Peking Opera Blues (Do Ma Daan) (1986)

 

Do Ma Daan

When I think of Hong Kong movies, martial arts is what comes to my mind. Lots of wires, kung fu and sword fighting that looks more like dancing than mortal combat. What I do not think of is comedies. Maybe for good reason, comedy translates very poorly, but “Do Ma Daan” (“Peking Opera Blues”) is such an entry on the List. Whether it is successful I think depends on the viewer.

It is 1913 and China is politically a mess with warlords coming and going and revolution brewing under the surface. General Tsao (Kenneth Tsang) has just ousted General Tun and is into some hanky panky with foreign bankers. His daughter, Tsao Wan (Brigitte Lin), is secretly a revolutionary and want to steal the documents to help the revolution. In this endeavour she is helped by Pak Hoi (Mark Cheng), another revolutionary. Sheung Hung (Cherie Chung) is a courtesan of General Tuns whose quest for a treasure of jewellery leads her to (and past) Tung Man (Cheung Kwok Keung), a soldier and cross paths with Wan and Hoi. The local opera house is the eye of the storm and here the acrobatic daughter, Bai Niu (Sally Yeh), of the owner fall in with the other.

Somehow a lot of things seem to happen, getting the documents, avoid being taken by the secret police, getting in and out of the opera house and getting entangled in the various armies. Beside the quest for the documents, there is Hung’s quest for the jewellery, Niu’s ambition to act in the all-male opera troupe and some romantic combinations.

It should be mentioned here that Peking opera is quite different from western opera. Like in very different.

It was very difficult to find this movie. The version I eventually dug up had English dubbing, complete with English names for the characters but acted on a budget. The dubbing was so bad that a large share of the comedy was the involuntary sort coming from these terrible voices. A movie like “Kung-Pow” is having a lot of fun with this sort of dubbing, but the real thing is... quite an experience.

Another large share of the comedy comes from the martial arts. No Hong Kong movie without martial art and in an action comedy like this one we get plenty. Much, if not most, is so exaggerated that it is funny. It is hard to tell if it is intentionally comedic or just becomes that way in a movie that does not really care if things make sense. The parts that definitely play for comedy work poorly though and that is not very surprising. A lot gets lost in the cultural translation.

It is rather incredible how much plot, action and characters “Peking Opera Blues” manages to squeeze into its 105 minutes running time. It is a very fast movie, quickly moving into the next scene. Look away for a moment and you are lost.

This is an odd mix of helpless amateurism (in large part due to the ridiculous dubbing) and very skilled physical acting and pacing. I am caught between ridiculing and admiring the movie and it ends up in this strange zone where I cannot tell if this was a good movie or not. I did enjoy watching it, but often for the wrong reasons and so I believe it is very much up to the individual viewer.

The Book is gushing about “Peking Opera Blues” and I am happy I only read the entry after watching the movie. What I actually watched was not bad, but very different from what the entry would have lead me to expect.

 

Caravaggio (1986)

 

Caravaggio

A historic drama from the seventeenth century about real people I did not know sounds like my jam. Unfortunately, this was an all-round disappointment.

Michelangelo Caravaggio (Nigel Terry) was an actual Italian painter during the Baroque period (early seventeenth century). This is supposedly A version of his story, stressing the “a”, told in episodic form. This means non-linearity long before Christopher Nolan made it a Hollywood standard. One storyline finds Caravaggio on his deathbed, suffering from lead poisoning. Another follows him in his youth where he enters the household of Cardinal Del Monte (Michael Gough), partly to paint, partly for sex. Later in life, he meets Ranuccio (Sean Bean) and Lena (Tilda Swinton), both as models but also for sex. He also takes on a mute boy, Jerusaleme (Spencer Leigh) as an assistant.

There is a lot of painting (marginally interesting) with people striking poses (not interesting) and screwing around, everybody with everybody (dirty, ugly and creepy). Eventually Lena is murdered for getting pregnant with a rich patron.

That is essentially what I got out of it.

I suppose my main problem is that I went into this movie on the wrong premise, thinking I was to watch a historic drama, but instead this was a surreal fable with an obscure point. When electronic pocket calculators, cigarettes, motor bicycles and electric lights started to appear, I was completely thrown. Obviously, this is not a historic account. Causality is thrown out the window and nothing is supposed to make logical sense. Director Derk Jarman clearly wanted to make an allegory in the style of “El Topo” or “Satyricon”, both themselves from a period in film history where the movies seemed to be on LSD.

