Wang Bing Movies
- 2007
The Portuguese-produced, Gulbenkian Foundation-funded omnibus film The State of the World (O Estado do Mundo, 2007) joins September 11 (2003), Paris, Je T'Aime (2006), and other feature-length works made around the same time that resurrect the form and structure of the classic "episode picture." Like the aforementioned titles, the scope here is international: six directors from around the globe were each invited to contribute a sketch of around 15 minutes, on the theme of sociocultural change as it occurs transcontinentally -- change in populace, landscape, economy, and/or lifestyles. The directors who agreed to participate include Belgian Chantal Akerman, Portuguese Pedro Costa, Thai Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Chinese Wang Bing, Brazilian Vicente Ferraz, and Indian Ayisha Abraham.
Weerasethakul's segment, "Luminous People," opens the picture, and depicts one Thai family's ash-scattering ceremony following the death of a beloved relative, as they cruise down the Mekong River in a boat between Laos and Thailand. The director utilizes a broken stream of metonymical shots to create a dreamlike, gossamery ambience, and consciously resists any explanatory voice-over or interpretation, instead encouraging his subjects to reflect on the meaning of the ceremony in voice-over. Next up is Ferraz's contribution, "Germano" -- a message-laden allegory about the elderly Brazilian fisherman of the title (Paschoal Vilaboim), saddled with a minimal crew, who must pilot his tiny vessel beyond its safe and shallow haven and venture boldly into deep waters to draw a healthy catch. En route, however, he must face a lull in the dreaded doldrums and the presence of a mammoth Russian oil tanker. Abraham helms the third segment, "One Way" -- a documentary piece that meditates on the life of Shyam Bahadur, a Nepali emigrant who works as a security guard in Bangalore. Per its title, Bing's fourth segment, "Brutality Factory," bombards the audience with a compendium of almost assaultive images, depicting factory ruins culled from his movie West of the Tracks. Bing then shifts the form of the segment from documentary to docudrama, by filming scripted scenes that depict the torture inflicted by the government on alleged counterrevolutionary dissidents during the notorious Cultural Revolution. A wife is ordered, under threat of execution, to betray her husband. She refuses and is promptly murdered, prior to the sickeningly ironic revelation that the husband committed suicide in 1967. Costa's acclaimed fifth segment, "Tarrafal," unfolds in a dilapidated shack in the outlying regions of Lisbon, where a mother and her son huddle protectively and reflect on the destruction of their Cape Verde home. The mother tells the son a fantastic story about a Boogeyman saddled with the task of determining who is to die, in his roamings throughout the world. Akerman closes the picture with a conceptual art piece -- a montage set in Shanghai, depicting the advertisements for popular products on the sides of buildings and boats. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
Weerasethakul's segment, "Luminous People," opens the picture, and depicts one Thai family's ash-scattering ceremony following the death of a beloved relative, as they cruise down the Mekong River in a boat between Laos and Thailand. The director utilizes a broken stream of metonymical shots to create a dreamlike, gossamery ambience, and consciously resists any explanatory voice-over or interpretation, instead encouraging his subjects to reflect on the meaning of the ceremony in voice-over. Next up is Ferraz's contribution, "Germano" -- a message-laden allegory about the elderly Brazilian fisherman of the title (Paschoal Vilaboim), saddled with a minimal crew, who must pilot his tiny vessel beyond its safe and shallow haven and venture boldly into deep waters to draw a healthy catch. En route, however, he must face a lull in the dreaded doldrums and the presence of a mammoth Russian oil tanker. Abraham helms the third segment, "One Way" -- a documentary piece that meditates on the life of Shyam Bahadur, a Nepali emigrant who works as a security guard in Bangalore. Per its title, Bing's fourth segment, "Brutality Factory," bombards the audience with a compendium of almost assaultive images, depicting factory ruins culled from his movie West of the Tracks. Bing then shifts the form of the segment from documentary to docudrama, by filming scripted scenes that depict the torture inflicted by the government on alleged counterrevolutionary dissidents during the notorious Cultural Revolution. A wife is ordered, under threat of execution, to betray her husband. She refuses and is promptly murdered, prior to the sickeningly ironic revelation that the husband committed suicide in 1967. Costa's acclaimed fifth segment, "Tarrafal," unfolds in a dilapidated shack in the outlying regions of Lisbon, where a mother and her son huddle protectively and reflect on the destruction of their Cape Verde home. The mother tells the son a fantastic story about a Boogeyman saddled with the task of determining who is to die, in his roamings throughout the world. Akerman closes the picture with a conceptual art piece -- a montage set in Shanghai, depicting the advertisements for popular products on the sides of buildings and boats. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sakda Kaewbuadee, Jenjira Jansuda, (more)
