybe 'hate' is too strong a word - dissatisfied. It is in films - good films - that my restlessness, my apprehension, my insecurities disappear. And in a one-week film festival, I find myself most alive, because what usually last two hours suddenly last that much longer. It's like being another person for a week. A fuller human being.

I would love to do it again. But coming back to Pusan next year won't bring back the exact same feelings, this I know to be true. This is thanks to diminishing returns - nah, here's where my Economics lessons come back to me. Besides, Pusan is a pretty inconvenient film festival - about the only bright side is that one is left alone and there aren't too many people to talk to. Not that talking is a bad thing - but in Telluride, for example, it very occasionally gets tedious.

I enjoy the feeling of running all over the city as if I owned it, thanks to the efficient subway system. I enjoy running about without a care in the world, lurching from one distinct country and one distinct period to the next within hours. I enjoy feeling independent, even if it is borrowed - I didn't exactly pay for the trip.

And I can't help but feel that there is something destined about this trip. I make many plans in my head - several at a time, sometimes - but they don't work out most of the time, I'd say 90% of the time. And I've gotten so used to that that I just don't expect them to happen - it is pleasing enough to just imagine it, to just plan it. Planning is almost all the fun. But so many things conspired to allow this trip to happen - I was allowed to get off work, the Raya holidays were around this time, my Dad approved, I didn't have to pay for the full flight ticket price, Pusan is fairly cheap as far as film festivals go, etc.

I don't know when I will next go to a film festival. Now I've done all the reviews, perhaps a distribution company or film criticism journal might want to employ my services - so that I get paid to do what I've just done so efficiently. While most film critics see 3 films a day at film festivals, I have done 4.5 a day on average in this one - I figured that must be a remarkable asset. But you see, this is just more idle planning. It will take another series of spontaneous coinciding factors to make this a reality. I shall wait and see - but meanwhile, it is enough just to imagine it.

Signing off. For now.


Links to all 31 reviews of the films seen at the film festival, and other articles.

This is the thirty-first and final film I saw at the 13th Pusan International Film Festival.

And, surprisingly, it affected me the most. I'm not sure it's my favourite among all the PIFF films that I saw, but it left me pretty haunted, which left me in a dazed mood as I left the cinema to go directly to the bus station where I head on to airport. Which is quite unexpected.

The Vanished Empire, a film which one can't find much information about on the Internet, tells of the lives of university students in the Soviet Union during the late 70s - their carefree lives, when they are still able to shun responsibilities, ignore the future, and basically live as if their lives as they were living it then could last forever. In particular, we focus on Sergei Narbokov (often referred to as Seroja, the nickname form of Sergei), who is not interested in academic studies but is very interested in hitting up with Lyuda, the new girl in class. He gets distracted often, but finds strong friendship in dorky Stepan and gung-ho Kostya. Together they make a trio, going to the same apartment for making out sessions with girls, going to the same concerts and parties, sharing drugs for the first time together, and getting into a fight because Kostya is angry he got kicked out of a band.

Meanwhile, at home, Sergei has a distant historian mother who seems the depressive type, a grandfather who used to be an archaelogist who appreciates Sergei's youthful playfulness, and a younger brother who pretty much does whatever Sergei tells him to do. The typical middle class home in 70's Soviet Union. Essentially Sergei has nothing to worry about, and does whatever he likes.

Then, and this is how the film is brilliant, problems arise without seeming to be anything grave, and a sense of burden of responsibilities that arises as adulthood approaches begins to creep into Sergei's life without him - or, more significantly, us - even realising it. There's nothing in particular that creates a major conflict in Sergei's life, at least not until the end when an incident that causes him to break away from his friends and that leads to the removal of the safety net that is his domestic home, when Sergei suddenly becomes a man, reluctantly, and still unsure of what to do, that leads him to make a fateful decision.

