A Chinese Ghost Story (Sien Nui Yau Wan) (1987)

 

A Chinese Ghost Story

As usual, when watching movies from far away places, I feel a bit on shaky ground as I do not always understand the background or context of what I am watching. “A Chinese Ghost Story” or “Sien Nui Yau Wan” strikes me as the Hong Kong version of “Evil Dead”. Sort of a horror comedy with over-the-top monsters, gross-out visuals and silly dialogue. I could be entirely wrong, and this is actually an established Hong Kong tradition, which it certainly is in terms martial arts by wire, in which case I have just demonstrated by complete ignorance.

Ning Caichen (Leslie Cheung) works as a debt collector, but it is not really going well for him. The ink in his book of debts has washed out so when he arrives in the town he is supposed to collect from, he is out of money and must stay in the only free place in town, a deserted temple. There is good reason the temple is deserted as it is haunted by ghosts with an appetite for humans. Nin Caichen knows nothing of this and the only reason he survives his first night is his fumbling luck and complete ignorance. He meets a pretty girl, Nie Xiaoqian (Joey Wong), and is infatuated by her. He also meets a Daoist priest, Yan Chixia (Wu Ma), who lives as a hermit at the temple, keeping the ghosts at bay.

Until Ning Caichen learns the girl is a ghost, he thinks he is protecting her from a madman, especially after seeing him decapitate one of Nie Xiaoqian’s sisters. When the priest finally convinces him they are indeed dangerous ghosts, he is terrified but agrees on a scheme to lure them out. Ning Caichen also learns that Nie Xiaoqian is a prisoner of “The Big Lady” (Lau Siu-ming), who is actually a terrible tree demon. To help Nie Xiaoqian, Yan Chixia and Ning Caichen enter a dramatic battle against the tree demon using all sorts of magic weapons to fight a ginormous demonic tongue. The battle eventually takes them to the underworld to fight even worse monsters.

I recognize three levels to this movie. At the first and most immediate level, this is a combined love and ghost story (Ning Caichen is after all in love with a ghost). It is not too hard to follow that story. Love is sweet and the ghosts are dangerous. The priest is a ghost hunter, and Ning Caichen is anything but a warrior. At the second level this is a comedy, which is much harder to translate. Practically all the dialogue comedy is lost on me. When the characters are supposed to be funny, they just look stupid or strange and only when the action turns comedic does the comedy start to work for me. This is not strange at all and very common. Comedy is extremely difficult to translate and for the Chinese the same is probably true the other way round. At the third level, this is a martial arts movie in the wuxia tradition with fancy swordplay and lots of wirework. It is over-the-top, but that is almost always the case and whether they are throwing magic spells or deadly thrusts at each other, it is dramatic to look at and not so difficult to follow. Martial arts translate fairly well. Luckily, as I mentioned, some of the comedy extends to these fighting scenes and we enter the same realm of horror comedy as that of “Evil Dead”.

The further we get into the movie, the more we enter this familiar territory and for me as a westerner the better “A Chinese Ghost Story” gets. All those battle scenes are impressive and the love story between the ghost and the mortal is sweet. Anything that happens in the town, though, feels awkward and amateurish, basically because it plays on a comedy I do not get.

This is very much an eighties movie where most of the budget was spent on the special effects. The soundtrack is... Chinese electronica and the acting is... well, Chinese. I am not the right judge of that. Apparently, “A Chinese Ghost Story” hit it big time in Hong Kong and became an underground cult phenomenon in mainland China, creating all sorts of spin-offs and what-not, so obviously it got a lot of things right.

I did enjoy it more than I expected. Certainly more than I expected ten minutes into the movie. Once it really gets rolling, we just need Ash showing up with his chainsaw to save the day.

   

The Princess Bride (1987)

 

The Princess Bride

For some strange reason, “The Princess Bride” was not a big thing in Denmark. I had never even heard of the movie until I was introduced to it by my astonished wife. Although I have watched it multiple times since, this is an excellent movie, it is not one of those eighties’ movie with a patina of sweet childhood memories. To me, it does not feel that old.

The story of “The Princess Bride” is a bedside story told by a grandfather (Peter Falk) to his grandchild (Fred Savage), a bedridden child of around 10. This is a fairytale, so it takes place in a fairytale world. In this world a girl, Buttercup (Robin Wright) is in love with a farmhand, Westley (Cary Elwes). Westley leaves to seek his fortune, but is captured by the Dread Pirate Roberts and rumoured dead. Buttercup is devastated and five years later betrothed to the arrogant prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon), a man she does not love.

