Bad Movies

Note, most of this will be kind of incomprehensible if you have never seen Better Luck Tomorrow.

I think Virginia Woolf said something about the mediocre pieces of a great writer are often better able to shed light on their strengths and weaknesses than their great works. (Most of my books are still in storage so I can't look it up and quote it.) Great works are often too wonderful and complicated, filling us with emotions that aren't really easy to digest and analyze. The Host and Paprika are both movies that I really liked recently and I probably won't have anything intelligent to say about them until I see them 5 times at least.

However bad movies or mediocre movies are something else again. It's easier to judge where they work and where they fall short. For example, last night, I watched Fast and Furious 3, as I recently observed to someone, it's hard to think of a movie #3 that's actually good, The Matrix 3, Rush Hour 3 the same rule can be observed with Fast and Furious 3. Where it worked was that the movie looked pretty good. After seeing two of Justin Lin's movies, it was interesting to see some recurring themes. There's a certain humor about how he approaches high school, and the opening credits were essentially to me a big budget repeat of a similar scene in Better Luck Tomorrow. The soundtrack as usual was slightly different and kind of interesting. Justin Lin also seems to make really good use of the locations he's in. And he takes advantage of Tokyo quite a bit. Visually, and cinemotographically the film looks fantastic. The script has some rather unexpected philosphizing, and as usual, his movies look great. Most of the money was put into the look of the movie, which honestly in a movie like this is how it should be. Lin also likes to put sort of iconic older figures in his movie, so Sammo Hung appears, as does the guy who invented drifting. Their presence does add a certain depth and make the whole affair a bit more interesting.

The downside was the casting of the main character. Actually, in both films, the actor who played the lead was not an incredibly charismatic guy. However Perry Shen's a lot better at conveying a basic range of emotions than Lucas Black, who unfortunately seems to have his mouth hanging open most of the time, and only two expressions. That's not a bad thing necessarily, however he doesn't really have the charisma to make me believe that he's a chick magnet which he's supposed to be. When you're being outshone by Bow Wow playing your snappy black sidekick, you have problems. Another thing that people, notably Oliver Wang, have noted about Lin's work is that women are generally placemarkers or tokens, both as a presence and as tokens of status. The girl is less important than what possessing her means. Again, in a movie like Fast and Furious 3, that's to be expected. What's also interesting is the parallels between The Girl in Better Luck Tomorrow and The Girl in this movie. Both of them occupy a rather ambiguous place in terms of ethnicity. One's adopted, the other one is hapa, raised in Japan. The first time it was kind of interesting. However repeating it just seems kind of lazy. He doesn't want to go to the trouble of defining her character, so making her mysterious and tragic is a lazy way to not go into it much. So chalk another one up to that theory.

In closing, the movie wasn't really all that bad. It wasn't that great either. At least it didn't have Paul Walker.

A Tale of Two Sisters

I've often thought that horror movies, and movies about ghosts in particular, can be read as the protest of people at the bottom of the social scale. In most haunting movies, the people most likely to become aware of the ghost's presence are women and children. Who are generally on the bottom of the social ladder in terms of rationality and thus easier to ignore by people in authority. That or if this is a secret Indian burial ground type of movie, than this comes from "ignorant superstitions" which are usually ignored by the (let's face it) white protagonists until it is too late. (I could read this as an expression of anxiety about the possible consequences of colonialism, but I would be being slightly silly.)

Ghosts also seem to have something to tell us. Either to reveal a story which was obscured by time, or actively covered up by the wrong doer, or to get revenge. This ghost is often someone who was wronged in life, and whose only recourse for justice now is through supernatural means after death. There are plenty of counter-examples I'm sure, since the horror movie genre is so big, but you have to at least admit that in quite a few of these movies, women or children figure prominently as either the protagonists, or the mediums through which these ghosts communicate. Children, in particular, are seen as having a close relationship to ghosts.

Which in a long and rambling way brings me to my point, which is The Tale of Two Sisters, a Korean movie which was released in the States a couple years ago. I'd link to the trailer, but quite frankly the trailer contains a ton of spoilers, and makes it out to be another The Ring. Not that the Ring doesn't have a few things going for it. (And besides, the story of a single mother, attempting to unravel the curse surrounding an illegitimate child of a psychic, in order to save her child who has a curious, sympathetic connection to said ghost, does reinforce my point I think.)