Fearless opens in Shanghai, China, circa 1910, when wushu master Huo Yuanjia (martial arts superstar Jet Li) prepares to battle one Japanese opponent, Tanaka (Shidou Nakamura), and three American opponents (Anthony de Longis, Jean-Claude Leuyer, and Brandon Rhea) in a massive tournament. The picture then cuts back to Huo's boyhood in the city of Tianjin, in North China, circa 1880, when his father forbids him from engaging in martial-arts training. He must therefore slip off and train covertly. Around 1900, Huo -- then in his twenties -- continues to fight in tournaments. His determination is such that his entire life begins to revolve around championships, and the prospect of becoming the top-ranked fighter in Tianjin turns into a die-hard obsession, despite the repeated warnings of his best friend, Nong (Dong Yong), to cut back. Huo ignores these admonitions, then turns conceited and ultimately refuses to hear an additional word of caution, until his arrogance leads to the death of a fighter and Nong's decision to abandon him as a friend. Driven into exile, Huo journeys to southeastern Asia, where he works alongside rice farmers and divests himself of conceit, then gently touches the spirit of a blind girl. When he finally returns to Tianjin, he has transformed, internally, into a different person altogether. A huge hit in Hong Kong when originally released into theaters in 2006, Fearless was often touted as Jet Li's final film in the wushu school of martial arts. The picture is based on the real-life story of Huo Yuanjia, founder of the Jingwu school of martial arts. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
A couple with a broken relationship learns some valuable lessons about love, life, and sacrifice in this romantic drama based on a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. It's 1925, and Dr. Walter Fane (Edward Norton) is a physician and bacteriologist who has become smitten with Kitty (Naomi Watts), the beautiful daughter of a wealthy and socially prominent family. Walter proposes marriage to Kitty and she accepts; however, while he clearly loves her, Kitty is more interested in her reputation than Walter's feelings, as she's recently turned 25, an age by which most of her peers have already wed. Kitty and Walter move to Shanghai, where he sets up a practice and she takes a lover, the British Vice Consul Charles Townsend (Liev Schreiber). When Walter learns of his wife's infidelity, he becomes furious, and impulsively volunteers to travel to China to work in a village stricken with a major cholera epidemic. While Walter's actions are meant to punish Kitty rather than reflect his own benevolence, the daily trials of living in a community in crisis have a striking impact on the couple, giving them a new and deeper perspective on their relationship. The Painted Veil is the third screen adaptation of Maugham's best-selling novel of the same name; a 1934 version starred Greta Garbo and Herbert Marshall, while Eleanor Parker and Bill Travers played the leads in a 1957 remake titled The Seventh Sin. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Naomi Watts, Edward Norton, (more)
- 2005
Omnibus films attained renewed popularity during the 1990s and 2000s; this particular seven-episode film-a-sketch arrived during that period, and involved several top-tiered international filmmakers including John Woo, Spike Lee, Ridley Scott, Emir Kusturica and three others. Each helmer was asked to shoot a segment of between 16-18 minutes in length, for UNICEF, on the subject of exploited and/or underprivileged children around the world. The package opens with "Tanza," helmed by Algerian novelist-cum-filmmaker Mehdi Charef and shot in Burkina Faso. It concerns the 12-year-old female title character - an adolescent freedom fighter - who trollops through the countryside accompanied by young male guerilla fighters who spout off deliberately nonsensical English-language dialogue. Kusturica takes the reins for the second segment, "Blue Gypsy," an overtly comical episode in the vein of