***** From: Louis Proyect <lnp3 at panix.com> Subject: City on Fire
After exchanging email with Michael Hoover for over three years, I finally got a chance to meet him here in NYC this weekend. He was promoting his new Verso book on Hong Kong cinema titled "City on Fire" along with co-author Lisa Stokes.
I am a big fan of Hoover postings on PEN-L and the Marxism list, which usually consist of some pointed factual observations about a topic under discussion. Instead of giving you his opinion about that topic, Michael prefers to let the facts speak for themselves. The other notable thing about Hoover is that he never gets into the sort of highly contentious toe-to-toe debates that people like me thrive on. He explained to me yesterday that he views mailing lists as public spaces that give him the opportunity to speak to a broader audience.
Michael is a native Floridian who teaches at Seminole Community College with Lisa Stokes. He has been an activist with Florida farm workers movements for the past 20 years as well. His activism goes back to his high school days, when he was summoned before the principal as an "SDS'er"--a group he had no connection with. In those days, being called an "SDS'er" was equivalent to being called a "red" or "anarchist" in earlier times.
"City on Fire" is a comprehensive study of the politics and esthetics of Hong Kong action movies, a genre that I share an enthusiasm for. Most people are aware of the recent explosion of interest in the genre, ironically occurring while the industry itself has been in relative decline because of the East Asian financial crisis. Quentin Tarentino's "Reservoir Dogs" is openly acknowledged by him to be strongly influenced by John Woo's gangster movies. Jackie Chan's highly acrobatic martial arts movies in which he does all of his own risky stunts have begun to appear in American movie houses in dubbed versions. And Sammo Hung, the rotund co-star of a number of Chan's films, now has his own prime-time CBS television show "Martial Law." All of these actors and directors cite Bruce Lee as a primary influence, especially Chan who modeled himself as the new Bruce Lee. What is not so widely known is that Hong Kong movies are also pervaded by Hollywood influences as well. Chan's movies owe a great deal to Buster Keaton, while all of Woo's movies evoke over a half-century of the movies he grew up admiring, from musicals like "West Side Story" to Sam Peckinpah's "Wild Bunch".
Michael and Lisa spoke at a Hong Kong twin bill at the Anthology of Film Archives yesterday afternoon. In the audience was Doug Henwood, who told me that he had never seen a Hong Kong movie before. I assured him that he would at least find the experience unforgettable. There would be no mistaking John Woo's "Bullet to the Head," which Doug squirmed through from beginning to end, for an Eric Rohmer movie.
Also attending was Bill Thompson, who was curator of Asian movies for the defunct Bleecker Street Cinema, and who gets an acknowledgement in "City on Fire" for supplying valuable background information to the authors. Bill also happens to be working as a computer programmer and systems analyst on the same project as me at Columbia University, where both of us have sought shelter from the insanity of the corporate world. It gave me pleasure to introduce Michael and Lisa to him.
The first film to show was "Ballistic Kiss", produced and directed by, and starring, Donnie Yen. This low-budget ($475,000) movie is an example of more recent Hong Kong movies, both in terms of the aesthetic sensibility and the financial limitations imposed by the meltdown. It is a brilliant film.
Just like American cowboy movies operated within tight thematic parameters (a writers workshop instructor at NYU once told his class--including me--that there were only ten basic plots in all of the novels ever written), "Ballistic Kiss" is a variation on the hit-man with a heart of gold theme.
The opening scene was probably the high point of the movie and a classic for the genre. Yen plays Cat, a slightly built hit-man, who has been sent to assassinate a gangster in his cocaine den. Standing in front of a dozen snarling, heavily armed thugs, Cat, armed characteristically with only a derringer, announces that "You will all have to die now." But before proceeding to hack, shoot and kick the villains into oblivion, Chen performs a wildly incongruous ritual dance in front of them, consisting of him twirling about and waving his arms above his head like a classical orchestra conductor.
Hoover and Stokes view "Ballistic Kiss" as a reflection of current-day Hong Kong insecurities:
"The movie is dark both visually and thematically; this is represented through the light-sensitive, and therefore generally darkened, glasses that Cat wears. His vision of Hong Kong is dark indeed. Twice in the film he describes what he sees, first in Cantonese looking over the flats of Happy Valley from a rooftop, and second in English voice-over, near the film's end as he lies dying, having been 'ballistically kissed.' He is surrounded by cops, who are running around him pointing guns as he painfully and ineffectually reaches for his glasses, a visual representation of Hong Kongers' confused struggle against their own. Carrie [his lover, a cop], hysterical, strains, held back by others, but breaks free to hold the dying Cat. Her roommate looks on, genuinely moved but puzzled, and we view the scene, shot in slo-mo, through her eves. In voice-over, Cat narrates once more: "It is so quiet and peaceful. But if you really look at each home, each window and look inside those ordinary lives, what do you see? Sons stealing from mothers, wives betraying husbands, the rape of children, women being beaten.... Anger, sickness and despair.' Carrie likewise shares a similar view. 'Are there any values in human life any more?' she asks her roommate. When she puts on Cat's glasses while visiting his grave at the film's end and the musical theme recurs, we know that his perspective has been passed on to her. A black-and-white sequence, with Cat moving through the streets, appears very early in the film and recurs with his death, following Carrie into the graveyard. This absence of color, this bleakness, reflects Hong Kong belongers' [a term for natives] psyche amidst the return and the Asian economic crisis."
