Film Studies
Professor Wen-Chi Lin
張昭昀 941002047
December 24, 2006
The Review of “The Wayward Cloud” and “A City of Sadness”
The film “The Wayward Cloud” starts with a period which lacks in water while
the authorities concerned advise everyone to have more watermelons to outlive the
drought. Kang-Sheng Li is the one who applies for a job as a porn star. Later, he
meets a girl called Shiang-Chyi Chen to whom he just sold the watch before. She
invites him to her house for supper and gradually falls in love with him. Li wants to
conceal his occupation as a porn star; however, when Chen begs for sex, he just gives
up or uses a cigarette to refuse her. One day she helps the porn actress in a coma and
she finds that Li’s real identity as a porn actor who prepares to make love. After the
orgasm, Li puts his genitals into Chen’s mouth. The sorrowful denouement ends with
her shedding tears, which seems to terminate their relationship.
The director uses an abundance of images to tell us of emotions of these
characters, including their attitude toward love, the city, and sex. Li first acts as a
doctor to have the sexual intercourses with the nurse. We usually take the doctor as a
holly job to help people alive but the doctor’s robe is utilized as a sexual drive, which
denotes that the urbanization distorts the real meaning not solely of the occupation but
of the values in the society as well. From his agonized facial expression, he seems like
the one who does not enjoy but suffer from the sex because he is very tired of the job.
Also, we can understand that the watermelons symbolize strong affections, yet Li
keeps uses his hand to spoil the watermelon. The melon which has a hole inside
denotes that no one can bridge the gap of real love and that sex no longer equals love
since his fantasy of love is ruined by repetitive and tedious sexual intercourses.
During the process of shooting the video tapes, we can see both the emptiness of the
actors and the pain imposed on the actress.
After he uses some tissue to get rid of some seeds from his body, he just squats
down on the road with no expression. It is undoubtedly that audience would not know
what haunt in Li’s mid. Through his looking around the cars passing by him, it may
imply that the modern people stand on the crossroads, struck in the predicament of not
knowing where to go and leave; to put it in another way, we have no precise goal to
achieve but just money to make a living. His lonely body on the roads also makes us
realize that we are indeed isolated and separated after the urbanization. Li later goes
to the top floor to wash his hair in a standpipe because there is no water around. While
Li dives into the water, he is transformed into a reptile crawling and singing in the
water. He is so bound by the cage-like standpipe with nets intertwined that he begs for
freedom to some extent because he is conditioned by the surroundings that we call
urbanization. Also, the reason why he is changed into a half-lizard and half-human
animal is that he, through the forced sexual intercourses, he gradually loses some
humanity but gains some characteristics of beasts, which may just know they can have
sex without any foundation of love. Yet, he still waits for love to come. He
understands that his love will be incomplete like a waning moon.
While Chen invites Li to her house for supper, she gladly passes watermelon
juices to him but he declines her bottles. At the same moment, he cannot open the
suitcase either. Li’s refusal seems to tell us that he cannot accept the strong affections
from her because he seems paralyzed in expressing love. Moreover, both of them can
barely open the suitcase, which denotes they have strong emotions in their mind but
have no way to release them. After he has sex with Yi-Ching Lu, he lies on the net
contemplating over something. He seems to fall into the net of love while he still
cannot escape from the net that we can call a contract binding him economically.
Chen seems to beg to make love with Li but Li just places his cigarettes between her
tiptoes, putting into his mouth smoking. Their behaviors at this moment are
transformed into an image of sex. Similar to Li putting watermelons into the porn
actress, the cigarette symbolizes the genital and the mouth the vagina. Yet, their
sexual identity is reversed─Li plays the female character and Chen the male one. On
one hand, it means that Li doesn’t assume love can be an equivalent of sex and gets
exhausted by it. On the other hand, normally men play predominant roles in having
sex but in Li’s job, he acts like a woman who is forced to have lots of intercourses he
doesn’t want. Chen is the flower in bloom, hoping to have sex to become a mother,
yet Li is like the cold CKS statue, who is parlayed in giving his love to her.
Another time of begging for sexual love from Chen happens in the room filled
with pornographic video tapes. While Chen still hopes to have sex with Li, he still
refuses her and takes her away to the skywalk. He is jammed with so much sex
everyday, so facing these videotapes makes him not more excited but more parlayed
in it. He cannot resist the sexual flow but he is overloaded with it. Nonetheless, he
dare not speak out his mind; in consequence, he just gives up and runs away from the
room, a symbol of the society full of sex and violence nowadays. Finally, when Chen
finds Li’s real identity, the shot of Chen in the windows watch Li does his routine,
making love with a sexual tool─the porn actress passing out─which blocks their
emotions from both sides. Beside her, there stands a billboard of attendant smiling
very cheerfully but they are actually raped by the distorted patriarchal society. While
Li force her to swallow his sperm after orgasm, we can realize that Li tries to break
the barrier to win her back. Nevertheless, Chen’s tears seem to tell audience,
especially in my personal viewpoint, their relationship is like the bubble on the faucet
broken, or the cloud easily blown away.