This basically means that the apparent plot is indifferent and the real story must be found in symbols and metaphors. Because of the former, I gradually lost interest in the story. Nothing made any sense to me and even worse, I stopped to care. It is always a bad sign when you start checking the timer and here it felt like a countdown to relief. For the latter, I never got around to decode the actual story. There are hints that Caravaggio is a Christ figure, at least the last pose is of him dead with the wounds of Christ, but otherwise the whole thing felt like an excuse to showcase sex. Not the sex of love, but as a depravity. Now, depravity is in the eye of the beholder, but Jarman goes a long way to present the sex in this context as ugly, filthy and guilt-ridden. Sex between older men and boys, Sex between men and women and especially men and men. Religious people indulging in sex and so on.

The general impression is one of nausea. I felt literally filthy watching the movie. If there is something else in the movie, I can live with that, I am not that much of a prude. The problem here is that there is nothing else. The story line has no relevance, the actual plot is too obscure for me, and I felt nothing for the characters, in large part because the director is so busy using them for symbolic effect that he neglected fleshing them out. Even the main character, Caravaggio we end up knowing very little about, and what we do get to know is implicitly false because causality has been lost.

I suppose the highlight is that we get to see a young Sean Bean and equally young Tilda Swinton here, but I doubt these are the roles they will be remembered for.

I do understand why “Caravaggio” would be celebrated by critics, especially in art circles. There is so much critics-bait here, but it is also typical for why that class of movies has such a poor reputation in the general public. I think David Lynch is cool, the weirder the better and I dig Jim Jarmusch, but this stuff here is not my jam. Not at all.

 

Platoon (1986)

 

Platoon

There was a period where Oliver Stone could do nothing wrong. “Platoon” was one of the highlights of that period. It was highly acclaimed by both critics and the public, but I have not watched it since those days in the eighties. To say that I have been trying to avoid it is probably too strong a wording, but I have just not been inclined to revisit this depressing bloodbath.

It is 1967 (we are not told, I think, but Wikipedia says so) and Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen) is arriving in Vietnam as an inexperienced rookie. Taylor is a volunteer who dropped out of college to join the infantry. New arrivals tend to die fast, so Taylor must learn the hard way to stay alive. It is brutal, dirty and distressing to say the least. Death is everywhere and if not that then rain, snakes, leeches and disease.

It is clear early on that the lieutenant (Mark Moses) is in charge of jack while the true platoon commanders are the sergeants Barnes (Tom Berenger and Elias (Willem Dafoe). Both are highly skilled and professional, the difference being that Barnes has succumbed to the brutality of the war while Elias has retained his humanity. This difference comes to a head when searching a village suspected of supporting the Vietcong. When they do find hidden weapons, parts of the platoon, led by Barnes, treat the villagers, women, children, all, as combatants and go on a killing rampage, while Elias tries to stop it. This splits the platoon in two halves, following either Barnes or Elias with Taylor clearly on Elias side. Since what Barnes and his group did was clearly illegal, murder between the two groups is in the air.

So, while the unit fights an almost invisible, but terrifying, enemy for reasons that are never discussed, the real war appears to be between the two fractions in the platoon. Humanity versus inhumanity.

That is also what I found was the larger message with the movie. It was never a war movie about conquering or even defend against an evil enemy. It is a movie about what a brutal war like the Vietnam war does to regular people. In this sense it leans up against “Apocalypse Now”, but avoid the Odyssean (or Orphean) references. The journey into hell is the human transformation, the loss of what makes us human. In this respect, Elias becomes a Christ figure, sacrificed to save the souls of his followers.

It follows from his analysis that the reasons for going to war in the end means little to those on the ground. The only higher purposes left is to stay alive and/or preserve their humanity, with the later being the first to go. This is not unique for the Vietnam war. It is my understanding this is relevant for any war with substantial fighting, whether it be WWI or Ukraine.

If you miss out on the above, the plot of the movie may feel thin. Shooting, marching, smoking, more shooting... Post-watching, it is difficult to discern the steps the movie follows, except this gradual decent into the hell of inhumanity. That does not mean it is uninteresting to watch. Stone never falls into the trap of sacrificing the movie to the underlying message. It is riveting to follow, not least because of the constant danger and tension, but also because it is technically an excellent movie on all accounts, from script and acting to cinematography and editing. Even the soundtrack is spot on. Classical music is not what you would associate the Vietnam War with, but the transcendental function of the music to lead us into hell is used to perfection.

