The Banquet - Song of Loneliness

(The Banquet. Directed by, Feng Xiaogang)
The Banquet (released as legend of the black scorpian in America) is a Chinese film set in 10th century China at the end of the Tang dynasty and is loosely based on Shakespeare's Hamlet. It follows the life of a banished prince, Wu Luan, and the two women who love him, cold Empress Wan and Qing Nu, a young naive lady-in-waiting. I loved this entire film, but the scene I'm going to write about occurs near the end of the film (spoiler alert!) in which most of the main characters die. Some context first though.
Basically the current emperor usurped the throne by killing his brother and then married his late brothers widow, Empress Wan (yes the same one in love with Wu Luan) and wishing to keep his hold on the throne, endeavours to kill his nephew. He cannot, however, do this openly for fear of retribution from the court, but more importantly, from the Empress.
At the beginning of the scene the emperor believes he has succeeded and the empress, wishing to exact her revenge, poisons the emperors wine with a mixture of cyanide and scorpion venom, unsurpassed in toxcidity except by "the human heart". But before the emperor has the chance to drink, Qing Nu comes forward wishing to perform a tribute to the 'late' prince who was a lover of music and the arts. Out of pity, the emperor offers her a sip of his wine, much to the horror of her brother and father (a curent and former general) who are in league with the empress and know that the wine is poisoned.
The song Qing Nu sings is the prince's favorite, a Yue song of lonliness and unrequited love. She performs it wearing the bloodstained mask that the prince always wore when he was performing.
The reason I love this scene so much is because of its simplicity, there is hardly any movement except for the simplest dance moves and almost no music, just the voice of Qing Nu crying out with a lonliness that is palpable in her song.
The camera switches angles repeatedly as is circles around Qing Nu and the masked person she is dancing with, the dance brings them close together, intertwining withought ever really touching, always apart, except for in the last moment when Qing Nu slowly collapses from the poison, and the masked dancer catches her.
Removing first Qing's mask then his own, Wu Luan reveals himself as the dancer to comfort Qing while she dies, her blood a shocking contrast against their white clothes. The saddest part is that for perhaps the first time in years, in Qing's last moment, Wu Luan no longer feels lonely.
Music Swells to replace the silence when Qing Nu dies and the prince is left in tears and Qing's brother desperately repeats the promise he made to her, "brother loves you, no one can harm you."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjhg53GGd3U

Film Texts as Prep for Lantana

The Seventh Seal:
We watched a clip from the beginning of this movie. In it, a man (probably a knight judging by his clothes) is confronted by death who is represented by a tall figure in dark clothes with only his death-white (ha) face showing. I liked that death was represented as something shadow-like that would be on your heels for all your life. The thing that I liked most about this video however was the way that the knight managed to cheat death, with chess! The knight challenged death to a game of chess, claiming that he had learned of death fondness of chess in a painting, suggesting that this particular situation had happened before, and someone had lived to tell (or in this case paint) the tale. I think chess is a good analogy for the game of life in this movie, it's all about tactics and skill, you have to be smart and always a step ahead to survive, the kind of game that death would like. What I couldn't tell properly from just the start of the movie and what I'd like to fnd out is whether or not death is represented as evil, because when you think about it, death in itself is neither good nor evil, it is simply the necessary and inevitable ending to life.


All or Nothing:
For this movie, we watched a clip from somewhere in the middle of the movie, just after the son in the family was hospitalised for having a heart attack, despite the fact that he is still quite young. The husband is obviously depressed, and this is highlighted by his hunched over posture the camera angle, it only films him on the side, like he's trying to hide. The only time we see him front on is when he is confronting his wife about whether or not she loves him. The majority of the clip is the argument between the wife and husband, the husband feels depressed and overwhelmed whereas the wife feels let down, married to a lazy husband that makes her do all the work. By the end of the scene both the wife and the husband are crying, it's a rare and honest look into what it is to be human.



The Umbrella's of Cherboug:
Another clip from the start, the Umbrellas of Cherboug is a french film the entirety of which is sung, with no spoken dialogue. The scene we watched was of two lovers singing their farewells as the man goes away to serve in the army. It's obvious that he doesnt want to go and that she doesn't want him to go, but they have no choice. Both of the actors do a good job, their sorrow obvious in their voices and in the song. The song itself could have been sadder I suppose, but it matched very well with the colours and setting in the film and besides it's not goodbye forever...or is it...