Yen's film is clearly a homage to John Woo's "The Killer," which also features a hit-man with a heart of gold. However, the film chosen to play opposite "Ballistic Kiss" on the double-bill was Woo's "Bullet to the Head," an atypical movie. Made in 1990, it is the story of three young hoodlums from Hong Kong who seek their fortune as smugglers in South Vietnam in 1967. Arriving there with dreams of riches, they soon find themselves caught between the two warring armies, neither of whom has any redeeming qualities in Woo's deeply pessimistic screenplay.
The Hong Kong depicted in Woo's film is conflicted as well, with local versions of the Red Guards battling cops in the streets. The three protagonists, Ben, Paul and Frank, have concluded that there is no future for them on the island so South Vietnam represents an escape. As it turns out, this is going from the frying pan into the fire.
Not only is it a tale of divided warring parties, it is also a story of how greed can destroy human relationships. When the three friends rip off a chest of gold from a Saigon gang lord, one of them becomes totally consumed with the treasure--to the point of betraying his comrades. Seen within the traditions of Hollywood film, the two strongest influences would appear to be "The Deer Hunter", Michael Cimino's existential riff on the horrors of war, and "Treasure of the Sierra Madre," a morality tale on the corrupting influence of gold.
The film is a relentless assault on one's nerves and stomach. As much of a fan of Hong Kong action films as I am, I eventually began to feel suffocated by the steady procession of torture and murder. Woo stated that the primary motivation for making the film was the Tienamen massacre. Hong Kong audiences did not feel comfortable with the movie either and it was a commercial failure, even though Woo considers it his best film. Made in 1990, the local film-going public identified with Paul, the greedy, betraying member of the trio, which says as much about the acquisitive mood in Hong Kong in those days as anything else.
Hoover and Stokes size up the film as follows:
"Woo admits that his brutal Bullet in the Head (literally Bloodshed Street Corner, 1990), in which three Hong Kong buddies undergo torture and unspeakable horrors during the Vietnam War, was influenced by the massacre in Tiananmen Square. He stated that, 'I also wanted to use Vietnam as a mirror for what's going to happen in Hong Kong in 1997'; Woo also explains that 'Bullet in the Head is the closest to an autobiography for me.' Woo devised a fine allegory. Opening to an upbeat instrumental version of The Monkees' 'I'm a Believer,' the song links to one of the friends, Ben (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), whose ideals are destroyed by the brutalization that he, Frank (Jacky Cheung), and Paul (Waise Lee) undergo in 1967 Hong Kong and Vietnam. Befriended by Chinese-French former CIA operative Luke (Simon Yam) and torch singer Sally (Fennie Yuen), the friends' cohesiveness is decimated by historical events and betrayal by one of their own -- Paul, whose determination not to end up like his father adds to the brutality and corruption he witnesses in Vietnam, blinding him to bonds of trust and loyalty. A former soldier, now a streetsweeper, Paul's father tells him, 'It's destiny. I'm a nobody. It's okay. But my son won't be sweeping streets. It's a cruel world, money talks. Without it, you're shit. Remember, if you get a break, hang on in there.' As Marx insists, 'Money is not just an object of the passion for enrichment, it is "the" object. When Paul intercepts a cache of gold leaf in a crate marked 'US Army,' his face reflects the gold sheen. He tells his friends, 'What you want? Today I saw some soldiers kill people. I learned something. In this world if you have guns, you have everything. Tell me how much is a human life!' Paul has learned well. He will shoot Frank in the head, choosing gold over his buddy's life. Frank's existence will become a nightmare, as the pain from his wound leads to heroin addiction, turning him into a hired killer to support his habit. Perhaps Ben suffers most because he experiences and witnesses others’ pain and anguish; he is no longer the true believer. The film's cynicism is overpowering."
Earlier in the year I posted a series of articles on Marxism and art to PEN-L and the Marxism list. Although there was keen interest in the social and political backgrounds of the artists I was reporting on, Gary McLennan of the Marxism list had an important criticism. He said that they tended to neglect the work as such. Since I am no expert on the esthetics of modern art, it was probably just as well that I bracketed those considerations out. No such criticism can be made of "City on Fire" which is a powerful synthesis of the author's political insights and their ability to appreciate the unique qualities of Hong Kong film. John Woo says that the book is "exciting and riveting" and "the best book on Hong Kong cinema." Who in their right mind would argue with John Woo?
Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html) *****