Friday, December 15, 2006
So here goes part II …
Before I move on, let me tell you guys that I’m writing this post while on my business (YAY!) class flight from Tokyo to HK … and they are serving drinks now. The service is so damn good, after you take business, you don’t feel like taking economy class again.
So let me continue on my reflections for some of the movies that I had watched for the past few months.
Love/Romantic/Emo/Thought provoking movies
Surprised to see me talking about love movies? Well … its good to have some exposure and talk about the “feelings” and “emotions” after watching the movie.
1. 大城小事 – This is a love story starring Leon Lai and Faye Wong. Well, many of us think that these two actors are not part of our generation, but when it comes to movies, actors are just part of it, so we should look at things holistically. (we shouldn’t be like those dancers who thinks Step Up is nice because the choreography is nice – BE NEUTRAL!)
The story’s setting is in Shanghai (that’s why it is “大城”) and of course the romance between Leon Lai and Faye Wong (that’s why it is 小事) starts here. The story started with Leon Lai and Faye Wong breaking up. Surprisingly, it was Lai, who wants to break up with Wong, asked Wong out and Wong was the first to speak of breaking up! (SEE… not so predictable eh?) Though the reason was quite simple, they lost the feeling for the other party.
After a while, Lai regretted and began looking up for Wong. Wong deliberately avoids him using many ways but Lai eventually managed to find her and secretly move to the flat opposite hers. Coincidentally, both of them were hired by this old man. Lai becomes the personal doctor of this man, while Wong was the birthday planner for this man’s 80th birthday. Part of the celebrations was bringing the man up to 80 storey building to watch fireworks fired up from the river, and Lai has to ensure that the man’s weak heart can take such “excitement” The old man’s chatted with Lai and urges him to go back together with Wong. Sadly the old man died before his birthday.
On that man’s birthday, Lai tried to look for Wong again to reconcile with her. Wong agreed provided if he can find her. So he decided to search to whole of Shanghai for her and finally finds her right on the 80th storey where the old man was supposed to by viewing the fireworks. Then Wong asked him to say three words and Lai said something REALLY REALLY unpredictable.
“我知道你好想听我说 ‘我爱你’这三个字，我有千万个机会说这句话，可惜我没做到，所以我只想说，‘对不起’”
!!!! Damn unpredictable eh? Of course, it is a happy ending. But it is so darn unpredictable!
2. There was this Taiwan romance story that I watched a few months ago, the name of the movie is “喜欢你，喜欢我”. So this movie is about the romance between two couples, but I shall talk about only one of them (though both are equally good to talk about). Anyway, so there was this girl, called 金巧莉, lost her gangster boyfriend a few years ago. Since then, she found herself lost in life (e.g. go to school just to pon school). Her brother was disappointed that she is giving herself up and always forcing her to find a direction in life, so pressurizing that she decides to hide herself from him. One day while she was running away from her brother, she met this guy, called 杜臣峰, who helped her get away. And in the process of helping her, he started to like her.
This is the part where I start to like the movie. The girl knows that the guy likes her, but try to use every mean not to fall in love with him, because she is afraid of losing someone she loves again, especially if the guy’s father runs the black market. (which means he might get hacked to death some day) She said “爱一个人那么痛苦，得不到痛苦，失去更痛苦”. There was this time she bet with the guy that if the car driving towards them stops right in front of them, he will not fall in love with him, and the next moment, she ran out to the road and stop the car! (unpredictable again!) But of course, the guy was in time to save her.
The guy then said, “Have you not seen moving waters? Only when the water moves, then it will bring you further and bring you new things. Everything that comes will go as well. Instead of being pessimistic, why not send these memories off with a smile?”
Then again, she decides to hide herself from the guy this time! She told him that only if she finds the tears of truth and a thousand reasons to like her, then he shall go find her. While hiding, she shouted to the sea that he should not look for her, forget about her instead, but then, she said softly to herself, “不，不要忘记我”.
This time I shall not reveal the ending, but I think the plot was really unpredictable, lots of twist here and there, but the ending was predictable lah, romantic stories are always like that. I also find the love philosophy introduced at different parts of the movie to be very thought-provoking. So I shall give it… 3.5 stars.
watch this at youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0k0qDuNQwk
3. The third movie that I watched, and worth talking about is the one that I watched ytd (14th Dec), yes in HK. The movie is 墨攻 by Andy Lau. So Andy Lau was this guy called Mozi Ge Li (墨子革离), a very smart guy who comes from a family that promotes this ideology called universal love （兼爱）. He helped to defend the city of Liang and became so popular that his popularity was even higher than the king! The king got jealous and removed him from power and he left, but many people were against the idea of removing him from power. The king began to send people hunt him down and his supporters in the city; this included the female general of the royal Calvary unit, Yi Yue (范冰冰饰演逸悦). Of course, she loved him and showed her support in many occasions when defending the city. One of her punishments for supporting Ge Li was to cut her voice box and make her a mute.
When she was about to be sentenced to death, the enemies made a surprise attack which captured the city in no time, and this made Ge Li to go back to Liang city and recapture it from the enemies, and to “rescue someone that is worth loving”. In the end, Ge Li won the city back, but the king still removed him from power and he left.
Though he won the city back, in the process of recapturing the city, he flooded the jails where Yi Yue was kept in. She drowned by the time Ge Li managed to find her. I think this was really sad because Yi Yue suffered too much for him! (Not to mention she look quite pretty as well, when she is dressed as a girl of course … hehe)Yet she still died in the end!!! So unfair!!!
All this happened when Ge Li promoted his family ideology of universal love. So what does universal love truly means? It is so difficult to love everybody, yea, EVERYBODY you know, not easy at all. There must be some occasion where you will have to “kill” somebody for the greater benefit right? (Sounds very MI now) So someone in the movie said, “你只知道兼爱，不知道选择该爱的人.” But if we choose who to love, isn't this not universal love? And if universal love brings jealousy, which ends up killing everybody, should we have universal love in the first place?
Another thought-provoking thing Ge Li mentioned in the movie was when he said this to the enemie’s general, “活下来，难道就是胜利吗？难道拿到梁城就能让那些5000个丧命的战士们回家吗?”
Other critics: http://yule.sohu.com/20061126/n246617206.shtml
Okay.. I shall blog about my trip to Tokyo and HK in the next post.
Read, You Must...10:34 AM