You're a drug dealer, I'm a cop. I didn't betray you; I busted you
Immediately and apparently disparate from the fifteen years of Hong Kong cinema that preceded it, and in maybe its only feature deeply resemblant of the past, this acts as a deliberate extrapolation of Patrick Yau's Expect the Unexpected, an earlier Milkyway production ghost directed by To himself. Like so many of the 90s that film was the direct result of collective anxiety amidst the troubling China-HK…
When exploring large, thematically complicated filmographies I often feel inclined to find which film is the "key" to unlocking the director's body of work, but instead Zhang Yimou has one lock. That lock is The Curse of the Golden Flower; immediately a work of opulence and beauty, but under which is his most elusive subtextual offering to date. I can't imagine getting much from this besides some great entertainment without first examining the political underpinnings of Zhang's 80s and 90s…
wrong ideas are the stuff of life
few films emulate a dream well enough to earn descriptors of the surreal, hypnotic, hypnagogic, or indeed the dreamlike, yet what this does goes so far beyond sustaining illusion; what it really does is make all those descriptors instantly redundant. not unusual for me to be left wanting to melt into a similar film’s atmosphere, but bi gan’s are the first to actually give me that freedom, to allow me to slip into its slumber and let the current take me, to dream its dream alongside it. he can make you feel it all, experience anything.
Mostly inert as an undercover cop mystery and serial killer procedural, and I’m afraid it only fares a little better as a psychological character study. It’s certainly an interesting one but unnecessarily muddled by Friedkin’s reckless and also frankly meaningless attempts at ambiguity. But aesthetically? As far as creating a world out of mood and atmosphere goes this is excellent, dangerous, problematic filmmaking that probably beckons for a better handle on the script.
How did they write every character so well? When they all burst out in tears I had no choice but to do the same.