And that is what I identified so strongly with the film, I think. It is something that I don't think I've ever seen portrayed in any coming-of-age film - that of a sense of burden creeping up on us as we approach adulthood. I guess it is because it is such a vague event on most of our lives that, while many of us feel it in the form of restless helplessness, eventually most of us get past it and forget that period of our lives, or at least that sensation of not knowing what to do with our lives while the world around us seems to be changing more rapidly than we've learnt how to deal with. Well, at least, I think all of my friends have gotten past this stage, having now had jobs and all - leaving me behind. There are still a lot of things I don't think I'm willing to take up, that I see youngsters younger than me taking up. Most people would erroneously describe it as maturity. I think it is something that leads to maturity but not the thing itself.

And the other thing is the fateful decision that Sergei takes. It was a moment in the film that was the only point in the entire film festival where I felt transcended. Sergei ends up where his parents first met - at the ruins of Khorezm. (Today known as Khiva, it lies at the border of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.) Alone among Central Asian people and stripped away with most of his belongings, he arrives at Khorezm, hikes up a cliff and observes the desolate world around him - him alone with no one around him in miles. I don't exactly know what Sergei is thinking at that point - if I were to guess, it would be acceptance, a sense of fear of the unknown future, and a newfound sense of who he is - but I remember a similar moment when I was above a cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in the Western Isles of Scotland. Mostly it was this last image in the film that welded the film so strongly to my mind and my emotions at the time.

And then after that, the film does something that is perhaps not surprising but which I didn't anticipate - it cuts decades into the future when an older Stepan bumps into an older Sergei. It is one of the most effective denouements I have seen in film in recent years. I got so close to the characters that watching this scene (interestingly shot, by the way, from first person point of view) just makes me wish I knew what happened in the intervening years, especially in Sergei's case. It's almost as if I'm already friends with these characters, and I am sharing this nostalgic conversation with them.

Many of the young actors are making their debut here: Aleksandr Lyapin who plays Sergei, Lidiya Milyuzina (looking like a Russian version of Natalie Portman) who plays Lyuda, Yegor Baranovsky who plays Stepan, and Ivan Kupreyenko who plays Kostya are graduating students from the Moscow and St Petersburg theatrical schools. Because of my particular affection with the Sergei character, I was particularly attracted to Aleksandr Lyapin - I hope to see more work from this fine actor. (Though unfortunately, he has a very unflattering face in the terrible poster of the film.)

A very honest portrayal about that transition period between adolescence and adulthood, how the trauma of that period causes us to make decisions that shape the rest of our lives, about friendship, about relationships before we understood love and what it means. The film almost makes me wish that I were these people, young students living in the Soviet Union in the 70s - which is absurd, considering it is a country with rationed goods, without certain freedoms. But the truth is, those were just the setting of the film. The essence of the film is what makes it so haunting and poignant.

Interestingly, if you read what the filmmakers say about the film, it is completely not what I was so focussed about. They would describe it as a film about young love set at a time when the Soviet Union was at the peak of its power, never suspecting that its seeds of destruction is being sown as they go about their lives and that the world they knew would be gone a little more than a decade later. I guess the way Sergei sells off his grandfather's books for money is a symbolism (which I did not realise until just now). As usual, Russian films contain a lot of symbolism, that are there for Russians to get it but not essential in order to understand the story.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 8/10
How Much I Liked It: 9/10

This is the thirtieth film I saw at the 13th Pusan International Film Festival.

It is a most unconventionally plotted film - in the sense that it's a film that I could have written if I knew about the subject matter.

It starts off with title cards stating that over 2000 people have been killed by the year 1981 over The Troubles (Irish: Na Trioblóidí) in Ireland. Then moves on to show the morning rituals of a prison guard who remains nameless to us in the audience, and then we see what he does when he goes to work. So it's a few minutes in before we see what happens in the prison which holds all the political prisoners who are the IRA. I say 'political prisoners', but in fact one of the main contention of the prisoners is the refusal of the British government (then prime minister was Margaret Thatcher, and we hear sound bites from her from time to time throughout the film, used to ironic effect) to grant them the status of political prisoner.