Don't Look Now:
This was an interesting clip, again from the start of the movie it begins with a girl and her brother playing outside while their father and mother are inside. As the girl wanders around playing, she loses her ball in the water and, trying to retrieve it, drowns. As the movie builds up to this, it was interesting to note that the actions of the parents seemed to mirror that of her and her brother (eg. when the girl throws her ball, her mother also tosses something). Colour plays an important role in this film, especially the colour red. The girl is dressed in a striking red raincoat wheras her surroundings are dull colours, all dark greens and browns. The father first realises something is wrong when he spills his drink on some sort of inked glass depicting a churches stained glass windows and a figure in red with only their back visible. The drink causes the blood-red ink to spread over the glass, visibly distressing the father and causing him to go check on his kids only to find his only daughter under the water. The film slows to slow motion as it shows the father try in vain to save his daughter.


Walkabout:
Another clip from the start of the movie! The opening scenes of this movie spend a great deal of time filming the city and the way it chokes, tags and supresses everything that is natural. There is even a shot of a teenage girl and her younger brother swimming in a pool when the ocean is only a stones throw away. The clip focuses on the girl and boy and their family. The tension between the mother and father is obvious, they stay in different rooms of the house and barely acknowlage each other. There is a dramatic shift in the movie when the father takes his children out to the desert, presumably for a picnic. The desert is a huge contrast to the forest of huge buildings the family is obviously used to, suddenly finding yourself in such a flat, hot and harsh environment would take a bit of adjusting. The clip ends rather dramatically and disturbingly when the depressed father attempts to shoot his children before burning himself to death in his car, a shocking end to a clip full of contrasts and surprises.

Superman and Paula Browns New Snowsuit.

This is a short story that I thourally enjoyed. It was well written, thoughtful and interesting from beginning to end, really my kind of story. It is about a young girl and her transition from childhood into, not so much adulthood, as the age of knowing, the loss of her innocence. She was forced to eat the forbidden fruit and unwanted knowledge came to her. The story is told through her eyes and begins with bright lights and technicolour dreams in which superman comes to teach her how to fly. She even plays superman games with her best friend at school and Sheldon, the loner "mama's boy" who always plays the villain. Sheldon does however bring quite a disturbing element into their games, the girl mentions that he could come up with the most inventive tortures and that he even spends his spare time pulling the wings off flys and watching them struggle. This suggests to me that little Sheldon might turn into a sciopath one day. Anyway the girl's world starts to shift as the story goes on and she describes the start of the war and the air-raid drills that the children must take part in at school. The last day of her untainted childhood comes on Paula Brown's birthday. All the children on the block are invited, including the main character, despite the fact that (according to the main character) no one really likes Paula all that much because she is "bossy and stuck-up." After Paula spends some tims showing off her presents, including an expensive new snowsuit from Sweeden, the children are all taken to see Snow White at the cinema after cake and icecream, but here is where the story becomes disturbing again. Before Snow White, the cinema plays a propaganda movie about prisoners of way in Japan. The girl watches in horror as the prisoners are first slowly starved, then brutally shot as they try to escape with the Japanese laughing and stamping above them. That night, instead of superman, the girls dreams are invaded by Japanese soldiers and the groans of dying men. The last straw comes comes for her when she is playing tag with Paula and the other children. At one point in the game, Paula manages to trip and fall into an oil slick, spoiling her brand new snowsuit. Eager to find a scapegoat to shift the blame, Paula accuses the main character of pushing her. It only takes. A second for the other children to join in, shouting "you did it, you did it," taunting her with the thoughtless cruelty of those who don't yet believe in consequences. Running home she has a brief respite with her mother and uncle whom she says bears an uncanny resemblance to superman, but this ends when a neighbor tells the girls mother that her daughter pushed Paulaand should therefore buy Paula a new snowsuit. The girl tells the truth and denies this of course, but of course one of the most unfair and frustrating things about being a child is that adults will hardly ever believe you, even when your being sincere. In the darkness on her bed that night, having been exposed to the cruelties of life and having been failed by both her mother and uncle, all of her dreams and childish fancies that she had painted to brighten the dark blackboard of life were all rubbed away, and she was left with nothing but harsh reality. All in all, I think that this was the best short story that I have ever read, it was dark and thought-provoking, so right up my ally ;).