The Assassin

I must confess to being slightly bored by The Assassin (刺客聶隱娘), which isn't to say that Hou Hsiao-hsien's movie isn't good, because it is good, I just did not find it very compelling.

You might find on the internet that The Assassin is a martial-arts movie; I suppose that is true, technically, but with Zhang Yimou and Wong Kar-Wai and Chen Kaige making films that are included in that group, the genre indeed doesn't mean very much except that people fight with swords in the movie, and usually also fight hand to hand.

The best part of The Assassin to my mind is its absolutely riveting, even breathtaking costume and production design (both by Hwarng Wern-Ying). The work is gorgeous. The Assassin is also impeccably shot and masterfully directed. Hou's vision is carefully realized.

But... half of the time I wasn't really sure what was going on. More than once, I found the protagonist fighting someone and I wasn't sure whom she was fighting, what happened during the fight, or where the two combatants left things at the end of their fight. And because Hou is more interested in locations and the frame – the way that the audience is allowed to observe the characters – than he is in the characters themselves, I found myself puzzled over the main character's motivations, her loyalties, and most importantly the moments she decided to change.

I am sure I figured all of these plot points out by the time the film ended. But the film's premise – that a young assassin fundamentally owes something to the Taoist nun who trained her to be a killer and should kill whomever she says merely because she says it – still eludes me.

The Assassin is gorgeous, but I think that may be all I have to say about it.

Wertenbaker and Two Films from Last Year

I read two more plays by Timberlake Wertenbaker today. The book (Plays One) includes five plays total:
New Anatomies is a really cool piece about a Swiss woman from history who dressed as an Arab man during the French occupation of Algeria. The cast is made up entirely of women, each of whom plays a Western man, a Western woman and an Arab man in the play. It's (obviously) about gender, but also about obsession and journeying. It's very cool.
The Grace of Mary Traverse is also about a journey and about womanhood. But this play is mostly about class in England. It's set in 1870 and it's a powerful play, filled with fascinating characters. Rather in the vein of Stephen Jeffreys' The Clink (if I remember that play correctly) and Naomi Wallace's One Flea Spare. It's brutal and messy and very interesting.
Our Country's Good is the most famous play in the book, and rightly so. I don't think I've ever read this play without crying. It's powerful and beautiful, and my undergrad (bless them) did it this Fall, though I didn't get to see it.
The Love of the Nightingale is a re-telling of the myth of Philomele, who has her tongue cut out by her brother-in-law after he rapes her. The play is quite beautiful, but perhaps I am becoming bored with adaptations of our old Greek myths, at least the ones that are set in Ancient Greece. I could direct the Hell out of this play, but it doesn't say quite as much as I would like it to.
The last play in the book is Three Birds Alighting on a Field, which I finished this afternoon. It's about the art world. High art, expensive art, selling out. I was kinda bored. It's not a subject that interests me much, though as we all know I am as susceptible to wanting to be fashionable as the next snob over. Thing is, nothing happens in this play. There's just a lot of, well, talk.

But I watched two movies yesterday that I want to talk about. Both of them were released in this country last year, and both are excellent. So:

Three Times is a film by Tiawanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien. It is really three separate films, each set in a different time period, but all three surrounding a couple played by Chang Chen and Shu Qi. The first segment "A Time for Love" was my favorite. Set in 1966, it follows a pair of very shy lovers as they meet and slowly fall in love. It's extremely cute and I found it touching without being sentimental. They're so awkward and adorable and they need each other so much! The second segment "A Time for Freedom" is set in 1911 and surrounds Taiwan and its independence from Japan. This segment is set entirely in the interior of a kind of hotel. The couple barely speaks to one another, so much so that this entire segment is a silent film, with the dialogue displayed on title cards. It's an intriguing device and the film is subtle and everything internalized, like a Merchant-Ivory film without dialogue. The third segment "A Time for Youth" is set in 2005 and concerns a triangle of characters, who interact with one another through technology. It's interesting, but the characters are rather hapless and it's not as stylistically cool as the first two segments. But I liked the film very much and moved it onto my top 25 for last year.

Shortbus is the latest film from Hedwig and the Angry Inch creator John Cameron Mitchell. Shortbus, which is unrated due to its sexually explicit conduct, is a fabulous film. It's about sex and New Yorkers and deep, difficult sadness. This movie is the best sexually explicit movie I've ever seen, and the sex is important. It's interesting. The people in Shortbus talk about sex and have sex and it looks real in the movie. They laugh and do silly things while having sex, and they talk and stop and start again. It's all so believable. The story concerns a bunch of New Yorkers thinking about sex and dealing with their sexual problems. It's funny and beautiful and accurate, and at times Shortbus is deeply moving and very powerful. I loved it. HOWEVER, there is explicit sex, both straight and gay in the film, and this movie is not for those who are bothered by the idea of sucking cock.