LFM Reviews Also Like Life

By Joe Bendel. Look in your pocket and you might find a smart phone made in Taiwan. They were the only one of the four Asian Tiger economies that largely dodged the regional financial crisis of the late 1990s. However, the Republic of China remains very aware of the extreme poverty it rose out of. The memories of its hardscrabble past were even fresher in the early 1980s, when Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien introduced the world to Taiwanese auteurist cinema. One of those watershed films was an anthology production Hou contributed to. Fittingly, Hou, Zeng Zhuangxiang, and Wan Jen’s The Sandwich Man screens this week as part of the traveling Hou retrospective Also Like Life, now playing in Vancouver.

Jin Shu is definitely a crying-on-the-inside kind of clown, but he doesn’t look very cheerful on the outside either. He tramps through his provincial small town wearing his shabby home-made clown costume and sandwich boards advertising the local theater. He has not even been paid yet for his humiliations. This gig was his idea and he is still working on-spec during the trial period. He badly needs work to support his infant son and increasingly impatient wife, but he does not have the right sort of personality for anything involving promotions to the public. Adding further anxiety to his wounded ego, Jin Shu’s little boy no longer recognizes him when he is out of make-up.

In some ways, His Son’s Big Doll (as the story’s title directly translates) also critiqued restrictive Taiwanese laws against contraception that were abolished a few years after the film’s release. It is a relentlessly naturalistic tale about economic desperation, but the surprisingly upbeat conclusion makes it feel like a sort of before-the-fact allegory of Taiwan’s rapid development—just hang on and everything will get better.

Since it is Hou Hisao-hsien and the titular story, The Sandwich Man would seem to be the main event, but the subsequent constituent films are just as good or better. In Zeng’s Vicky’s Hat, two new recruits try to sell Japanese pressure cookers throughout their provincial territory, but they soon start to suspect their product is categorically unsafe. It is a story that has a bit of Glengarry Glen Ross to it, but it is even more concerned with the younger salesman’s halting friendship with Vicky, a mysterious school girl in their neighborhood. There are some fine lines Zeng and his cast must walk—such as establishing his willingness to chastely wait for her to grow old enough for a relationship, but they turn the multiple tragic twists to devastating effect.

Wan’s concluding Taste of Apples is a bit O. Henry-ish—in fact, its irony now seems ironic. A migrant worker is hit by the American military attaché’s car, but this might not be the worst thing that could happen to his struggling family. He will have the best of medical care at the American military hospital, his wife and family will be financially taken care of, and his children will have educational opportunities that never would have otherwise been available to them. Plus, the American Colonel seems genuinely sorry about it all.

From "The Sandwich Man."

Reportedly, the Taiwanese government sought to suppress Sandwich Man because of its portrayal of American government personnel, but considering the anti-American propaganda out there, we should settle for Sandwich Man every chance we get. Sure, we try to fix problems by throwing a bunch of cash around, but that just might work for the family of Apples.

It is also rather fascinating to see how each narrative arc (all adapted from short stories by Huang Chunming, by screenwriter Wu Nien-jen, and shot by cinematographer Chen Kun-hou) speak in dialogue with each other. Those who survived the painful past and make it through the difficult present just might see a better tomorrow, but it will not be easy. A modern classic of Taiwanese cinema, The Sandwich Man could be even more significant when seen in the light of the subsequent thirty-some years of growth and liberalization. Highly recommended, it screens this Thursday (2/26) at The Cinematheque in Vancouver, as part of Also Like Life.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on February 25th, 2015 at 9:56pm.

LFM Reviews Fires on the Plain @ The 2015 Film Comment Selects

By Joe Bendel. Joseph Heller’s Yossarian has nothing on Private Tamura. He is caught in a miserable catch-22 and the only thing that will dislodge him from his vicious cycle will be a further downturn in Japan’s fortunes of war. There is absolutely nothing heroic about combat throughout intense auteur Shinya Tsukamoto’s faithful but bloody remake of Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain, which screened during Film Comment Selects 2015.

Tamura is suffering from a nasty case of tuberculosis and maybe some mild shell shock. Deemed too sick to serve effectively by his arrogant commanding officer, Tamura is ordered to check into the nearest field hospital on Leyte. However, the medical staff refuses to admit him, considering him too healthy to merit a spot on their disease floor.

Back and forth he trudges between the camp and the hospital, repeatedly being turned away by each, until Allied attacks essentially eliminate either option. Receiving word the Imperial forces have belatedly ordered them all to regroup at Palompon, Tamura falls in and out of small ragtag bands of retreating Imperial soldiers, but his increasingly desperate countrymen might represent a more immediate danger than the Yanks he is supposedly fighting.

The 1959 Plain has to be Ichikawa’s darkest, bleakest film. Tsukamoto does not exactly match its dour existentialism, but he certainly never whitewashes its atmosphere or implications. In terms of tone, the recent Plain could be described as one part Samuel Beckett and two parts Apocalypse Now, but with liberal helpings of severed body parts. Tsukamoto’s Plain is definitely not for the faint of heart, but it is considerably more accessible than the full-on assault to the senses delivered by his Tetsuo series.

From "Fires on the Plain."

It is safe to say vanity had nothing to do with Tsukamoto’s decision to direct himself as Tamura. He is never flashy, but it is grimly compelling to watch the soul steadily seep out of him. You absolutely believe his is just a shell of a person, which is certainly some kind of performance.

Plain is truly serious stuff, intended for discerning audiences, but there might be enough gore to placate his loyal cult-following. It covers all the bases Ichikawa did, nearly beat for beat, yet it is unquestionably and readily identifiably a Tsukamoto film. Together with his co-cinematographer Satoshi Hayashi, Tsukamoto gives his slow descent into tropical madness a distinctively sweaty, feverish, and slightly surreal look that is equally transfixing and disconcerting. One of the better remakes of a genuine classic you will see in sometime, Tsukamoto’s Fires on the Plain is recommended for those who appreciate uncompromising anti-war cinematic statements after its screening at the Walter Reade, as part of this year’s Film Comment Selects.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on February 25th, 2015 at 9:55pm.