Preoccupation And Repression

[summertime]

From a Hong Kong blog - Plums in Blue Moon 梅林邀月


Saturday, 6 October 2007

Preoccupation And Repression

Not surprisingly, the screening of Director Ang Lee's award-winning Lust, Caution has stirred up another round of fuss among many people in Hong Kong. It has been quite some time since any other film received the same level of recognition among the local audience.

Again, there is now a compelling reason for everyone to spare more than two-and-a-half hours in the cinema. Admitting that you haven't watched an extremely popular film like your friends and colleagues did is by no means noble. The incapability of engaging in a conversation about the plot, the characters or, more importantly, the sex scenes in the case of Lust, Caution, is deemed to be unbearably embarrassing. Interestingly, most of us in Hong Kong are taught to believe that we shall never become a laughing stock just by being different - something that is not acceptable and subject to contempt and disgrace.

Highlighting the eyebrow-raising sex scenes in the promotion campaign was obviously a deliberate effort to arouse attention to highest possible limit. This tactic is proved to be particularly effective for the local audience who is generally addicted to the excitement of voyeurism.

Few in Hong Kong have read Eileen Chang's masterpieces, let alone being a fan of hers. But it takes nothing to appreciate sensual pleasure, be it real or hyper-real on the silver screen.

How sad it is to spend too much time and effort focusing on the sex scenes, which were designed to deliver a message rather than being a message by themselves. Too many commentators, including those Christian fundamentalists who called for a boycott of the film because of the episode that takes up no more than one-tenth of the length of the film, seem to have lost sight of the full picture.

People who are blinded by prejudice think the others are blind as they are. People who are preoccupied by sex find sexual references in everything they see. As the Buddhist teaching says, "Wind doesn't move anything but it's your heart that makes you see things move." As we can see in communication theories, perception is often a self-imposed belief or even indulgence rather than something of objective existence.

Actually, to my own surprise, the sex scenes were the most natural and the least embarrassing I have ever seen, even though the actor and the actress were nude. I found something in the atmosphere that was much more powerful and breath-taking than what the couple was doing - repression.

It was repression of love, repression of desire, and repression of conscience. It was a story with a motif that has been tirelessly explored and vividly depicted by Director Lee throughout these years.

Like many other characters portrayed by Director Lee in his previous works, both Wang Chia-chi and Mr Yee were victims of repression. Their subtle movements and facial expressions, and sometimes even their expressionless faces, had so much more to tell than the words they muttered.

In the setting of a war-torn China, repression seemed to be the only means of survival and deterrent to overwhelming fear. Just look at the faceless crowds on the streets of Shanghai in the film. Be they Chinese, Japanese or Europeans. There was little difference, if any at all, between sexes and nationalities before fear and repression.

Coincidently, repression is also a common theme in Eileen Chang's literary works, though it is often disguised skilfully in torture, absurdity and indifference. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Director Lee is, in my opinion, the most successful and truthful presenter of Eileen Chang's fiction in the format of film. He obviously has an insightful understanding of Eileen Chang's work as if she had told him what she wanted to deliver between the lines. What is even more important is his unmatched mastery of script, cinematography, music, props and any other component to the finest detail. What I found most impressive was the extravagant re-construction of the streets of Hong Kong and Shanghai during the 1940s. It was certainly extraordinary but indispensable in setting up the right context and atmosphere. This is particularly important in representing the fiction of Eileen Chang, who herself devoted a lot of ink in such trivial details of food, clothing and accessories of the characters. Comparing to his counterparts in Hong Kong or Mainland China, Director Lee apparently has a much stronger grasp of the "soul" of Eileen Chang's works.

This is certainly a piece of good news for Eileen Chang's fans. For the first time in history, we now have the first glimpse of hope of introducing one of the greatest modern Chinese writers to non-Chinese readers through cinema.


http://am631010.blogspot.com/2007/10/preoccupation-and-repression.html