Christmas (eve) cinema

[septimus_...@q.com]

This year I resumed the ritual of watching Kieslowski's _Dekalog 3_
after lapsing for several years. It is an incredible story about
compassion,
about two flawed people who struggle (sometime viscerally) to overcome
their demons and become greater (if only barely, temporarily) than who
they were. The Arabian Nights framing device should be a screen-
writing
standard, the reminder about the demimonde, the institutionalized, and
the
on-duty professionals during the holiday season is testimony to
Kieslowski's
profound humanistic vision, and Piotr Sobocinski's haunting refracted
X'mas
lights are the ultimate cinematic Holy Spirits hovering over the
living and
the dead. There can't be a more perfect X'mas movie than this.

I also rewatched _2046_ after chatting with someone about it. _2046_
features no less than 4 X'mas eve's. I was so involved in it at the
time
(13 times on the big screen alone) it is good to revisit it after
distancing
myself for so long. And I am completely stunned by how brilliant the
story telling is, not just the way it is structured, but how it is
enacted
by the actors, helped tremendously by the props Wong gives them
(a stack of $10 HK dollar notes that keep passing between Tony Leung
and Zhang Ziyi, Gong Li's deck of cards, always with the ace of spade
on top). Wong manages to accumulate such emotional power over
the repetitions and parallels. It is truly stunning and devastating
to
watch, but uplifting at the same time because you realize you've seen
something that is at the peak of human achievement, and can only
be inspired to match that effort, however marginally. Watching the
two back-to-back confirms that the Faye Wong X'mas eve sequence
is profoundly influenced by Kieslowski and Sobocinski (down to the
flickering red light reflected off X'mas tree decorations). That
sequence
is so sad, funny, bittersweet, and transcendentally edifying at the
same time -- how is Wong going to top that.

It has been 7 years since _2046_. Where are you, WKW?