Willem Dafoe is for some obscure reason a big thing for Gen Z according to my son, despite him being a very different generation. It was curious to see that even in 86 he looked old and worn. Tom Berenger always looks tough, but I think he takes the price in “Platoon”. That man is a demon.

“Platoon” is not a movie I enjoy watching, and I would be suspicious of anybody who do, but it is a high-quality movie that brings something important to the table and that makes it a must-see, even if it is just that one time. For me, I can wait another few decades watching this again.

Children of a Lesser God (1986)

 

Kærlighed uden ord

We are staying with a romantic drama, but compared to last weeks “A room with a View”, we are at the other end of the scale. This was not really my jam.

James Leeds (William Hunt) starts working as a teacher on a school for the deaf and severely hearing impaired. His speciality is teaching the deaf to speak... I will let that stand for a moment. James is a very involved teacher who gets very close to his students. One of his students is Sarah Norman (Marlee Matlin) who technically is not a student, but a former pupil, now janitor, on the school and technically not his student because she is not interested in learning to speak.

None of this seems to deter James. He is romantically interested in Sarah and through persistence he manages to wear down enough of her defences to get into her pants. James is a man with a mission. He sees Sarah as a bright girl who just needs to be able to speak to be able to fulfil her potential which goes beyond cleaning the floors of the school. This is the one item where Sarah holds her ground. She sees absolutely no reason to learn to speak and, in fact, find it problematic that she needs to accommodate him rather than he meet her in her world of silence. The crisis in the movie is that this argument comes to a head and Sarah leaves James.

I think my problem with “Children of a Lesser God” primarily is that if you take away that most of the characters are deaf and communicate in sign language, this is a very trivial romantic drama, essentially a Hallmark mass produced item. There is not that much at stake and there is only a crisis because of bull-headed insistence. In this respect there was a lot more meat on “A Room with a View”. A second reason is that the character of James Leeds is problematic on three accounts. He starts a relationship with a student, never mind she is technically an employee, but she is still his student. That is a major no-go in my book and frankly creepy. Secondly, he is stalking her and pushing her rather than respecting her rejections. We are supposed to see his interest as a good thing, to help her, but to me, he is coming on way too hard. Getting that treatment from a teacher or colleague is unacceptable. Thirdly, everything happens on James’ terms. It is his projects, his goals, his world which is the right one. If you at any moment was in doubt of that, observing him at the deaf party of Sarah’s friends was very convincing. He could not accept her being happy if it was not on his terms.

Not everything is bad though. Both Hurt and Matlin deliver extraordinary performances (Matlin got herself an Academy Award for this) and having so many of the deaf in significant roles was definitely a positive. Matlin herself is almost entirely deaf and has made a career out of playing deaf roles. Unfortunately, the movie dares not take us all the way into the world of the deaf. All conversations in sign language are spoken out in plain language by the receiver, which is something I doubt would happen in reality and is frankly disturbing. What would have been interesting was if the deaf had been communicating entirely in sign language and we get the silence and a translation through subtitles. That would make us experience their world and elevate them to equal partners to the hearing. Instead, as the title hints at, the constant translation to spoken language makes them into deficient beings. This would of course have required that the audience would have to READ while watching, oh horror.

Maybe it is a period thing, the eighties are far away, but “Children of a Lesser God” comes across as a missed opportunity. For a movie trying to present the hearing impaired as fully equal to the rest of us with emphasis on accept, it falls short and often gives the opposite impression. Insisting that the deaf speak despite their humiliation, refusing to let their language stand alone and elevating a character to hero status who wants to mould them into an inferior version of the hearing. On top, to wrap this “message” into an insipid and trivial romance with the outcome telegraphed to not the deaf but the mentally impaired.

I love the deaf characters, but the movie is terrible.

  

A Room with a View (1986)

 

Et værelse med udsigt

There are many interesting benefits from following a curated list. For me, the best is that I get to see (or read on my book blog) material, I would never otherwise have watched and sometimes it moves my idea of what my preferences are or should be. One such movie is “A Room with a View”.

It is very early twentieth century, and we find the young Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) and her chaperone Charlotte (Maggie Smith) in Florence. Lucy is a tourist and has booked a room at a pension run by an Englishwoman and catering to English visitors. Greatly disappointed with the lack of a view, they are offered the room of the Emersons, father (Denholm Elliott) and son (Julian Sands), bringing them into contact. Lucy is very much the correct and stiff Victorian gentlewoman, but Florence has a troubling effect on her. George Emerson, raised as a free spirit, fascinates and scares the virginal Lucy and when he dares to kiss her on an outing, Lucy and Charlotte immediately leave, never to tell anybody about this terrible breach of decency. Except Charlotte apparently told Eleanor Lavish (Judi Dench), a novelist, about the incident.