For the next 20 minutes or so, we get to know the prison and the prisoners through the eyes of one new incarcerated individual - again, we're not told his name. His introduction to his cell elicits a quiet shock from him - and a gradual realisation to what we are seeing. It is at that point that I realised why it was reported that some people 'could not stand watching the film because it was so disgusting' and bailed out halfway through the film. (From Wikipedia: The film has premiered at Cannes, where it opened the official sidebar section, Un Certain Regard, sparking both walkouts and a standing ovation.) You see, the cell wall is covered in ****. Intentionally. At which point the new prisoner realises he has a cell mate, cowering with a bushy beard under a thin blanket on the cold, hard, dirty floor - and we realise that's what they all become.

We see how the prisoners resort to concerted retaliation - the one using piss and mashed potatoes is perhaps the most light-hearted moment in the film. Still disgusting though. We see how things are passed between prisoner and their visiting families during visitations.

And then we see what happens when the prison guards drag the prisoners out for a beating, one by one, and then for a major haircut and scrubbing session - in a bravura employment of the single-take scene, where the camera swoops from one tortured prisoner to the next. Oh, I forgot to mention, all the prisoners are completely nude throughout most of the film - they are either not allowed clothes, or refuse to wear clothes which paint them as prisoners. So, lots of full frontal, though the film operates as if that isn't something untypical.

Anyway, the single-take scene is where we finally transition into Bobby Sands, who is supposed to be the protagonist in a film without protagonist. I say that because the film is generally described as a portrayal of "the hunger strike led by Bobby Sands in prison during the Irish Troubles". But it's a third into the film before we see him for the first time.

Soon after, is a scene which has become the signature feature of the film - a 20-minute discussion scene framed simply (almost one-take, but not quite as it cuts between wide and close-ups occasionally) between Bobby Sands and a priest played by Liam Cunningham. The discussion is essentially a debate, whereby Sands explains his reasons for the extreme actions he takes, while the priest tries his best to talk him out of it. (I'm ashamed to say I fell asleep for half of the conversation ... not because it was boring but because I have just watched two and a half dozen films in a week. I MUST watch the film again, if only to see the conversation scene again.)

My point in describing all this is to make the point that Hollywood would never ever approve such a production. But, personally, such innovative screenplays deserve to be made into films. When done well, they contain such fervent ideas and inherently possess the ability to keep the audience at a place where they do not know what to expect next. By the way, this is director Steve McQueen's debut feature film. He received the Caméra d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival this year.

What happens next in the film is basically the ending you see in Into The Wild stretched out over the last third of this film. Bobby Sands goes ahead with his plans for a hunger strike. While other prisoners participated, the film concentrates entirely on Sands as his bodily functions fail drastically and painful lesions multiply on his body. I didn't know starvation caused lesions. This and many other interesting facts about starvation can be gleamed from this film. I've never heard of actor Michael Fassbender (apparently he was in 300), but his dedication to the film - he had to starve proper to get the right skeletal look - is admirable.

A must-see, because of its unconventional plotting, its provocative images, the way it's packaged as a series of episodes that allow us to experience many aspects of the IRA's struggles during what is effectively a low-level civil war in Northern Ireland. Or maybe I'm just biased towards British films.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 9/10
How Much I Liked It: 8/10



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This is the twenty-ninth film I saw at the 13th Pusan International Film Festival.

I'm always interested in films from Central Asia, because its desolate, never-ending steppes haunt me with its beauty and solitude. And at least this one has a story to tell, and for once, a pretty decent one. The added bonus is that the story is not predictable at all - without being boring. (Yes, unpredictable stories can be boring, if they have lousy characters, for example.)

Native Dancer tells of a healer (a Kazakh 'baksy') named Aidai who operates on a piece of land owned by a grateful Batyr, a businessman whose barren wife gave birth to a boy after seeing Aidai. For the first half of the film we see the lives of the people surrounding Aidai: Batyr's son who stays with Aidai for extended periods; a young girl sent to stay with Aidai for her mischief; Batyr's black-sheep brother-in-law who eventually sleeps with the young girl, to Aidai's great irritation.