As does A Tale of Two Sisters, or obviously I wouldn't be connecting the two. A Tale of Two Sisters seems to be about a lot of things. On one level it's about guilt, and the different reactions that people have in connection to it. On another level it's about the gendered nature of illness both physical and mental. It's also the story of an extremely messed up family. Since it's been out for a couple years, I'll probably reveal all key important plot points, so if you don't want me to spoil anything for you don't read any further. You've been warned.

The story is about how ostensibly two, sisters, come back from a stay at a mental institution. They are brought to their extremely beautiful if isolated house in the countryside, by their silent and dour father. Their high-strung step-mother, who Dour Father was stepping out with before their mother's death, also lives in the house.

It's also quite clear that this family is not ok from the get-go. The stepmother resents the presence of the two step-daughters. Su-mi, the older sister is often in direct conflict with her, while Su-yeon, the younger, more passive, sister suffers abuse at her hands. While the father apparently doesn't see anything.

The stepmother is also being given pills, by her husband, and Su-mi just got out of the mental hospital. So it's also an open question as to whether you can believe what they are telling you, or you can believe anything that they are seeing. An early scene where Su-mi sees doubled objects is an early indication that you shouldn't necessarily believe what she's seeing.

Meanwhile, the stepmother and both sister start seeing ghosts. And there's the question of how their mother died, and why the closet in Su-yeon's room seems to bother everyone so much. And there's a clear feeling that past events which occurred in the house are being repeated again, using other people, in particular, women as substitutes. However, is this actually the result of the supernatural, or just sublimated guilt?

A Tale of Two Sisters is particularly difficult to understand, because you never know the full story of about Su-yeon and their mother's death until the last scene of the movie. After seeing the scene, it's pretty clear why revenge of some sort seems warranted. However, you never knew what really happened up until that point it makes the movie far more difficult to understand the first time around.

A Tale of Two Sisters is a pretty good movie in my opinion, however, it does have some weaknesses, the first of which being that it has a lot of Sixth Sense-esque twists. Two or three, depending how you're counting.
1) Su-yeon is dead. Which initially is difficult to the viewer to accept, since the stepmother has been interacting with Su-yeon except that
2) Su-mi has been hallucinating and thinking that she is the stepmother part of the time.
and then possibly
3) the ghosts of Su-yeon and their mother have been haunting the house for real. (this last one is debatable)

What was interesting to me was how the reactions to guilt were clearly gendered. The men spent most of the movie pretending that the event never happened, erasing evidence that it ever occurred, and medicating women when they do something that transgresses the boundaries of sanity.

The women of the movie, however, seem forced to voice and perpetuate the deeds which went on in the house, even as they are being surpressed. Furthermore, the ghosts single out the women to be frightened. The ultimate comeuppance is visited on the evil stepmother rather than the father, who, at least to me seems more responsible.

A Tale of Two Sisters could also be read as a story about Su-mi's psyche. Considering that her personality is split between herself and her stepmother, it's pretty clear that the conflict between the two characters is emblematic of the conflict between guilt and self-hatred, as well as the burden of memory. Su-mi, unlike her father, and her real stepmother (who makes an appearance at the very end) seems compelled to remember, or at least try in some way to bring events out into the open. The film seems sympathetic towards this, although the final results of remembering, Su-mi returns to the mental hospital, are far from optimistic. She may or may not receive redemption in the end. It's really rather hard to say.

The film loses points for a couple of things. There's a childbirth theme, running through all the haunting scenes. At one point, Su-mi dreams about a woman with hair over her face who stands over her in bed, and a small arm comes out from between the woman's legs and grabs at her. And in the final scene of the ghosts appearance, a baby is crying. This part is never explained, at least by the English subtitles, but given the explanation of events in the movie this seems a tad inconsistent.

Also there's a subtext of incest running through the film that seemed unnecessary. The film is extremely complicated, it would be less challenging viewing if it was less so, however, I enjoy this kind of thing.

On the upside, despite the incredibly convoluted plot, the film is really truly beautifully filmed, and it just looks great from an aesthetic point of view. The acting is generally good, particularly from the actresses who played Su-mi and the stepmother. However, in terms of blood and gore, A Tale of Two Sisters is pretty low on that. It's definitely fairly creepy, but it's just not really all that bloody. Well, I liked it, anyway.

