|
Goodbye South, GoodbyeRating:
Release Date: 19 February, 2002 Retail Price: $24.98 OUR Price: $21.99 You SAVE: $2.99! Cast: |
Goodbye South, Goodbye Reviews
The All-Unseeing Eye
Just a couple of years ago, Hou Hsiao-hsien made "Café Lumiere", a tribute to the great Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu. At first glance, the Taiwanese director may seem to share with his illustrious predecessor a love of keeping the camera at a safe remove from his characters, letting them at least seem to live out their lives away from the furious Steadicammed intrusions that so many modern (but hardly "modernist") filmmakers prefer. Yet it is hard for me to see how Hsiao-Hsien fits into the league of Ozu, and harder still to see how he explains some contemporary zeitgeist.
"Goodbye South..." is a film about familiar themes: a small-time Taiwanese gangster wants to go into business on mainland China, but gets let down by his hotheaded younger brother... and, to be honest, that's all I can remember. It's just so undistinguished; one chapter merges into another, with lots of clever cross-cutting between timeframes. One of the director's favourite tricks is to show a tinted subjective shot of a driver going along various roads. Later on in the film we find out the tints correspond to the sunglasses the brothers are wearing. Of course, you could say that this is all very clever, as it confounds the audience's expectations as to how far removed they are from the action without immediately informing us of this directorial ruse. And of course there will always be people that confuse Hsiao-Hsien's cool, detached style for some highly original recasting of the rules whereby contemporary films are made. Never mind that Orson Welles dared to anchor a camera in one place to record a family talking during their dinner in "The Magnificent Ambersons" back in 1942, or directors such as John Cassevetes have been making "banal" conversation -actually anything but- the subject of entire films, such as "Faces" (1968). The only way that Hsiao-Hsien's films could seem original, is that so much modern commercial cinema is so woefully conservative.
Compare Hsiao-Hsien with another east Asian, Wong Kar-Wai. Although the Hong Kong director's films are not daringly original, they have one thing that his Taiwanese counterpart lacks: class. Kar-Wai has a clear understating of the genres that he is referring to, subverting them in subtle ways; he doesn't draw back his camera and elongate his takes because we never get to see the characters that way. He actually creates interiority in films like "In the Mood for Love", throwing out backgrounds and scene-setting in order to focus on characters' spatial and emotional relationships with each other. Part of Ozu's greatness was that he could make seemingly banal things interesting, not through discarding banal detail but by somehow accentuating it, and in turn linking it with his characters' emotional and social lives. Yet both Ozu and Kar-Wai share the same language of social interdependence, and express this without need of gimmicks which actually get in the way rather than express anything new or even interesting.
The desperate search for new and interesting voices in cinema on the part of critics merely creates an Emperor's New Clothes mentality of gimmicks and, worst of all, a kind of "it hasn't got CGI, so it must be good" mindset which is very hard to get out of. Similarly, cinema won't find a new lease of life by simply pulling back the camera and introducing boring long takes as if to baton down the hatches against blockbusters and CGI.
inspiring
Goodbye South, Goodbye is not for everyone, but if you give it try, you may see how incredible this film is. The dolly shots from the trains and on the motorcycles are beautiful and really give you a taste of the atmosphere. During the film the camera is like an object in the setting that gives you an inner look into the world of Gao and flatty (the two brothers). As a filmmaker this film has inspired me immensly and I highly recommend it.
More Customer Reviews (4 total)
You like Goodbye South, Goodbye?
|
© 2004, 2005, 2006 DVD Booty | Don't Plunder Our Cache of Booty, Matey!
Hosting made possible by donations from consolidate debt, Debt Counseling Explained, and Payday Now