Things turn bad when a group of unscrupulous people want to take over Batyr's land. Obviously Aidai refuses to leave, and Batyr sticks by her loyally. So an accusation is engineered against Aidai to get her to leave. Instead, Aidai kills herself in front of everyone through a ritual dance - and curses the land. The people build a petrol station over the land - which mysteriously burns down the day after the celebration. Now they demand payment from Batyr, and when he refuses, they take drastic action that will end in tragedy.

Interestingly, the camera is constantly moving in this film, very kinetic. The lives of the people in this desolate region are vividly portrayed - there's the rich and the poor, and they lead different lives. The beginning of the film portrays a rather disgusting lamb blood ritual, which is the first time we see Aidai operate. She spends a lot of time giving predictions - and interestingly, we never know for sure whether those predictions come through, so there is that slight doubt over Aidai's abilities. Just like we doubt modern day fortune tellers and temple masters and such.

Mostly I like it because I got to see the country life in Kazakhstan. The resolution of the story isn't too well done, seems a bit insignificant with much that isn't resolved. But that is a minor complaint.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 7/10
How Much I Liked It: 6/10



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This is the twenty-eighth film I saw at the 13th Pusan International Film Festival.

Feast Of Villains is the sort of film that makes the audience sit through the entire opening credits in silence.

I don't know why, but it kinda annoys me. The film is done very cheaply, using what is clearly miniDV. The intention is obviously to make it more documentary like - hence, no cinematography to speak of and no score. Immediately some avid film buffs would say, hey, not everything has to be like Hollywood, you know? To that, I say, shut up! No, not everything needs to be like Hollywood, but even European cinema and Asian cinema seek to make movies that are different from reality. Because film is not truth and should not be truth - unless it is a documentary. When I say should not, I don't mean it as a rule, I mean traditionally, conventionally, so yes, sometimes there are films that straddle both worlds. I'm not saying that's wrong. They can actually be fun - take Death Of A President.

Chinese independent films, however, do not make films for 'fun'. Instead, they are made to share their miseries with the rest of the world, hoping to import them. A very American thing to do: the world must know of our sufferings! (Not that it is strictly American, just that Americans seem to scream that the loudest, especially in their movies.)

Take this film. It is a story about a young man, who, in order to earn money fast to cure his father's possibly-terminal illness, sells his kidney through illegal methods. Purely by knowing that this is a Chinese independent film, you should already know the outcome - the young man will lose everything in his life, despite good intentions. In this case, he is screwed over by people of the professional trade - doctors, police, traffic officers, community centre workers - that he almost didn't need the unscrupulous organ sellers to accomplish that. (Hence the film's title.) Which is the one underlying theme of the film.

Another sub-theme is the way the country's booming economy has left behind those at the bottom of the pyramid - not the most bottom, that would be the peasants ... but the urban working class. This is accomplished unsubtly by shots of the emerging skyscrapers swooping by the window of the van that our protagonist drives as his job (including the Bird's Nest Stadium). I say 'unsubtly' because there is no other reason to show him driving for a full minute without anything else happening.

The filming and direction style is, as I said, nearly nonexistent, because it is all geared towards one goal - to portray as realistically as possible the sufferings of the working class as seen through one young man's experience. So everything is stripped down. The dialogue, the plotting, the way the camera seems to film nothing significant at parts of the film. Does it work? Yes, I suppose you could say so. I felt angry at the people who screwed over the young man. I know that there is such an issue in China now.

And yet, I feel annoyed at having been invited to share this misery. Why the hell did I go watch this film to begin with? Because I wanted some diversity in the films I picked, and since I rarely see Chinese independent cinema, I thought, what the heck.

Interestingly, I actually got a bit angry with our young protagonist as well. Why the hell would he risk so much just to save his father who is already halfway to hell anyway? I kept thinking, if his father were conscious he would slap some sense into his son and told him to save up the money for business or something. Oh, I forget, that's not how the simple folk think in China. Always, above all, respect one's parents.

Chinese cinema is easy. I say that because one of the things I noticed when watching all those depressing movies back during last year's Telluride Film Festival was that oppressive societies provide amazing material for great storytelling, including films. And certainly modern China remains one of those societies. In effect, all these terrible stories of suffering are everywhere, and you just need to walk out of your house to find it, package it into a nice story, and make what you will of it. No such luck in Europe or America, where one needs to invent problems (see Eagle Eye). But purely because of this difference, Western entertainment cinema is denounced by some as inferior to Asian cinema such as those from China or Iran.

