_The Promise_; _God Emperor of Dune_; _The Romance of Astrea and Celadon_
sept...@millenicom.com
It has not occurred to your that your ancestors were survivors
and that survival itself sometimes involved savage decisions,
a kind of wanton brutality which civilized humankind works
very hard to suppress. What price will you pay for that
suppression? Will you accept your extinction?"
-- _God Emperor of Dune_
I really feel bad slandering Chen Kaige, because he always has his
heart in the right place and expresses an off-center, outsider's,
almost anti-Confuscian viewpoint in his films. _The Promise_
even kills off the worthless emperor early on without making
a fuss about it. At the same time, I've never been overly fond
of his films. Should go back to those I haven't seen, including
_The Emperor and the Assassin_. _The Promise_ has an auspicious
beginning. The title sequence shows a map with the west of China
marked "Barbarians," and north of that, "snow wolves" country
where the film's hero grew up. This is a sly comment about the
xenophobic ancient Chinese view; of course even the "snow wolf"
inhabitans would have been considered barbarians. Better
yet, the hero (since enslaved by a Chinese general) is the child
of ordinary citizens, not some prince or royalty. (Chen does
has a democratic sensibility, not like Zhang Yimou.) So is the
heroine, who makes a memorable entrance as a child stealing bread
from dead soldiers strewn absurdly across the landscape like
Bresson's roundtable knights in _Lancelot of the Lake_. It is the
grim reminder of the horrors of war one never sees in Zhang Yimou's
extravaganzas. The heroine makes a pact with some fairies,
sacrificing
capacity for love for wealth and status. As if to hammer home its
cosmopolitan world view, the film features an internationalcast:
Japenese, Korean, and Chinese, and Hong Kong.
The adult version of the orphan-turned royal concubine is played by
Cecilia Cheung, who resembles a young Maggie Cheung but is sadly
now known more for her unfortunate indiscretions than her acting.
She tries hard to make her character interesting, is alternatively
seductive, petulant, and angelic. Despite being in the film's
framing device and its most interesting character, she has minimal
screen time. In fact,it is all downhill after the prologue, with
uninspired fight scenes and CGI effects dominating the rest of the
film. There are a few well-shot scenes, like the bird-cage-like
prison, but the less said about the story the better. If only
Chen had got rid of all the fighting and special effects and
focused on the love triangle born of mistaken identities and
misunderstandings, like Rohmer's _The Romance Of Astrea and
Celadon_ ...
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It just struck me that Chen Kaige would be the perfect director
for filming _God Emperor of Dune_. With all the expensive and
poorly written Chinese pseudo-historical fables, not to mention
American remakes of _Star Trek_ and worse, why not classic science
fiction stories instead? _Dune_ itself *is* being remade, apparently
by the director of the decent middle-east thriller _The Kingdom_.
So one assumes it will have an American-centric view but will
at least hammer home the oil = melange metaphor, the religious
fanaticism, torture, and human cloning. Hopefully the new film will
focus on the impending ecological disaster too. Frank Herbert, a
true visionary among scifi writers, is more relevant than at any
time in history. But I thought the Scifi miniseries did well
by _Dune_ and even its 1st and 2nd sequels already. _Dune_
is epic in scale but intimate in its soul. It doesn't need CGI;
it needs better actors to portray the fanatical desert Fremen,
whose women throw their babies and themselves at Sardaukars
to open a path for their men's attack. Even the climatic,
legendary battle between the emperor's shock troops and Paul's
sandworm-mounted legions is disposed of with a single sentence
in the book. I always thought the first three books could have
been stage plays, or filmed with painted backdrops like Rohmer's
_Lady and the Duke_.
_God Emperor of Dune_, the 4th in the series, does require special
effects; the protagonist is a 21 meter long human-sandworm hybrid.
It would be the perfect film for Chen Kaige to make. Chen seems
to like CGI. He has already made one English-language film.
(And the rebels in the book successfully assasinate the emperor!)
The 3500-year old God Emperor/sandworm is the perfect metaphor
for China which should benefit from decentralization and the
"Scattering." (China's film industry has certainly benefitted
from Hong Kong's talents, not to mention those of former
"barbarian" states like Korea, Japan, and Western Europe!) It
is a pipe dream, of course, but I'd like to see a humanist like
Chen wrestle with this provocative novel. As added benefit, you
don't need to pay for screenplays! The _Dune_ novels are already
perfectly edited into scenes complete with cliff-hangers and
flashbacks; they are usually told from distinct, interesting, first
person points of view. Herbert is such an underrated story
teller. Who can forget enigmatic openings of each of the books:
Paul's Gom Jabbar trial in _Dune_; the plot-within-a-plot to
dethrone Paul, told from a fringe character's point of view, in
_Messiah_; Stilgar contemplating regicide in _Children_; and Siona
and her band of rebels running for their lives in the forbidden
forest, chased by genetically engineered wolves in _God Emperor_
(another enticement for Chen?)