Time of the Gypsies about a precocious young boy who makes the split from his alcoholic father and thieving family and goes to live in a juvenile detention center, finding it preferable to home. The third episode, helmed by co-producer Stefano Veneruso and entitled "Ciro," recalls neorealismo with its Naples-set tale of a young boy unloved and systematically neglected by his mother, who resorts to spending time with other neglected children and stealing watches, and then gets caught in the direst of ways. The fourth segment, Spike Lee's delicately-handled "Jesus Children of America," stars Hannah Hodson as Blanca, a young Brooklynite ostracized by her peers because her parents are junkies; when she learns of her HIV-positive status, her world crumbles. For the 5th episode, "Bilu and Joao," Brazilian director Katia Lund casts child actors Francisco Anawake de Freitas and Vera Fernandes as two impoverished tykes whose days involve walking around the outskirts of Sao Paulo and pulling a wooden cart, into which they pile aluminum and paper - but do so joyously, with the courage and grace of two individuals delighting in subhuman work despite the direst of circumstances. For the sixth segment, "Jonathan," Ridley Scott teams up to co-direct with daughter Jordan Scott; the episode stars David Thewlis (Naked) as an emotionally-traumatized war photographer who encounters a band of Eastern European orphans. And the closer, John Woo's "Song Song and Little Cat," studies the contrast between the lives of two young Asian girls from polar opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum: Oi Ruyi is Little Cat, an abjectly impoverished child discovered in the garbage, during infancy, by a homeless man; she grows up helping her discoverer forage for victuals until he dies, leaving her aimless and bereft. Woo cuts between her story and that of Song Song, a wealthy and pampered little girl whose story is equally tragic in its own way, as her parents are undergoing a bitter divorce. Though this film, as indicated, enlisted the support of at least two major Hollywood directors (Scott and Lee) it did encounter extreme difficulty securing U.S. theatrical and ancillary distribution, which effectively kept it out of North America in the years that immediately followed its global release. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Adam Bila, Elysee Rounamba, (more)
- 2005
- PG
- Add Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles to QueueAdd Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles to top of Queue
On the heels of such extravagant historical swordplay epics as Hero and House of Flying Daggers, Mainland Chinese director Zhang Yimou returns to the reins to tell this intimate tale of an aging father who attempts to remedy a longstanding rift with his grown son. Summoned to Tokyo by his daughter-in-law, Rie (Shinobu Terajima), village fisherman Gou-ichi Takata (Ken Takakura), arrives at a city hospital to find his son, Ken-ichi (Kiichi Nakai), bedridden by liver cancer. Though Gou-ichi attempts to use the visit as a catalyst to heal a decade-long dispute between the pair, stubborn Ken-ichi rejects his father's attempt at reconciliation outright. Subsequently handed a videotape by Rie before departing back to the countryside, Gou-ichi returns home unsuccessful in his efforts to build a bridge of peace between himself and his ailing son. Upon watching the videotape, a research project exploring the Chinese folk arts that was shot by Ken-ichi in the Southern province of Yunnan, Gou-ichi is oddly affected by the onscreen failure of his son in convincing well-known opera singer Li Jiamin (playing himself) to perform the titular song, a classic operatic piece espousing the values of friendship. Now determined to travel to Yunnan and videotape the performance that his son could not, Gou-ichi embarks on a life-changing quest that will not only give him a greater understanding of the relationship between himself and his own son, but set into motion a healing process that will also have a profound impact on the troubled opera singer and the man's long-lost illegitimate son as well. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ken Takakura, Kiichi Nakai, (more)