But I don't see this the same way. Because their stories are already so rich with emotions, Chinese filmmakers can use amateur filmmaking to make a film that travels film festivals easily and get people to praise them. It's pretty unfair. Where's the craft? Simplicity in choices is not craft. While I still value emotional engagement over other criteria like good visual style or great acting, to have just emotions from a film and nothing else is no less than a big cheat.

So I just spent most of the review describing my apprehensions over Chinese independent cinema and not too much about the film. In short, I'll say give this a miss, unless you want to know more about the problem of illegal organ donations in China.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 7/10
How Much I Liked It: 4/10


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This is the twenty-seventh film I saw at the 13th Pusan International Film Festival.

One way to put it would be that it is the Thai equivalent of Malaysia's hopes at epic filmmaking when we came up with Puteri Gunung Ledang. Sure, it is sumptuous, with a huge budget to boot (reportedly 140 million baht ... which is still cheaper than Puteri Gunung Ledang, by the way), with ancient-looking costumes and production design. On top of that this one has (mediocre) fight sequences (that will impress nobody). But then to parade it around the world through film festivals with a tinge of hubristic pride ... I don't know, I just don't really like it. Well, at least the film was far from that terrible Tibetan epic Prince Of The Himalayas (which has an equally hubristic aura surrounding the director). Just watch the trailer, especially the climax bit, and you'll see what they're most proud of - it's almost laugh-out-loud hilarious.

The film itself is a complicated enough set-up involving the queen and princesses of Langkasuka and their entourage, a rogue prince who wants to take over the throne, Arab pirates, a Chinese inventor, a village boy who grows up to become ... the half-absent protagonist, and a master wizard with dual personalities. Other kingdoms that were mentioned were Thammarat, Songkhla, and ... hey, Pahang. The Prince of Pahang plays a small role in this story. Cue Malaysian distributors getting interested in this film. Just wait.

If I sound negative about the film, well, I did enjoy it a little. It was played at the Outdoor Theatre, which is always nice. And I was mightily impressed with the visual effects! Blimey, for the most part, the composite work looked seamless. There is a panoramic shot of the nation-state of Langkasuka with its high walls, which I thought looked better than those in The Battle Of Red Cliff. However, there is a battle scene at the end when boats get smashed up when they got completely lazy (or are fucking retarded) and the way the boats were destroyed were physically impossibly sped up. Otherwise most of the visual effects work.

The music is suitably bombastic, almost scary in the way it uses vocals.

Another interesting thing is that, in one sequence the Queen had to speak English and then Chinese. She sounded American in her English, which is anachronistic and hence distractingly hilarious; and she did alright with the Mandarin, though the pronunciations are all a bit off. (That's okay, I guess it's revenge for Chinese actors mispronouncing all that Thai in Anna And The King).

The rest of the characters are all pretty generic as far as films about legends go. Perhaps the only character that I liked was the Queen herself. She gets to wear gold-plated war armour. And for the most part she carries herself with a definite air of royalty, with the right amount of compassion for her subjects on one hand and a determined fierceness on the other that is so important to a nation's queen during wartime. There are some supernatural elements in the story, which seem somewhat incompatible with the more scientific orientation of all the other characters who are jostling for better cannons and firepower.

I do have to say though, when you match your protagonist, who is a village boy, with a village girl, and that village girl spends all her time preening about like an ad model told to sit a certain way and move her hands gracefully, you KNOW she's going to die.

I guess I'm just too cynical. I'm sure the simplistic, more unsophisticated segments of the Malaysian public will enjoy the film if given appropriate amounts of publicity and promotion.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 7.5/10
How Much I Liked It: 5/10



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This is the twenty-sixth film I saw at the 13th Pusan International Film Festival.