Back in England, Lucy is courted by the arrogant and bookish Cecil Vyse (Daniel Day-Lewis). She accepts his marriage proposal, but then the Emersons move into a nearby cottage and that opens a path for Lucy she thought had been long shut down. With Simon Callow as the insightful vicar Mr. Beebe.

The story itself is not particularly new. The repressed woman, keeping herself in a tight control dictated by social conventions, who meets somebody who helps her liberate herself to be the person she actually is. If you have watched “Titanic”, you know exactly what I mean. The special thing about “A Room with a View” is how elegantly it is done. There is that dash of comedy to keep it lively, that sense of who the characters are that makes them come alive as real people and just enough drama to feel something is at stake. There is never any doubt of the outcome, it can be predicted ten minutes in, but it is a joy to see it unfold.

That the characters are as fleshed out as they are, has of course a lot to do with the script, but I dare say that having quality actors in not just the key roles, but also in practically all supporting roles is definitely a factor. I mean, Judi Dench as the writer and Maggie Smith as the chaperone! A lot rests on Helena Bonham Carter as Lucy, and she turns out to be a lot more than just a pretty face. There is a fire in the character, but under very tight control. Her hair is a metaphor of her state. Wrapped tight in a braid or in a disciplined hairdo signal tight control but letting her hair out means she is letting go of that control. Something her surroundings are not keen on letting her do. The wilder her hair, the more she blossoms, even if it is because she is upset. It is then a liberating anger.

Daniel Day-Lewis’s Cecil Vyse is the villain in the sense that he represents the golden prison Lucy is about to walk into, but also because he comes about as both arrogant and mean. We are supposed to not like him. I am not as dismissive of him though. More than anything he is misplaced and entirely the wrong match for Lucy. In a sense, he is in as much need of liberation as her, he just does not know it. Or maybe he does near the end. He is socially clumsy and inept and masks it with arrogance. I actually feel sorry for him.

If there is a problem with “A Room view a View”, it is that as a novel being squeezed into a movie, there is a sense a lot of material missing. Especially George Emerson is not nearly enough fleshed out. There is a strong hint that there is a major story here, but that it simply did not make the cut and that makes him a bit like the prince in Snow White, not quite, but almost a non-entity.  

“A Room with a View” is a period piece in the romantic genre and almost the definition of a movie I would skip, but that would be a shame. It is actually a delightful movie.

 

Down by Law (1986)

Down by Law

You know going into a Jim Jarmusch movie that the experience will be different form the standard Hollywood fare and you know that you will spend the next few days contemplating what exactly you have just watched. “Down by Law” is no different and as this was a first-time watch for me, I am not at all done wondering what this was all about.

Somewhere in the New Orleans area, we meet Zack (Tom Waits) and Jack (John Lurie). Zack is an out of luck disk jockey whose (very pretty) girlfriend is leaving him in the opening scenes. In a drunken stupor he accepts a job to drive a car from one end of town to the other, not knowing there is a dead body in the trunk. Zack is busted and sent to prison just like that.

Jack is a pimp who is lured to meet a new girl who turns out to be a child. Too late he learns he has been set up and he is busted too.

Zack and Jack end up cell mates and are eventually joined by Roberto (Roberto Benigni), a tourist who threw back a billiard ball when attacked and accidentally killed one of his attackers.

We follow their interaction in the cell. They escape and then we follow them in the swamps.

The big question of what this is all about is still lost on me. All three are framed, but the court events are omitted. As is the actual escape. They talk about escaping and in the next scene they are on the run. For a prison break movie, those are two very curious omissions. Instead, we get long scenes where they are playing cards, arguing or just doing nothing. Except Roberto is never quiet.

The closest thing to a theme I have gotten to, is the developing relationship between the three of them, particularly seen from the points of view of Zack and Jack. They are both loners, who need nothing from other people and have trouble socializing. They see each other as enemies but are actually quite alike. Only as we approach the end, they seem to realize that, but it is very difficult for them to admit that what they have in front of them is their soul brother. That in fact, they are not alone. Roberto is almost the opposite. He very easily socializes, do not judge anybody and looks for opportunities instead of obstacles. He is not smart, but he does not need to be with those traits. He is the glue that keeps the team together and make things happen. Almost as some divine intervention.

