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.
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