I had thought this would be a bittersweet, perhaps even quirky story about romance. In fact, the opening prologue of the movie seems to confirm that. But it didn't take long before it descended into a lifeless drama without much comedy (certainly not much entertainment value) about two lonely souls who find each other through an unusual mission in the community library - between the librarian and the guy ripping page-198s out of various library books.

The structure of the plot is awkward, and for no good reason. An adopted father appears unintroduced (as if the filmmakers expect the audience to get it without being told) three quarters into the film. The leads seem to want to be interesting but the story gives them nothing to be interesting, and nothing interesting for them to do either. At some point they take a trip - where the guy asks the girl to go with him for a reason that strikes one as asking-too-much, but the girl willingly goes. And then he asks her to leave him alone at the destination, and she does. What?

The guy seems to have a traumatic past. Well, it's not hard to guess what it is - the least the filmmakers could do was to make it somehow more shocking, more unexpected, or just something. But no, the revelation of that traumatic past couldn't have been more pedestrian.

Also, the librarian has a certain routine every morning, where she passes by or greets a few people on her way to work. Those characters there are completely off-tangent to the story, are barely amusing, and don't need to be in the film at all.

Pointless.

Maybe the filmmakers thought they could just count on the cuteness of actor Lee Dong Wook with his feminine lips, or Eugene being a (famous?) Korean singer to sell the film.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 3.5/10
How Much I Liked It: 3/10



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This is the twenty-fifth film I saw at the 13th Pusan International Film Festival.

One of the most interesting films of the year - and by interesting, I mean one of the wackiest, oddest, most incongruent film telling of ... an Italian prime minister's life. Well, it's not a biopic. And this isn't Silvio Berlusconi. No, it's Giulio Andreotti.

Who? You say. So did I. But wikipedia him and you can perhaps see why they picked his story to be made into a film. These are a few of the facts. Andreotti, of the Christian Democratic party, has served as prime minister of Italy three times between 1972 and 1992. He has been accused of crimes and misdemeanours that most prime ministers could never imagine themselves to ever be accused of (but then this is Italy), from ties to the Mafia, to involvement to the kidnapping and murder of then prime minister Aldo Moro, to the assassinations of half a dozen other journalists and businessmen. Aldo Moro, during his captivity, wrote a series of letters which contain very grave criticisms against Andreotti. The trial court might as well be his second home.

But otherwise, his story wouldn't be all that interesting to the rest of the world.

So in fact, the reason the film is so interesting is its unique style. It doesn't really tell a story. Actually a film critic compared this film to Amélie. Yes, if Amélie were political, morbid and dark. The film opens with a more-than-a-minute long series of title cards explaining this and that about Italian politics in the 70s and 80s, but ending up confusing us non-Italians because there are so many names and parties and the subtitles were just too fast (ironically, this opening section is titled 'Glossary'). And then it moves on to show a delightful (yes, delightful) montage of assassinations filled with bullets, blood, and a falling car exploding into a mine (in beautiful extreme slow motion!).

From then on, the film whisks us here and there to show amusing snippets about Andreotti, his relationship with his minions (err, politicians), elections or parliamentary discussions, internal discussions, cocktail parties and clubs, all to the sound of very odd choice of music and songs - they sound a bit too modern and electronic for the era and for the topic (politics and electronica have never been in the same room). The mood of the music is generally ominous. But then it is interspersed with frequent whistling sounds. Perhaps it is reflecting Andreotti's state of mind?

And always in the middle of all that chaos and kinetic energy, is the calm and composed Andreotti, with his idiosyncratic mannerisms and robotic style of walking and moving, very ably portrayed by an excellent Toni Servillo (who is also in another PIFF-screened film called Gomorra, making its own waves). Not knowing too much about either Andreotti or Servillo, to me Servillo IS Andreotti.

There is one scene where a journalist lays down accusation after accusation for Andreotti to reply for two to three minutes - and the camera just stays on the journalist.

And then there is another scene later where Andreotti answers to all those accusations - to the audience, seemingly from a darkened room under a shaft of light coming from above. Also lasting a few minutes, also all in one take (or it seems like it). It was the one point when Andreotti seemed angry, passionate, speaking very fast (aided by the fact that Italian is such as polysyllabic language.)