In the film, there are plenty of images that connect these characters,
demonstrating their emotions visually. Among them, watermelon and water are the
most obvious and strongest images appearing in the film several times. I will illustrate
some other images about watermelons and water that I’ve not mentioned above.
After we see the watermelon on the porn actress’s vagina, the shot soon is taken
Chen’s putting the flowery cushion in the same position, watching the news
concerning watermelon. The flower substitutes for the watermelon and her keeping
drinking watermelon juices, which mean her eagerness for love. The news also
informs us that the drought of the river causes the lack of water in the reservoir, which
suggests that our emotions, through the industrialization, gradually disappear in the
city; that is, we are indifferent to others’ predicament. While Chen still stores up many
bottles of water which she takes from the public restroom in her working place, the
Palace Museum. Too many bottles of water tell us that Chen has no outlet to express
her emotions, particularly love for her lover. Finding the watermelon floating on the
filthy river, Chen takes Li’s mineral water to cleanse the watermelon she picks from
the river. These floating watermelons stand for these lovers she may meet during her
life journey, and she immediately takes one melon away, meeting Kang-Sheng Li,
which makes us aware that Li may be her destined lover. Furthermore, cleaning the
taint on the watermelon seems that Chen hopes to have a pure and sweet love with Li,
but Li who seems crammed with so much negative stuff cannot give her such
feedback.
In order to open her suitcase, Li takes the knife to dig out the asphalt on the
road and gets the key back. After a while the water suddenly emerging from the road,
the spilling water like their love cannot be hid anymore and they will have a further
relationship. We can see more powerful image when they fry the rice-flour noodles.
When they fry the noodles, they right away swell up and get fired. Hoping to
extinguish the fire, they put some water on the noodles yet they flame more violently.
Their affections toward each other as the swollen rice-flour noodles gradually rise and
the water acts as an emotional drive to boost their relationship. After Chen listens to
the groans form the upper floor, the shot from an angle of elevation between her legs
takes the round light on the ceiling. The same image appears here again─the light is
metonymy of the watermelon─but this time Chen hopes to get not only love but also
sex. And we can see Li has sex with Lu while the staff keep pouring water on them
because the sex lacks in love needs water to fill the gap. While the water in the bottle
gets less and less with no water refilled, the staff sprays the remaining water on them
in a rage which scares them so much since excessive water like overflowing emotions
make them overloaded. Finally they have to take the dirty water as a sexual drive to
keep working. Since they just have physical excitement but no mental feeling on the
intercourse, any kind of emotions, either pure water or dirty water cannot help them
get more happiness from it.
There is also a vaudeville which many people hold a water-melon like umbrella
walking in and out of the mouth of a dragon and tiger, which symbolize the sperm
swimming through vagina. Later Chen opens the refrigerator filled with many bottles
and a watermelon, and she sticks her head in it and licks the watermelon, which
reminds of the original scene of Li’s licking watermelon on the actress’s vagina. Her
movement powerfully implies her strong desire for having sex with Li. However, after
dragging the porn actress home, she intends to take the watermelon down but it is
broken. It gives us the idea that her fantasy of falling in love with Li will be broken.
From this film, we can see the director transforms the invisible emotions of these
characters into palpable items like water and watermelons. The protagonists are
through the period of urbanization but they are all exhausted not merely physically
but mentally as well.
The film “A City of Sadness” begins with the era that KMT government in
Mainland China takes over the sovereignties of Taiwan from colonization of Japan.
The story basically depicts the tragedy happening in the Lin family. The eldest brother,
Wen-Heung Lin redecorates his geisha tavern and changes its names into “Little
Shanghai,” but finally gets shot because he wants to revenge for Wen-Leung Lin. The
second brother Wen-Sheng Lin is recruited to be a military doctor to help Japanese
soldiers in The Philippines, from whom no one has heard anymore. The third brother
Wen-Leung Lin is recruited to be a translator for Japanese in Shanghai during wartime.
When he runs back to Taiwan, he is allured to smuggle but fails owing to Wen-Heung.
Finally he is under arrest because he is confidentially informed as a Chinese traitor
and thus gets insane. The mute photographer Wen-Ching Lin is the youngest one, who
is close to a group of intellectuals hoping to improve the society. Yet, they are all
arrested by KMT government, inclusive of Wen-Ching married to Hinomi. The
denouement ends with the KMT government defeated in Mainland China and
retreating to Taiwan.