Just like “Stranger than fiction”, “Down by Law” is filmed in black and white and gives the feel of taking place in some sub-reality that is similar to the real world, but eerily disconnected from it. This has the effect of taking the characters out of a real-world context and making their world very small and unpopulated. We see only the other cells in a single glimpse; we see only their connection to the outside world as sort of goodbye scenes and I could even believe that the prison and escape is meant as some religious purgatory leading to a rebirth.

Tom Waits I only know as a musician, but it turns out he has a massive resume as an actor and here I learned why. He is very convincing. Luckily, we get a few of his songs too. Benigni is a polarizing character. His arm-waving kind of over-the-top Italian comedy usually sits poorly with me, but somehow it worked perfectly in this movie. It must be that the character begs this sort of acting or that the two other characters were constantly trying to put a lid on it.

Did I like the movie? Well, based on the above, it is hard to say I did not, but it took me an awful long time to get into it and most of it, I only like in retrospect. I frankly admit that, especially during the first hour, i was often bored and had some trouble maintaining attention. My wife checked out after 10 minutes, but my persistence paid off and I think it redeemed itself towards the end. Probably mostly for Jarmusch fans, but a tempered recommendation from me.

 

  

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

 

En vild pjækkedag

Here is another eighties movie that goes way back for me and one I am very torn about. Parts of me enjoy watching it immensely and other parts despise the movie as abhorrent.

Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) is a senior year high school student, living in upper middle-class suburbia (or is it lower upper class?). Frequently he skips school and is in fact an expert on the topic. He convinces his parent he is sick and has a whole string of fall backs set up just in case such as snoring sounds from his room, an answering machine at the front door and a back story for the school. He even knows how to enter the school computer to reduce his record of missed classes.

Ferris wants to do fun stuff with his girlfriend, Sloane (Mia Sara) and for that he needs a car and therefore his “friend”, Cameron (Alan Ruck), who has called in sick for real. Despite Cameron’s protests he comes over and they spring Sloane from class, pretending to be her father and that her grand mother has died. He also bullies Cameron into letting him take Cameron’s father’s beloved vintage Ferrari for them to drive to nearby Chicago to do “fun” stuff, like eating in a fancy restaurant, go to a baseball game and join a parade.

Meanwhile, Ferris’ sister, Jeanie (Jennifer Grey) is upset that nobody can see through Ferris scams, the student body is convinced that Ferris is mortally ill and are running a “Save Ferris” campaign and the school principal, Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones), smells a rat and wants to expose Ferris so badly that he will literally go to extremes to nail him.

I understand that the point of the story is that it is a good thing to break the rules, to take initiative and ignore authorities. The youth rebellion story that this is what coming of age is. Doing what is expected of you is to follow boring, useless classes and being under the thumb of dominating parents, in other words, missing life. In this light, Ferris is successfully turning his back on the system and striking out on his own and if you accept the premise, his adventure is a lot of fun.

The problem is that this premise is seriously flawed. Ferris needs the school, he needs his parents and there are consequences to his actions, at least in real life. Ferris’ concerns are for his own gratification and what he does to Cameron to get that gratification is so beyond the acceptable. He knows Cameron is suffering from a very dominating father, he knows that taking his Ferrari will land Cameron, not Ferris, in very hot water and he hears again and again Cameron plead with him to not do this, yet Ferris persists because he wants to have fun. He even invents reasons that this is good for Cameron, but I cannot see how in any way this will do him any good. That Cameron somehow is learning to stand up for himself will only last until he encounters his father because like Ferris, Cameron also needs both family and school.

We are also supposed to laugh at or mock all those who cannot accept that Ferris can get away with things other people cannot. The sister learns that she can accept that other people can get away with things she cannot, and the school principal is the butt of most of the jokes for not accepting that Ferris is beyond the rules everybody else live under. Again, many will agree that this is small people’s thinking and admire Ferris, but I find it deeply problematic.

Jeffrey Jones’ Principal Rooney is by far the funniest character of the movie. Regardless of whether it is acceptable or not what Ferris is doing, that man is completely of the rails in his vendetta against Ferris Bueller. His efforts are comical and ultimately futile, and Jones makes the very best out of that role. Had he been a more balanced person I would have wished him good hunting in nailing Ferris, but for a character this zealous it is difficult to be on his side and that is actually a shame because he is the only one really standing in the way of Ferris getting away with his stunt.

I do not like Ferris, and I do not like the message of the movie, and I have difficulty bending my mindset into accepting the premise of the movie, but I also, grudgingly, must admit that it is a movie that makes me laugh. The ending with Rooney being picked up by the school bus is simply outstanding. So, yes, very torn on this one.