On top of that, there is a proper gliding Steadicam one-take scene of a celebrity party showing all the politicians having fun, and even Andreotti is there, though on a couch with his usual, stern, expressionless face - all to very provocative percussions.

Perhaps the best line about Andreotti is a line he utters in voiceover in the beginning of the film: "They'd predict my demise and I'd survive. They'd die instead."

The thing about it all is how fun the film is, when it's not supposed to be. I mean, we're talking about corruption and assassinations, and we're enjoying that our protagonist might or might not be involved in all those but we know he's definitely good at hiding.

Another reason why the film has been compared to Amélie is the cinematography - specifically, the way the camera dolly-swoops and decelerates to stop at a particular object/person. (It's not really Amélie. Actually, it's most often used in montages of, for instance, planning sequences and heist sequences.)

I'm ashamed to say I fell asleep for bits and parts of the film, for reasons I still don't know why. As such I think I would have to watch the film again. You are welcomed to watch it, but just keep in mind that if you only ever want to watch movies that you understand, you're in for a major bout of gleeful confusion.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 8/10
How Much I Liked It: 7.5/10
Best Oscar Noms That It Deserves: Best Foreign Language Film



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This is the twenty-fourth film I saw at the 13th Pusan International Film Festival.

I had thought that this would be a soulful, melancholic exploration on love and nostalgia. Well, it's that alright, but the soulfulness and melancholic is laid on so thick that it is ... well, try pouring sugar onto margarine on bread. It's too much, and it's not nice. I was so bored I wanted to fall asleep on this one (unfortunately it was the first screening of the day, no chance of falling asleep there).

The story involves three strands of troubled love between couples - the gay couple, the elderly couple, and the fictitious one in a play directed by one of the gay partners. Soon you can recognise how all three stories are linked to each other - and linked so tightly as to be contrived ... but that's just me complaining - though the film did an okay job in trying to keep it under wraps for as long as possible. By the last half of the story though, one could see all the possible ways it could end (not many) and unfortunately the film is disappointingly predictable.

But why ask for unpredictability in a film about melancholy and nostalgia? Well, coz, if you can't give me unpredictability, then you have to make me enjoy (or cower in suspense) over what I know will happen. The film gives us none of that, because the situations - the 'problems' - the characters have are so awfully simplistic. Which would be fine, there is in fact no easy solutions to all the characters' love problems - but then with such flaccid dialogue and theatrical-like acting (even for the non-theatrical majority of the film) and such plain-looking actors (except for the gay theatre director), it is so hard to care. I honestly didn't feel any of the characters' emotions, and that right there makes the film bad as that is the number one thing the film should prioritise, not the cinematography (not bad) or the music (melodramatic, but it is describing something that isn't there and is leading the film from beginning to end).

Apparently the director O Nathapon came from a theatre background. No wonder. The story is already slow-going as it is. But then the characters speak as is they are trying to out-slow a snail, and their movements are equally slow. Worse, every single character's response to their problem is to ... cry. Cry cry cry. Useless wusses. Another reason why the film is so theatre-like is because the actors seem to be anticipating their beats, very noticeable when they all have to speak so slowly.

I keep saying the film's theatre-like. It's not that I don't enjoy theatre - I do, very much so, one of the things I miss about being in the UK. But when you employ a story in theatrical play, you HAVE to have interesting dialogue, either in the content or the delivery style (like David Mamet or Martin McDonagh, for example).

There is in fact a twist in the end, but it was too little, too late. In conclusion, sure, it has all the features of a Hollywood production - a hefty budget, nice sets, nice costumes, grand wall-to-wall music score, with a poster showing everyone looking away from each other. But it's still a waste of time.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 5/10
How Much I Liked It: 3/10


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This is the twenty-third film I saw at the 13th Pusan International Film Festival. It played at the much appreciated Outdoor Theater.