Although the title of the film may make us aware that it may be shot in a big
city, especially Taipei, indeed it is shot in a little town, Jiou-Fen. Also, the whole
process of February 28th incident is not directed presented in the story. All we
audience can know from February 28th incident is from experiences and dialogues of
protagonists, particularly Hinomi’s diary. The director seems to purposefully cope
with the incident indirectly, impairing the horrible trauma between the opposite
people in two-two-eight. Yet, by stating these stories of humble characters in a small
town, we can have more compassion and empathy for them because there is no real
wrongness in the accident but the different identity between two people in China and
Taiwan. In another aspects, there are so many violent scenes appearing in the film,
why not call the film “A City of Anger” rather than “A City of Sadness” as a title? The
people who are colonized by Japan hoping the ancestor-nation can treat them more
equally, but their different identities cause a lot of misunderstandings here. They are
fighting for their equality reluctantly because their anger is raised out of sadness in
mind and broken dreams of their expectation. Hence, the whole society is torn apart
and what is left after the internal war is only trauma and sorrows. The director applies
many things as symbols to represent how Taiwanese attitude toward the new
authorities concerned, KMT government and the relationship with Japan.
With Japanese surrendering, the eldest brother Wen-Sheng Lin prays to the god
to deliver the baby smoothly but actually the process of delivery is not easyl. His
behavior seems that he doesn’t know whether the result is good or not after KMT
government taking over Taiwan; as a result, he may pray that everything like his
newborn child will be fine. Wen-Sheng names his child “Guawng-Ming,” with the
candle light flickering in the night and the electricity functioning too late. It means
that KMT government symbolizes a gleam of hope to save them from suffering for
fifty years and that their taking over Taiwan as the late electricity is a dilatory justice,
but their hope seems like the weak candle light easily blown away. After naming the
child, the movie suddenly inserts its title, which makes audience realize that their
gleam of hope will be transformed into broken dreams.
Later we can see the Lins redecorate his old geisha tavern and change its names
into “Little Shanghai,” and it tells us that Taiwanese in the beginning faithfully have
high expectations of KMT government and change some old customs to welcome the
new ruler. Yet, when Wen-Leung Lin discusses the matter of smuggling with the
merchant in Shanghai, the merchant gets very angry at their attitude toward business.
The differences of cultural identity are implied here. While Taiwanese take it for
granted that they always discuss business with many geishas around them, the
merchant considers it inappropriate to do the serious matter with many strange women
helping serve wine. Through the oblique suggestion, we can in reality detect there are
many cultural contradictions between the dominant and ruled class.
Also, when we hear their discussing the matter of ROC flags, we can
understand there is no real tie between Mainland China and Taiwan because they
don’t have the same “imagined community.” Since both of people haven’t been
through the same experiences or history, they cannot have memory in common. When
they have to fly the flag to celebrate Taiwan’s return to China, the Japanese flags they
have used for fifty years are now changed into clothes and pants for children. Because
the Japanese flag is a red circle imprinted on the white cloth, how Taiwanese change
its direction is fine─there will be no mistakes here. While they have to fly the new
ruler’s flag, they don’t understand what is really behind its meaning. Therefore, the
leader considers the flag means the moment of sunrise; that is, the sky will be red
when the sun rises and they tell the residents to hang reversely. Though he doesn’t
intend to do such matters, it shows that Taiwanese don’t know anything concerning
their new ruler’s history. The director doesn’t tell us the whole reasons of February
28th incident, yet his uses some daily trivial matters to make us understand the people
in Mainland China and Taiwan actually have less in common.
When Hinoe receives the calligraphy from Shisuku’s dead brother, he sighs and
tells the cherry blossom will fall off from the branch and into the dust when being in
bloom. Later Hinomi conveys the message Hinoe gives to Wen-Ching that a girl
commits suicide by plunging into the fall when confronted with beauteous youth. She
doesn’t know what to do if the youth disappears, becoming like the cherry blossom
fall off from the branch which the wind blows away. Her deeds supposedly encourage
many intellectuals in Meiji Restoration. In Japan, through the revolution, the Japanese
gradually become one of the strongest and affluent nations. Taiwanese hold the same
expectation of the new government, hoping they can do a lot of reforms to improve
the unclear institution founded in the period of Japanese colonization. Yet, the new
government doesn’t take their welfare into consideration, but oppresses them to
conform to the new unfair law.
