1993, Hong Kong. Starring Maggie Cheung, Joey Wong, Zhao Wen-zhou, Wu Hsing-Guo, Ma Cheng Miu. Directed by Tsui Hark. Available on DVD (HKFlix).

We've documented in previous reviews how the Hong Kong film industry began to collapse in the mid 1990s. Although disappointing, it shouldn't have really come as a big surprise. Hong Kong had been cranking out astounding films for three decades, starting with the old Shaw Brothers swordsman films of the 1960s and ending with the Hong Kong New Wave in the 1980s. That's a long time to sustain such a high level of entertainment. Preoccupation with the 1997 hand-over to China, video piracy, and the fact that the triads basically bled the industry dry left the once thriving Hong Kong film empire little more than a shell. The talent that had generated all the buzz was getting older, and the new generation of stars simply wasn't up to the task of filling in their shoes. The exploding VCD piracy market and triad greed caused budgets to shrink to a minuscule level, and with dwindling profits came dwindling quality.

A few brave souls remained to weather the storm, or at least did double duty in Hong Kong and the United States. Director and producer Tsui Hark was perhaps the man most responsible for what we call the Hong Kong New Wave. Films like Zu revolutionized movie making in the small island nation, and Tsui's knack for discovering new talent remains unparalleled to this day. As we've gone over before, his list of contributions to the world of film making are staggering. John Woo was laboring away in sub-par comedies and ultra-cheap action films before Tsui Hark fronted him the cash to make a little film called A Better Tomorrow. Tsui Hark's filmography as director and producer is more or less the same thing as a list of the most important, influential films in Hong Kong history. Chinese Ghost Story, Once Upon a Time in China, The Killer, Swordsman, Peking Opera Blues -- this is the man who basically made big-time action stars out of Chow Yun-fat, Brigette Lin, Jet Li, and countless others.

While you can't overstate Tsui Hark's contribution to the history of film, not everyone was happy about it. A lot of kungfu film purists disliked Tsui's reliance on slick editing and wires to augment his performer's talents, or in some cases cover up their lack of talent. Additionally, Tsui was notoriously difficult to work with in many instances. He would often bully his way out of the role of producer and into the role of director. You have to admire his conviction and passion, but if you're a director trying to work with him, it becomes frustrating to say the least. As many people as Tsui Hark "made" he alienated. John Woo and Ching Siu-tung are two among many who eventually had their fill of Tsui Hark's overbearing artistic passion.

However, most great directors shared these traits. It was Akira Kurosawa who demanded the entire lavish set for Seven Samurai be destroyed and rebuilt because a close inspection of the construction revealed nail holes in buildings that would not have been built using nails in the time Seven Samurai was set. Kurosawa also freaked out on the set of Tora Tora Tora because the paint on the battleships was a shade off the authentic historical color of paint used on Japanese ships during World War II. Obsession runs deep in people that committed to their craft, and it can definitely try the patience of those around them.

When Tsui Hark felt Hong Kong films had become too much about making money and not enough about artistry and innovation, he and a few friends started their own production company, Cinema Workshop, to cultivate film-makers who wanted to break out and try something different. When few Hong Kong film-makers would dare make films with overt political or social commentary in them, Tsui Hark made the fiercely political and downbeat Don't Play With Fire. Love him or hate him, there's no denying that Tsui Hark is one of the most important figures in Hong Kong film-making history.

But nothing gold can last, Pony Boy. As the industry fell apart, Tsui Hark was among the many directors who decided to try their luck in America. It was no surprise, really. Hark and friends like John Shum (the frizzy haired comedic actor was also a major figure in the freedom demonstrations that lead to the dramatic and tragic events at Tienamen Square) were outspoken opponents of Communism, and it seemed only logical that they would bid farewell to their home before China took over. Unfortunately, Hark's career in America was short-lived. Like John Woo and Ringo Lam before him, Hark was saddled with directorial duties on a Jean-Claude Van Damme film, only it was much worse because the movie also starred annoying basketball marketing scam Dennis Rodman. As if that wasn't bad enough, Hark immediately got stuck with another Van Damme clunker, this time bearing the burden of the Belgian bumbler and some intensely irksome comedian named Rob Schneider, who was nothing like the handyman Schneider from One Day At a Time.

After those two films, Communism suddenly didn't seem so bad. I think anyone who sat through either of those films would agree that maybe a little totalitarian censorship can be a good thing when it comes to Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dennis Rodman.

Hark's career leading up to his departure from Hong Kong was faltering. The comedy Chinese Feast and the romantic tragedy The Lovers both scored big with critics and fans alike, but from there Hark hit a series of stumbling blocks. His stylish and darkly violent retelling of the One-Armed Swordsman, entitled The Blade came and went with nary a peep. Likewise, his cynical, downbeat fantasy film Green Snake attracted little attention upon its initial release. People simply weren't that interested in depressing, angry films at the time. Since their initial failure, however, both films have acquired fairly large fanbases among aficionados of the genres. Certainly both films deserved far more attention and praise than they actually received, but at the time folks in Hong Kong just didn't want to hear the lunatic ravings of Tsui Hark.