Shortly before the wedding, Buttercup is kidnapped by an unlikely trio led by the dwarf Vizzini (Wallace Shawn). He is accompanied by a giant, Fezzik (André the Giant) and a Spanish swordsman, Inigo Montoya (Mandy Patinkin). They are chased by a mysterious stranger which they first take for the Dread Pirate Roberts, but eventually turns out to be Westley. What ensues is too good to reveal in a synopsis. Suffice to say that Prince Humperdinck and his evil advisor, Count Tyrone Rugen (Christopher Guest) are the true bad guys here and both Buttercup and Westley must pass a lot of trials on their way.

The plot of “The Princess Bride” is nothing special. It is the characters and the dialogue that wins the price here. Both are magnificent. Vizzini as the Sicilian smartass has some fantastic lines including his ubiquitous “Inconceivable” and “Never enter a land war in Asia”. Inigo Montoya is hunting for the six-fingered man who killed his father and dream of telling him “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die”. This is his life mission and for this he has become a master swordsman. Both Humperdinck and Rugen are absolutely awesomely evil and ridiculous. Exactly the over-the-to villains that makes a good movie great. Guest is particularly awesome and such a departure from his role in “This is Spinal Tap”. We even get Mel Smith and Billy Crystal in small but vital roles.

Because of these fantastic characters, “The Princess Bride” is amazingly rewatchable. It is one of those movies you enjoy quoting the lines from so that if you hear someone screaming “The cliffs of insanity!”, you know what they have be watching. This is the kind of comedy that may not have you rolling on the ground on first view, but one that drops so many pearls that, I at least, cannot help loving it more every time I watch it.

This also happens to be one of my wife’s favourite movies.

Not long ago Rob Reiner got murdered, apparently by his own son. It was such a crazy story and it made me think of all those great movies Reiner made, especially back in the eighties, and not least “The Princess Bride”. He had a very good streak and even though his late movies may not have reached the same level, he was one of Hollywood’s great directors (and producer).

“The Princess Bride” is a fun watch and an essential comedy of the eighties. If it had not been on the list, I would have added it in a heartbeat.

 

Pelle the Conqueror (1987)

 

Pelle Erobreren

“Pelle Erobreren” (“Pelle the Conqueror”) is an entry on the Danish version of the List (replaces “Princess Bride”). It is based on a book that is very famous in Denmark by author Martin Andersen Nexø, a fellow we were always tormented by in literature classes in my youth, and catapulted director Bille August into international stardom. Though I have known about the movie since it came out, I never had the courage to sit through its reputed 2 hours and 40 minutes of misery.

Lasse Karlsson (Max von Sydow) is a poor Swedish farmworker who, upon being a widower, emigrates to the Danish island of Bornholm with his young son, Pelle (Pelle Hvenegaard). It is the middle of the nineteenth century and at this time farmwork was all manual labour, which required many hands, which in turn was available at low cost. Lasse and Pelle get hired on Stengården, owned by Kongstrup (Axel Strøbye) with the day-to-day operation in the hands of the brutal steward (Erik Påske).

Life as farmhands on Stengården is hard work, full of humiliations, random punishments and unfair treatment. Being the lowest of the lowest, Swedish farmhands get no protection anywhere. Lasse knows this, lowers his shoulders and accepts, but it is harder for Pelle to accept this, and he keeps ending up in situations where his position makes him lose.

The movie is episodical and takes us through a string of events in Pelle’s years on Stengården. There is his interaction with Rud (Troels Asmussen), a boy in, if possible, worse conditions than Pelle, with Erik (Björn Granath), a fellow Swede who dreams of going to Sweden and rebels against the treatment he gets, but ends up brain damaged in an accident, and the other children in school, who torments Pelle in ways that may threaten his life.

While we learn early on that Kongstrup has fathered several bastard children (including Rud), it gets really disgusting when he impregnates his own niece, Jomfru Sine (Sofie Gråbøl in a very early role), who is suddenly not so much jomfru (virgin) anymore. It is not that Kongstrup is evil, he just does not care about others, and nobody is to stop him from doing what he feels like.

This is of course a political story, telling of the appalling conditions the working people on the countryside lived under in those days. Sort of “Novocento” without the screaming. Martin Andersen Nexø was exactly that, so it comes as no surprise. What may be surprising though is the tone of the movie. Rather than going for the dramatic, it is almost resigned and apathetic in the apparent acceptance of the gross injustices being thrown at us. It is melancholia rather than anger that we feel as Lasse and Pelle are powerless against a cruel fate. The message is of course that it should not be like that, but in the headspace of Lasse, there is no real alternative. The world is stuck and any attempt at improvement is doomed and will send you right back to where you came from.

