John Woo, Red Cliff Part 1

Sunny Vergara (ehem, author of the very soon forthcoming Temple University Press Pinoy Capital: The Filipino Nation in Daly City) has a very good post on John Woo’s Red Cliff Part 1 here. It was awesome to have viewed it in such fun and critical company, to think ridiculous things aloud about the bromance between the lovely Zhuge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro) and the lovely Zhou Yu (Tony Leung), at whose first appearance one hour or so into the film — close up on the eyes only — did indeed have me and Valerie giggling, maybe even going, “squeeeee….” To croon James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful” as the two beautiful men gaze long at each other with admiration.

I am interested in bromance, this mutual male admiration for multifaceted male beauty, this admiration which really isn’t necessarily homoerotic. Here, each character observes the other so carefully, and it is to assess the other’s skills as warriors, in making decisions and judgments. How do they decide what is the “right” course of action, what factors do they take into account, who do they consider while making their decisions. The “dueling zithers” scene, as Sunny says, is something of a test run, to see whether they can work together as military strategist and military commander. How do they improvise, how does each lead and follow the other.

Other ridiculous outbursts had to do with the Fellowship of the Ring; Kaneshiro as the lithe and hygienically fastidious Legolas. Leung as the shrewd military leader with the gentle poet soul Aragorn. And then there is the Gimli of the group, a thick and hirsute, armored and roaring One Man Wrecking Machine.

Anyway, do read Sunny’s review, as he discusses Woo’s use of space, and places this film within the context of Woo’s trajectory from contemporary Hong Kong settings to Hollywood, and then to this sweeping Chinese epic. I do realize that in my viewing of this film, I was so easy to forgive Woo for the kinds of basic questions I ask of a film I am viewing. For example, perhaps most importantly, what was the narrative again? How are folks here allied and related? Quite a muddle, but a super glitzy and beautiful one.

Finally, how beat over the head with explaining of metaphor must we be? Or do those who are not fully steeped in teaching, writing, and reading figurative language really need to have the metaphors to be unpacked for them? I say this because the room was full of writers, authors, educators, and academics, yelling at the television, “We get it! We get it already!” as the tortoise shell formation of soldiers came into view, and then the fade into the tortoise shell itself, and then back to the military formation. All this, after the land tortoise had already been placed on the battlefield map, sunk in a pot of water, dished out by the Éowyn of the group, who’s articulated the key to their tortoise shell strategy; why drop a land tortoise into the water (i.e. can land soldiers stationed on naval ships be effective fighters). We get it; we get it already.

And/But we forgive these things. At least I did.

What I did not forgive, however, was The Day the Earth Stood Still, which we saw on IMAX at the Metreon. I don’t think I want to say too too much about this film because it would be mostly disparaging. Ultimately, this film relied upon emotionally manipulating the audience by placing a child in many dangerous and scary situations and having to have him witness things we believe a child should not witness. That the actor is Will Smith’s child had me wondering the whole time, however, how much the father’s existence determined bagging that part for the child. Two highlights within this hot mess: (1) A brief appearance by John Cleese as the Nobel Laureate, a character that is set up to be all that is to be admired about humanity. (2) A brief appearance by James Hong, with whom a very … slow … talkin Keanu speaks Mandarin. Hong’s character shows us a future possibility for Keanu.

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