Chinese director Zhang Yimou fuses a martial arts action-drama with a tragic romance in this elegant period piece. In the year 859 A.D., as the Tang dynasty is beset by rebellion, Leo (Andy Lau) and Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro) are a pair of lawmen who have been given the task of ferreting out the leaders of a revolutionary faction known as the Flying Daggers. Working on a tip that members of the group are working out of a brothel called the Peony Pavilion, Jin arrives there in disguise and is introduced to a beautiful blind dancer named Mei (Zhang Ziyi). After watching Mei's performance following several drinks, Jin drunkenly attempts to have his way with her, and Leo is forced to intervene. After gaining Mei's trust in a game of skill, Leo arrests her and informs her that she'll be tortured if she doesn't tell all she knows about the Flying Daggers. Jin responds by helping Mei break out of prison, but he has an ulterior motive -- by following her, Leo and Jin are certain she'll lead them to the Flying Daggers. However, as he helps the blind girl find her way back home, Jin finds himself falling in love with Mei, and isn't certain if he's willing to betray her again. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Takeshi Kaneshiro, Zhang Ziyi, (more)
- 2003
Filmmaker Wang Bing spent three years charting the decline and decay of one of China's major industrial regions in his over nine-hour, three-part documentary Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks. From 1999 to 2001, Wang traveled via freight train through the northeast district of Tie Xi. Beginning with the four-hour first section entitled Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks -- Part One: Rust, the director visits three important factories in Tie Xi that are all on the verge of closure -- a development sure to accelerate the region's economic downturn. In the nearly three-hour second section, Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks -- Part Two: Remnants, Wang visits a rundown governmental housing community that is also on the slate for demolition, leaving the inhabitants without shelter as well as unemployed. Completing his series is the final section, Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks -- Part Three: Rails, that follows some of the people that make their earnings by bumming around and on the rail lines. With the downturn of the economy, which in turn decreases the rail traffic, these scavengers are also falling into desperate times that force difficult choices to be made. The entirety of Tie Xi Que was screened at the 2003 Rotterdam International Film Festival and the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival. During its festival run, this film played in an English-subtitled version. ~ Ryan Shriver, All Movie Guide
Hero is two-time Academy Award nominee Zhang Yimou's directorial attempt at exploring the concept of a Chinese hero. During the peak of their Warring States period, China was divided into seven kingdoms all fighting for supremacy. Most determined to dominate China was the kingdom of Qin, whose king (Chen Daoming) was wholly obsessed with becoming the first emperor of China. Though he was an assassination target for many, none of his would-be killers inspired as much fear as the legendary assassins Broken Sword (Tony Leung), Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung), and Sky (Donnie Yen). In hopes of thwarting his death, the king has promised endless wealth and power to anyone who defeats his would-be murderers. No results come until ten years later, when a man called Nameless (Jet Li) brings the weapons of the three assassins to the Qin king's palace. Nameless claims to be an expert swordsman who had defeated Sky and destroyed the famed duo of Flying Snow and Broken Sword by using their love for one another against them. Once Nameless comes face to face with the king, however, it looks as if the situation is more complicated than he had thought. Also featured in Hero is actress Zhang Ziyi (The Road Home, Crouching Tiger, Hiden Dragon) as Broken Sword's devoted servant, Moon. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jet Li, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, (more)
- 1998
Li Shaohong directed this Chinese drama about a working-class Beijing family. On a sidestreet by a railway line, Qi Hongguang (Song Dandan) awakens at 3am to go to her job at a meat-processing plant. She's married to factory foreman Liu Shijie (Wang Xueqi). His aged mother (Lu Wenzheng) lives with them, as does their tomboyish 16-year-old daughter, Mingming (Gao Jun). When Mingming's school requires her to take an army drill course, she develops a strong attraction to a young soldier (Liu Xingsheng), while her mom finds a few romantic sparks ignited by her former art teacher (Wang Bing). An immense shopping mall spells doom for Shijie's factory, but he keeps the news from his family. In sequences recalling The Full Monty, Shijie and his buddies secretly search for work, play cards, and hang out together in mutual support -- until one day Hongguang stumbles onto the secret. Shown at the 1998 East West Film Festival (London). ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Song Dandan, Wang Xueqin, (more)
