Today's movie double is a trip down memory lane. For some reason I managed to pick these DVDs up almost one after the other. They evoked so much memory, I kind of had to watch them back to back.There was a time under Deng Xiao-Ping that China's world profile was making great strides. There were constant jokes about Deng and Hu Yao-Bang - uh-huh, that's a real politician's name. Yes, there was a time when it wasn't Who You Knew in Beijing but Hu Yao-Bang.
Anyway, after some kerfuffle to do with oh, Tienanmen Square in 1989, China's big push for international respect took a beating. The hang over of which went against Beijing's bid for the 2000 Olympics back in 1993; and even the hand over of Hong Kong not withstanding, the international community probably didn't feel comfortable with 'Communist China' getting its claws on the Olympic Games to beat its chest. It would have to wait until 2001 for that to transpire, and even then it took a punishing in the media stakes this year at the Olympics. I would imagine the top level people in China are wondering if the two wek extravaganza really helped China's international image.
Part of the problem for them as well as anybody is that the goal posts keep moving - and the Western media is one of the most obvious examples of goal-post movers and history re-writers. There's no point in the finger-wagging the Chinese authorities leveled at the media, it may as well have been admonishing hookers for plying their trade on a busy night. Shame it was their party where the hookers turned up - but that's what you get when you invite the whole international community to your place. They tend to check out your ornaments critique your decoration choices, and joke about the bathroom smell.
So it seemed like an interesting moment in time to reflect back on those heady days prior to the Tienanmen Square incident and to see just what the West thought of China back in the late 1980s.
John Lone's Big Moment In Cinema
It's hard to imagine this, because he's been anything but prominent since, but these two films represent the apotheosis of the actor John Lone's international career. Its a shame because his filmpography reads as follows:Iceman (1984)Judging from the fine performances in 'YotD' and 'TLE', he's hardly been used properly and it's a real shame he hasn't done more important work. It is possible, playing Henry Pu-Yi and arch-antagonist Joey Tai typecast him as the 'Suave Asian Villain' and there was nothing left to do. I'm actually surpirsed Quentin Taranatino hasn't cast him in one of his shoot'em up movies.
Year of the Dragon (1985)
The Last Emperor (1987) as Emperor Puyi
The Moderns (1988)
Echoes of Paradise (1989)
Shadow of China (1990)
Shanghai 1920 (1991)
M. Butterfly (1993) as Song Liling
The Shadow (1994)
The Hunted (1995)
Rush Hour 2 (2001) as Ricky Tan
War (2007)
What's interesting about Joey Tai in 'YotD' for instance is the degree to which he reflects against the prejudices he knows are being leveled at him just because he's Chinese. It was pretty funky to see an Asian villain who could stare down the West and say "I'm not interested in what you've got. I want my own thing."It's also ironic that the Chinese American community protested against this film, because in a very real way, this film opens up the future world where Hong Kong cinema crashes through to the west bringing with it Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Chow Yun-Fat and company. It is in that very sense that John Lone did pioneering work here and should get more credit than he's received.
As for his turn as Henry Pu-Yi, he was almost too handsome to be playing that man. He brought such an aesthetically pleasing facade to a man who was essentially a gormless twerp who had little moral or ethical compunction about doing bad things; Lone's Pu-Yi comes across as possibly more endearing and sophisticated than the real man. That's the 'beauty bias' for you - and I'm sure that was Bertolucci's plan - but all it leads to is a confused rewriting of history.Rewriting History
If there's one thing that the movie business does well, it is to present image as a kind of defacto fact. If you saw it, you'd better believe it. Bertolucci's signature movie in the 1980s was 'The Last Emperor'; and it's a rather one-eyed book about the last Manchurian Emperor of China who subsequently got coopted into being the head of state of Manchukuo - his ancestral country - by the Kwantung Army of Japan. It's a miserable chapter in Japanese history, as it is a miserable chapter in Chinese history. Essentially, in the wake of the 1905 Russo-Japanese war, the Japanese sought to set up a buffer zone to keep Russian interests away from the Pacific Ocean. To that end Japan annexed Korea and then tried to set up Manchukuo as a sort of frontier 'buffer' country against Russia.All of this is part of what makes it so miserable in as much as the Koreans and Manchurians forever won't forgive the Japanese for their miserable colonial experience; the Chinese will always blame Japan for a pile of its miserable woes, but neither was there to actually defend their miserable borders from an Imperialist Russia. So much Japanese blood was shed protecting those places from the Russians - all in the post-19th-Century-colonialist period that was the early 20th Century. Not that it jusitifes it in any moral sense, but the strategic imperative to set up Manchukuo and the subsequent administration of Manchukuo was a miserable experience for all because nobody wanted to be there or to do it properly except for the crazy and the dedicated.