I just reread _God Emperor_ for the first time in 15 years. I
used to identify with the Worm. Now I find him odious, his riddles
arrogant, his sentimentality and weakness for a soulmate hard
to swallow. (Paul Maud'Dib's tragic demise in _Dune Messiah_
is far more powerful, almost Shakespearean.) Above all, I am
troubled, even offended, by his Olympian dismissal of his subjects'
day-to-day lives and their happiness in favor of his "Golden
Path:" the survival of the species, guided by his ability to
see into the future. I suppose when one is young and responsible
for nothing one is apt to focus on the abstract and the collective.
Our older, settled-down selves have the luxury of insisting on
the dignity of the individual and the everyday ("it is not enough
to survive; we must deserve it"), usually at the expense of the
universal and faraway. I can't say which is more naive. The
tension between experience (3000+ years plus all our ancestral
memory) and the vigor of youth is clearly one of the book's themes.
Regardless of where my sympathy lies, the book perhaps strikes me
as even more provocative and more of a force to be reckoned with
than when I first read it.
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Like so many non-U.S. films, I had to watch _The Romance of Astrea
and Celadon_ on DVD, after I have long forgotten what the critics
said about it. Since this is his last feature, I made an effort
to dig up 4 reviews (NYTimes, NYPress, NYPost, and the Village
Voice) to frame my thoughts (or to make sure I have any) on it. The
Times complained that the characters lack "flesh and blood." Stephen
Holden must have been very lucky (or unlucky; I'd go with the former)
not to feel a painful kinship with the love-sick shepherd Celadon's
confusion, desperation, and contradiction when Astrea rejects him.
He forces himself to obey her command to never see her again to
the letter, while deviously schemes to get close to her and makes
life a living hell for everyone else. It is an incredibly
powerful, painfully true portrait by Andy Gillet, even if the
story-telling is stylized. The NY Press indeed highlights the
physicality and sensuality of the very much flesh-and-blood actors
-- qualities that characterize Rohmer's best films, perhaps missing
in his last two (both period works), resurrected with renewed
vigor here. I am however suprised that the actress playing Astrea
seems so uncomfortable, at least in the beginning. Rohmer usually
has no problem finding complete unknowns who emerge whole and entire
as accomplished, eloquent actresses. Astrea is more like an ordinary,
sullen teenager. But she is arguably not the heroine; Cecile Cassel
(relative of Vincent Cassel) has far more screen time as the
substitute girlfriend (a la Amanda Langlet in _A Tale of Summer_),
while Veronique Reymond is more picturesque as the druid royalty.
The Voice and the Post reviews seem to celebrate Rohmer's entire
career more than this specific film. In fact, it has been 12 years
since Rohmer made a film about the romance of contemporary youths,
once his favorite subject. Perhaps this is appropriate; Rohmer
is in his 80s after all, quite a bit removed today's multicultural,
text-messaging youths; a literature teacher once, he surely believes
in telling stories about what he knows well. This timeless romance
re-ignites his passion in this subject, and some of the debate about
romantic love in the film reminds me of Arielle Dombasle's
unforgettable proclamations in _A Good Marriage_.
Unlike other Rohmer films set in the mythical past (_Perceval_ and
_The Marquise of O_), _The Romance of Astrea and Celadon_ is less
restricted by class-consciousness. In particular, Bruno Ganz's
Count violates the Marquise in her sleep, and a few foot soldiers
pay for this with their lives. When he is revealed as her child's
father, her family rushes to embrace him. This has always been so
troubling to me. Rohmer, like Ozu, likes his couples well-matched,
and class-consciousness comes into play here. When they are not
well-matched, like in _The Good Marriage_, it can be really
humiliating for one party. Celadon, however, rejects social
climbing and the advance of the Druid goddess; he stays faithful
to his true love. Faithfulness is generally not among Rohmer's
heroes' attributes. Jean-Louie Trintignant in _Maud_ is one of
the great exceptions. In fact, the NY Post stresses the spiritual
aspect of the shepherd's love for Astrea; the film certainly remind
me of _My Night at Maud's_, where religion, spirituality, and carnal
love intersect to such memorable effect. It is sad to see Rohmer
retire; we can use more romances shot in sun-bathed south of
France and less CGI movies made inside soulless computers.