When you shoot a film that clocks in at 3 hours, you’d
better make sure it is either:
(1)
Grandiosely Epic: Stun your audience with waves
of awe-inspiring spectacles i.e. big battle scenes or magnificent ceremony
celebrations, visually dazzling sets and costumes, and fascinating CGI effects.
(2)
Poetically Beautiful: Once again, this has got
something to do with bombarding the audience with endless beauty visually and audibly
that it feels like we are watching a poem unfolding before us.
(3)
Amusingly Entertaining: Enchanting story lines,
delightful adventures or entertaining musical numbers to keep the audience
hooked and never realize time flies by.
The Golden Era,
the latest offering from award-winning director Ann Hui that clocks in at 179 mins,
is neither of the above. The pace of the film is so slow and the structure so
loose that none of the elements work. It is disappointing that with three hours
to develop the characters and love story properly, Ann Hui failed to incorporate
any of her usual sensitive touch into the narrative thus unsuccessful in
bringing the audience into the heart of the story. What’s left is the audience
checking their watch every five minutes waiting for the movie to be over.
The film tells the story of legendary Chinese writer Xiao
Hong (played by Lust, Caution’s Tang
Wei) during the last 10 or so years of her life in the 1930s through early
1940s. It centers on her relationship with a few men including (arguably) the
love of her life Xiao Jun (played by Lan
Ling Wang’s Feng Shaofeng) and the only man she ever married Duanmu (played
by relatively unknown Zhu Yawen), in addition to her unofficial apprenticeship with
Lu Xun (played byveteran Wang Zhiwen). Because the focus is on her love life,
the film does not show us how and why she is regarded as one of the most
talented female writers in her era. If Ann Hui thought through reading of bits
and pieces of her articles we can have a glimpse into her talent, she did not
execute it effectively.
The film is structured to be told from the POV of multiple
of her friends and comrades in the literary world. It jumps back and forth
between years, narrated by different people about different stages of her life.
This is perhaps due to the fact that the script was written from information
gathered through multiple articles about Xiao Hong from different people, and
thus Ann Hui chose to let these characters narrate it themselves. However, this
creates confusion among the audience especially early in the film when the
characters are yet to be established fully. If the introduction of a film is
important in grasping the interest of the audience, The Golden Era fails
miserably in this task.
The problem of the film lies greatly in the “narrating”
format that Ann Hui chose. Instead of letting the camera doing the work of
storytelling, she chose words. In every minute of the film we are disrupted by
the voice of someone recounting the event. It is like hearing ten different
people telling one endless bedtime story that refuses us the chance to piece
together the whole story, not even in our imaginative mind. The words, as
spoken by the characters, are inorganic and pretentious. It is a pity that Ann
Hui has traded her A Simple Life’s straightforward
narrative style for this more complicated yet ineffective way of storytelling. I’m
not sure if the director intended the film to be poetic or not, but the film as
a whole does not feel so.
Ann Hui has gathered an impressive ensemble cast, yet when
they are put together I do not see sparks, not even between Tang Wei and Feng
Shaofeng. If I were to describe Tang Wei’s performance with one word I would
perhaps choose “lazy”. She cruises along the movie with the same expression and
body language, and we can’t tell much difference between her early 20s and her
early 30s. True, the sorrow in her eyes catches the spirit of Xiao Hong quite
precisely, but you can’t take the same emotion and apply it to the whole life
of the legendary lady. The same can be said about Feng Shaofeng, who
unfortunately falls victim to an underwritten character (once again, this
perhaps has got to do with the fact that much of the script is based on others’
description of their relationship, so there will be parts where third parties
will never understand thus leaving unfilled hollow in Xiao Jun’s character
development). The only watchable performance comes from Wang Zhiwen, who in
every gesture and every line reading captures the spirit of a respected
literary icon perfectly.
Ann Hui has three hours to tell a simple story (many will
argue that it is never truly simple when the subject matter is a legendary
writer, but I feel it’s just a matter of choosing which angle to focus on and
in the case of The Golden Era, it is
the love story), yet I scratched my head wondering how can it feels so rush in
some of the plots when the overall pace of the film is so slow. We barely know
what happened in Wuhan and we are not treated enough of Xiao Hong’s struggle in
the love triangle and her heartbreak over her eventual breakup with Xiao Jun,
yet we spent nearly half an hour with her in her deathbed. At the end of the
movie, the audience feel like they know as much about Xiao Hong as before watching
the movie. We do not grow to like her or loathe her because we barely know her.
The portrayal of her is two-dimensional that we never really throw ourselves
whole-heartedly into the movie.
This film is ambitious, there’s no denying that Ann Hui
intended to shoot an award-winning epic (though an acclaimed director like her
who already won countless accolades before should not shoot movie for the sake
of trophy anymore). Yet the misjudgment in execution makes The Golden Era a rare failure in her filmography. It comes to no
surprise that the film failed to be shortlisted as one of the nine Best Foreign
Language Film at the Academy Awards, but the fact that Ann Hui won a Best
Director at the Golden Horse Award puzzles me. That may have something to do
with the brand name rather than the quality of the film. I would recommend you
use the time to re-watch A Simple Life,
then use the remaining one hour to do other more useful things.
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