I doubt you could sell that real estate to the Japanese today. That frontier has moved south to the 38th parallel, and it's North and South Korea's problem now. Although the nukes in North Korea has again made it everybody's problem.
Bertolucci's vision, alas, does not extend into the nuances of these post-colonial conflicts in the Far East. He's more interested in telling the decadent moody visual narrative he forcibly constructs around the persona of Henry Pu-Yi. If you read enough history like I have, the film's actually deplorable in parts, commendable in others and generally out of focus as to what really was Henry Pu-Yi's position and what was volitional. It even doesn't adequately address if his volition really mattered that much. The Juggernaut of History just runs him over as it runs over China. The fabulist ending with the magical cricket appearing from a little container betrays Bertolucci's own inability to come to terms with the Juggernaut of History running roughshod over human beings.
Post-Colonial Trauma
In the instance of 'Year of the Dragon', it's America's struggle with getting over Vietnam. Michael Cimino of 'Deer Hunter' fame directed 'Year of the Dragon', where Mickey Rourke plays a disgruntled, personality disordered, driven cop who takes his hard-boiled style down to China Town. Just as he is looking for a rematch with the Asians, Cimino was looking for a directorial rematch with Polanski and 'Chinatown'.
I won't go into the referentiality of the script, needless to say, that both films rest their case on the supposed inscrutability of the Asians. Back in its day, 'YotD' was a hard-hitting film about the drug trade, but time has not been kind to it. The subsequent influence of Hong Kong cinema has obliterated any sense of tension in the scenes in which the machine-guns are let loose in the restaurant. It just looks cruddy by our current standards. Remember, this film was Pre-Die Hard too, se we're talking about 3 generations of action movie violence that have come since.It's ironic that the Manchukuo experiment contributed to the formation of North and South Koreas an therefore the Korean War. The Korean War soaked up a lot of blood too, but nobody talks about it anywhere near as much as Vietnam. The Vietnam War too is a post-colonial war which the Americans inherited from the French.
Thus, to see a character who is a Vietnam Vet who goes toe to toe with a resurgent Asian villain is indeed an appropriate and cogent set up for a story. The anxiety that flows on from the Vietnam war experience is in a sense the very trauma of the post-colonial experience, reflecting and coming back to haunt America. In some ways this film is being overlooked because of its out-dated crappy action; the deeper readings seem more relevant than 'TLE' today.
China As The Great Unknown
China never looks or sounds like China when people from the West talk about it. China, thinks it's the centre of the universe... at least the parts that matter. It has thought of itself that way for at least 3000 years. Its history is populated with real men - Men of Honour, Men of Valour, Men of Principle, Men of standing; and that is what the character for Han in Han Dynasty means. The Han dynasty was the Empire of Men, as in Mankind. The rest of the foreigners were just a pack of uncivilised animals. The West was like a bunch of barbarians who have suddenly manifested out of nothing on their shores in the 19th Century, disturbing their peace, peddling Opium.It's a vast contrast to how the Average white person thinks back to their school days and their Chinese classmate, who they saw as "That Chink". Or "Ching Chong Charlie." It's kind of pathetic, really.
Thus China as it presents itself to the world is considerably different to the way the West views it. I think the Chinese don't get the depth of the contempt that's been leveled against China over the last 200 years. The gap in that understanding in a way underscores the angry tantrums the Chinese government displays when it feels slighted. Then the westerners ask a whole bunch of rude questions about its customs and pass judgment. It's really not a functional relationship.
Fortunately we get to see this dysfunction in both films. This is because in many ways these films are Orientalist fantasies of the west, projected onto the East. The West keeps insisting Asians are inscrutable. Well, yeah, if you want to paint your fantasies on their faces, they're going to just shrug and walk away, wouldn't you say? Neither of these films would've been remotely credible without John Lone for this reason.
Mickey Rourke And The Glory of '80s Cinema
I once read somewhere that only the French and the perverted like Mickey Rourke - and the French like Mickey Rourke because they're all perverts anyway. Count me amongst the perverted then, not because I'm not French, but because I'm still a big fan of Mickey Rourke's films. Don't ask me why, I just think he has a splendid screen presence and his 1980s filmography alone should be enough testament to the man. This is the guy who is in 'Angel Heart' and '9-1/2 Weeks', 'Year of the Dragon' here, and 'Rumble Fish' as the Motorcycle Boy. Even his vanity project 'Homeboy' features dialogue to die for and moments of true sentiment. The man has *something* going in his work.Okay, 'Wild Orchid' was terrible and he keeps appearing as this orange-looking dude lately, but he's still great.
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