With more and more people upset with the deeds the new government does to
them, a group of intellectuals start to the social status quo. They have mentioned
many issues, including daily necessities and employment. To illustrate, the court
minister from a foreign province gets rid of all of the local judges and hires his own
relatives to assist him. Also, one intellectual satirizes himself that he cannot get the
job because he is enslaved by Japan. Here we can understand that there is no identical
consensus between Taiwanese and Chinese. The new government doesn’t provide any
equal opportunity for Taiwanese to get but no one in power is aware the essential
problem in economy will lead to huge turmoil. Because these local elites have their
ideal mode of the new government, they will be totally depressed if they meet such
unfair institution. Moreover, Treaty of Shimonoseki is the underlying elements of
identical crises between them. They don’t participate in decision of their fate, but they
are easily sacrificed by Ching Dynasty. Since they project the false decision of Ching
Dynasty onto ROC─ROC is the successor to Ching Dynasty, they undoubtedly take
the fault as a excuse to blame ROC, the new government treating them also badly. The
cultural gap is gradually widened because of a series of wrong measures taken by
KMT government.
We all understand that the obvious symbol of KMT new rule may be shot like
forcing students to speak out Mandarin. Yet, through some implied cultural
differences, we can have more and more feeling about the transformation around us.
In the film, we see an aria of Chinese opera outside and many people sit around,
feeling bored with the unfamiliar performance. In reality, local people used to watch
Taiwanese opera, touched by special melody and sound developed in Taiwan.
Nonetheless, people seem forced to watch Chinese opera, which makes us realize that
the new government compels not solely students but also elders who have received
Japanese education. By filming this, we will have a more profound understanding that
the influence of KMT government by degrees changes some customs that have
existed in Taiwan for many years.
The broadcast system is originally a tool of KMT government that is used to
communicate with local people. However, these doctors and nurses standing around,
listening to the radio that Yi-Chang reports his strategy to deal with February 28th
incident. While they attentively know what is really going on in his announcement,
the radio is suddenly out of tune and they have tune to the original channel. With the
outburst of two-two-eight, the opposition and cultural differences are getting more
and more obvious. The unexpected untuned moment implies their Taiwanese identity
of handling this event is totally opposite to what Yi-Chang have said. Owing to a
succession of wrong measures taken by Yi-Chang, he no longer obtains the trust from
Taiwanese. KMT government, yet, doesn’t put emphasis on the serious problem and
help Yi-Chang to track down the people in Taiwan because of his unilateral words.
Their ignorance gives rise to the most tragic internal war in Taiwan.
In the film, there are many empty shots and frame-in-frame shots applied in
each sorrowful or violent scene. After every scene filled with overflowing emotions,
the director will use a stationed camera to shoot certain landscape in deep focus and
long take. These are some functions by applies this shooting method. Usually, by
shooting the scene that is always desolate and no people, the shot will transform the
emotional energy of the former scene into the landscape. Also, it will impair our
strong sorrows that are brought by the trauma of history. Furthermore, the long silent
moment seems to make a voiceless protest that Taiwanese inability to change
anything but yielding to the merciless measures of the new government. For example,
after Wen-Heung gets shot in the tavern, the scene is soon cut to an eagle flying in the
misty sky above gloomy woods. Wen-Heung like the eagle finally gets freedom to
hover around the sky and get rid of all the burdens with which he is overloaded. Yet,
the misty scene makes us feel that he still cannot put aside all his worries about his
family because there is no prop to take all the burdens. After the funeral procession,
we can see a group of people in red on the grassland with sunshine. It soon reminds us
that Wen-Ching has to marry to be the master of the family because he is the only one
the whole family can depend on. Through these simple landscape shots, we can have
more connotations about the mental states of characters and contemplation over its
significance.
The frame-in-frame shots are almost omnipresent in this film, including
shooting in the hospital, the dinning room of the Lin family and the prison. Everyone
in this film is all conditioned by the surroundings. They have no ability to fight
against the new government but to surrender to the arranged punishment in the long
run. Wen-Ching, for instance, is shot from the widow frame in prison when he is
under arrest. Though he is mute, he cannot escape the unfair trial imposed on him.
What he can only do is to wait the calling of soldiers to come out accepting the
sentence. We audience can get deep sorrows for these humble characters who cannot
change the status quo but constraint themselves in the unfair society.
As for Wen-Ching’s inability to speak anything, he symbolizes that these
voiceless people who have not done anything really wrong but accepted the
groundless trial. These oppressed people are also like the silent photos which
Wen-Ching take. With repetitive merciless oppression, Taiwanese act like disabled
persons who have no right to assert their needs but fight against them out of sorrows.
Though the two-two-eight is not directly told, this film really records the event very
carefully and delicately, touching our minds.
Through the two films, we can see different people in different generation have
to take different burdens. In “The Wayward Cloud,” they have to suffer from
indifference and profit-oriented society after the urbanization in Taiwan. In “A City of
Sadness,” they have to be tortured by unfair institution and merciless treatment
because of Taiwan’s return to China. Though the two directors have very different
shooting techniques, both of them really present the social status in both eras very
well.