Pacing may be a problem with this movie. Its long run time and the time it allows itself to tell the story is straining, but there are also many episodes to cover and what the movie lacks in pacing, it serves in intensity. Especially Max von Sydow is incredibly convincing as Lassefar. He is a simple character, but Sydow becomes this character in a way that is almost scary. He was indeed nominated as Best Actor at the Academy Awards for this performance and that was well deserved. This great actor only received two nominations in his glorious career.

There are a few technical mysteries like Pelle’s amazing feat in learning Danish with a native accent in a matter a few months or how the good people of Bornholm, known for their very special and strong accent, in this movie uses a variety of accents covering most of the country, but, one the other hand, the visuals are flawless. This looks authentic through and through, the harbour, the boats, the farm, the cloth, even the food they eat. Very impressive.

“Pelle Erobreren” is a big movie, a movie that covers a lot of ground and which requires something of the viewer, but it is also a rewarding movie, if you can live with the pacing. It went on to win the Palme D’Or in Cannes and Best Foreign Language movie at the Academy Awards, but for some reason, it did not qualify for the international version of the List. I can think of a few movies I would have sacrificed to make room for this one.

Highly recommended, especially if you are interested in conditions on the Danish countryside in the mid-nineteenth century or want to watch Max von Sydow at his best.

Housekeeping (1987)

 

Housekeeping

After Bill Forsyth made “Local Hero”, he went on to make “Housekeeping”, a movie I never heard of before it came up on the List. I am apparently not alone. Turned out that the producer got fired from Columbia and the studio, as a result, gave the movie minimal attention. It has therefore flown under the radar of literally everybody and that is truly a shame. This is a little gem.

Somewhere in the Northwest (Seattle?) in, presumably, the 1940’ies, a young mother, Helen (Margot Pinvidic), set off to Fingerbone, Idaho, to put off her two daughters, Ruth and Lucille, at her mother’s house before she drives off a cliff and into the lake.

Years later, sometime in the fifties, the grandmother dies and the two girls, being teenagers, are without a guardian. Two aunts come by temporarily, but flee back to where they came from when Helen’s sister, Sylvie (Christine Lahti) arrive. Sylvie is... eccentric. She is a drifter, who never stays long in any one place. She is married but seem to hardly remember her husband. She does all these odd things that are more whims than anything. To the girls she acts more like a friend than a parent and it is often them who must keep track of her than the other way round.

To begin with Lucille (Andrea Burchill) and Ruth (Sara Walker) are so alike they appear to be twins and they seem to speak with one voice. The presence of Sylvie, though, creates a rift between them. Lucille sees Sylvie as a problem. Lucille wants to fit in with all the other townsfolk and wants to break out of the bubble of weirdness she thinks Sylvie is creating. Eventually she moves out of the house, to stay with one of her teachers. Ruth on the other hand feels like an outcast herself with more of a kinship to Sylvie. She likes the isolation and fears other people. To her, being totally accepted by Sylvie is a door opening to a world where she does not have to fit in in a normal sense. The rift escalates to the point where Lucille is setting the town authorities on Sylvie to “save” Ruth.

This is an innocent looking movie with a surprisingly lot going on, most of which in subtle ways that are unobtrusive until you notice them. One of the curious details is the almost complete lack of men in the movie. They are simply... absent. This forces the women to make their own decisions and in a patriarchal society such as rural villages in the fifties, this tastes like freedom. What then do you do with that freedom? Helen used it to kill herself. Sylvie uses it to do whatever comes to her mind, but generally avoid responsibility. Their mother ran her home as if her husband was there. He just wasn’t. Lucille and Ruth are coming of age, and they are in a position, perhaps more than their contemporaries, where they must decide what they want to do. Lucille’s choice is to join the conventional world with all the comforts of fitting in, while Ruth’s choice is to stay outside conventional society. Not because she insists on being independent or aloof, but out of a combination of fear of how the world look at her and duty to Sylvie whom she genuinely like. Of course this is a coming-of-age story, but it neither involves knocking somebody over, having sex or winning a competition. It is simply about making your life choice.

Even Sylvie is going through, belatedly, a coming-of-age of sorts. While she made the life choice a long time ago to be free, learning to take responsibility for somebody is her growing up.

There is a quiet tone to the movie that I found extremely soothing. Screaming and shouting is at a minimum and instead I get to know these people to an extend rarely seen in Hollywood productions. Sara Walker and Andrea Buchill were both amateur actors and I cannot find that they did anything since and that is such a shame. They are naturals and are very convincing. I felt so much sympathy for Ruth and while that may be intended, the fact that it comes through so powerfully, speaks to her credit.

Obviously, with no studio support, the movie tanked upon release, but in the years since it has won recognition and that is well deserved. I would never have found this movie if not for the List and I am very happy to have watched it. Highly recommended.