Anyone who has come to the end of this, I'll have to think of some sort of prize to give you. I swear that after this, we will return to our regularly scheduled program of short posts. If possible, short posts with some sort of humor. That may asking too much, I'm pretty grumpy these days.

It's about to get heavy again

since I'm in major endorphin free-fall, I washed my mp3 player (long time readers may recall the times I washed my wallet, twice, and washed a cell phone) and found a cockroach in my refrigerator. It's been that kind of day.

So for those who have been keeping track, an Asian American gunned down 32 people, slightly before that, an Indian exchange student stabbed his prof , an Asian American with Asperger's made an ass of himself on TV and in the newspaper. Before that, I remember a spate of Asian fathers killing their families and then killing themselves. In addition, I remember earlier statistics which tell me that Asian American women quite likely to kill themselves. Clearly the state of Denmark is not entirely sound.

It reminds me of something a friend of mine said. We were talking about families, and how both of ours were pretty passive-aggressive, and she said "I think most Asian families are." It kind of clicked for me then. Living in Taiwan, I've noticed most people tend to deal with things fairly passive aggressively. It's better, I think, than getting angry loudly and causing everyone to lose face. At the time it was something of a revelation, passive-aggression is generally seen as fairly negative, and immature behavior in the States. I guess I had never thought that it could actually be a cultural difference. So how does this relate to the stuff I mentioned above? I guess perhaps subjective proof that Asian people, even Asian Americans react to situations in a different way than white people. Both my friend and I come from pretty Americanized families, her mom is 1.5, her dad is 2nd generation, both of my parents are 3rd. However, looking at things now, I can see how we deal with things in a different way.

In poking around on the internet, I found that the model minority stereotype is blamed for Asian American depression, as well as isolation for immigrants. This might be true for some people. I guess personally, I never found this to be so. I never got depressed because I thought everyone thought I was perfect. The idea that I would be depressed because people thought of me as Madame Butterfly is laughable. I'm pretty sure most Asian American women aren't thinking about that, although you never know. (How many Asian Americans listen to Puccini anyway?)

I've been trying to think about why, I myself, once, and ever so occasionally these days, wanted to do bad crazy things to myself. And I guess I came up with an answer. It's not The Answer, however, I suspect it's a lot closer than the Madame Butterfly thing. It's comparing yourself to other people and finding yourself wanting. Comparison is both internal and external. Parents and relatives like to compare you to your siblings, cousins, family friends, or whoever. Furthermore, I suspect there's a certain amount of perfectionism in the way we're raised sometimes. Anything less than 100% is evidence that there is room for improvement. Failings, academic or social are also evidence that improvement is needed. If other children surpass you, you're not good enough. Comparison is then becomes internal. (Incidentally this is probably why I think Magnetic North are the most Asian American of Asian American rappers, they rap about being depressed and not feeling good enough.) Perfectionism, whether imposed or internalized, can lead to a variety of bad things, of course.

One solution for this, of course, is if our parents would just stop comparing us to other people's kids. That would be nice.

The other thing I think is the fact that mental health isn't really set up for Asian people, or I suspect, not set up for any sort of person who is not white. I don't know what can be done about that. Particularly since the Asian thing to do generally seems to be to just deal with it as best you can and not talk it publicly, or at all. This approach is actually pretty good if you just have problems. It does become a problem if what you have is not a problem but a sickness.

Getting back to the passive-aggressive thing, part of the reason I suspect that it wouldn't work is that many Asian families, that I know anyway, communicate about things fairly indirectly. While this communication style can often be described as unhealthy or somewhat unproductive, it's worked for billions of people for millions of years, so something about it works anyway. It seems to work well enough when everyone's playing by the same rules. It becomes more complicated when your family operates on different wavelength than the mainstream culture.

Honestly, in Asia, I have met many more Asian children and parents who are satisfied with their (or their children's) mediocrity on various levels. Perhaps the drive to have your children succeed means something different. I mean, most Americans want their children to be successful too, but perhaps we get a little more complacent, since American-born people grew up within the American social system and know it through and through. Foreign born Americans, being less familiar with the whole set up, might get more anxious, and therefore push their kids harder. That still doesn't explain my family though, or my friend's either. Dammit, I give up.