Gaining the opportunity to watch this film was one of the prime reasons I sought to come to film festival, as this film won the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival this year. It also turned out to be a nice French lesson for me too - The Class is exactly what it says, one year in the life of a teacher and his students (they look about 14, 15?) where he is their form teacher as well as French language teacher. We get to sit in on the grammar lessons (subjunctive this and that). It must have been quite hard to subtitle this to English - for example, at some parts when the kids get the verb conjugations wrong the subtitles go [swim: swummed, swammed].

It is also the strongest argument/rebuke towards parents and authorities who say teachers are 'not doing enough'. While the setting in the film is unmistakably French, which means students are a bit more outspoken and classes can be a bit more rowdy, yet the difficulties and struggles that teachers have to bear, so vividly portrayed here, must be the same worldwide. Certainly in the US. Nowadays for Malaysia too.

For the reason this film won the Palme D'Or is because it adopts a filmmaking style similar to those winners of the same prize in the recent past - Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days and the Dardennes brothers' L'Enfant. They all share the usage of a freely moving camera - shakycam, but not to the extent of Peter Berg or Paul Greengrass - to give it a more documentary feel, the direction of actors for more naturalistic dialogue delivery and portrayal of characters, usually without a score or artificial sound design, all designed to lend as realistic a feel to the story as possible, so that even the most mundane of events (by the standards of the world of movies) such as seeking abortion in Communist Romania or the typical going-ons of a French classroom is given such absorbing immediacy that one just can't break away from it. So for those of you chasing for a Palme D'Or, buck up - making Fahrenheit 9/11 will get you nowhere.

It's not much point to go into the story as there isn't really one by conventional film story standards (there's plenty of conflict and even character arcs, but they aren't united to a theme, isn't mapped to a dichotomy of protagonist-antagonist or good values-negative values and so on). I'll just point out a few instances that are interesting to me.

There's the inclusion of a Chinese boy in class named Wei. Well, that's an unfair observation as the class is very multiracial (which causes some problems as some of the more outspoken ones in class occasionally blames the teacher for discrimination). But being Chinese myself I'm just naturally interested in the Chinese diaspora. And the Chinese stereotype still holds: Wei is blamed for being a bit quiet but you can actually see he tries to engage in class with his not-as-good French. Unfortunately he always comes across as showing off (you know, the hand-raising type), because the boy is also naturally smarter than the rest, more hardworking than the rest ... and spends an inordinate amount of time on l'ordinateur. Which, his parents, typically, complain about because "don't want him to spoil his eyes or get sleepy in class".

There's the teachers' meeting, where after an unfruitful discussion of how to make more effective the punishment system in school, they then spend an equal amount of time discussing the coffee machine in the staff room. It's nice to see teachers being, well, somewhat childish too sometimes, when they are not among the students. And of course, there are instances of teachers' banter sprinkled throughout the film.

It's interesting to see the teacher being so talkative in class, and then keep quiet almost entirely through the PTA meetings.

It's heartbreaking to see, during the third act, the teacher whom we the audience knows genuinely cares about the students, get attacked because of one mistake he made, which got complicated as it gets tied into a conundrum of a problem which I won't reveal here.

And at the end of the film, which is at the end of the school year, suddenly everyone is happy with the teacher again. We learn that teachers aren't perfect, in fact they are just as human as we all are, with pride and ego and embarassments - but here's the thing, they have to pretend they're not. However, they try and they try harder than almost any profession you could think of, because the stakes are so much higher - but from the outside they are unfairly seen to not be doing enough, or that they're out to get the students. (Yasmin Ahmad's Muallaf, for example, seems to celebrate an unusual girl's triumph over her exasperated teacher.) And that in this profession, most issues are not as black and white or clear-cut as one would think. Often teachers have to make compromises where they are demanded to be accurate, and students and parents call out on what they think are mistakes or wrongdoings (usually with much glee, much Schadenfreude) when in fact, there is no other solution. I know all this is rather vague, so I'll just end here and say ...

WATCH THE FILM.

It ought to be in Malaysian cinemas (at least a limited release). Our teachers will appreciate it.

Now, what I want to know is - exactly how was this film directed?

How Good I Think The Film Is: 9.5/10
How Much I Liked It: 8.5/10
Oscar Noms That It Deserves: Best Foreign Language Film



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