Green Snake is set in a world between myth and reality. Zhao Wen-zhou stars as a young monk who spends his days hunting down demons and spirits who have crossed over from their own realm into the realm of mortals. Some of them come with malicious intent, but many of them seem only to want to run wild and free in the physical world for a brief time. The monk operates under the notion that the two worlds simply cannot cross paths, harmless intentions or not. The opening scene of the monk chasing an old wiseman who is actually a spider demon through a field as they both run through mid-air sets a beautiful but disturbing tone for the film. It's incredibly lush and over-saturated with dreamlike color. The hallucinatory beauty seems eerie, however, not at all peaceful, sort of like those old fairy tales where things are actually creepy and sinister instead of all bright and Disneyfied.

Monk Fahai is also immediately established as a complex character who is unsure of his Buddhist vows. He is determined to fight against the world of demons (keep in mind that in Chinese mythology, a demon is not necessarily an evil being), yet he also seems to find something fascinating about their realm. Likewise, he wrestles with physical temptations from his own world. On a rainy night, he witnesses a peasant woman giving birth to a child in the woods and finds it difficult to avert his eyes from the spectacle. He also notices that the woman is being protected from the rain, and quickly spies to giant snakes in the trees, serving as umbrellas. His initial response is to dispatch them quickly to the nether-realm, but he soon has second thoughts and decides that since they were helping the woman out, he'll let them slide by this time.

The two snakes are played in human form by the devastatingly beautiful Joey Wong and Maggie Cheung. They are two sister snake spirits who have decided they prefer the human world to their own, and so are doing their best to maintain human form and pass as mortals. Causing them untold amounts of grief is a blind Taoist ghost hunter and his assistants. Unlike Fahai, the priest has no doubts about his holy crusade to rid the world of demons and spirits. He goes about his quest with an unfaltering, blind conviction. Luckily for the sisters, he's about as good at his vocation as the Three Stooges were at their jobs as exterminators or movers or guys who carried around those big blocks of ice. He's a minor annoyance to them, but not a real threat.

Hmm, two snake spirit sisters just trying to make it in this crazy world -- how come Lifetime can't play movies like that instead of those "woman is stalked by her crazy ex-husband while trying to get back the baby she gave up for adoption years ago" movies?

Rounding out the bizarre cast of characters is a young scholar named Hsui Xien who would much rather be drinking wine and writing love poetry than learning the ins and outs of Confucian philosophy. He's the classic "dreamer" character. You admire his idealism, but sometimes you just want him to shut up with his "my heart's so full of dreams" nonsense. And could someone tell me what the hell is the deal with the head rolling? As the scholars regurgitate the Confucian wisdom, they all roll their heads back and forth. I've seen monks and other assorted wisemen doing the same thing in various movies. Now I'm no Confucian gentleman. I've always been more along the lines of one of those drunken Taoists who lives in a cave and gets in arguments with the moon. So I guess the rule was you had to loll your head about while reciting your lessons, but you know if I tried that in school the teachers would tell me to quit nodding off, not unlike how they made me quit reading in "the robot voice" when I was in second grade.

Seriously though, if someone can tell me exactly why they made scholars roll their heads around like that, I'd appreciate it. I'm not above learning some new bit of history.

On a warm summer night, the two sisters sneak into town. Maggie Cheung breaks hearts by dropping in, nude and covered in rain, on a lavish party being thrown by some vaguely Indian guy. She proceeds to stomp mercilessly on said broken hearts with her suggestive semi-lesbian dance involving one of the female Indian dancers. I don't know of anyone, male or female, who's forgotten that scene. Joey, in the meantime, slips into the river and catches a glimpse of the young scholar. She's instantly taken with him.

Did I mention Maggie's suggestive dance?

Things get complicated quickly. Although Sou Ching (Joey Wong) and Hsui Xien hit it off well, there's this whole issue of her being a giant snake. Maggie also attracts the attention of Monk Fahai, who is torn between his sworn duty to combat the spirits and send them packing and his feeling that they are benevolent creatures doing far more to help their "fellow" humans than most of the actual humans are doing. Plus, he finds himself seized by a strong attraction to her, which shouldn't really surprise anyone. Fahai's confusion mounts as he witnesses people wallowing in filth and greed, far more destructive and nasty than any demon he ever vanquished. You could probably havea pretty good fire and brimstone movie featuring Monk Fahai and Robert Duvall's character from The Apostle, but you'd have an even better movie it was Monk Fahai and Robert Duvall's character from Apocalypse Now.

Monk Fahai considers the romance a blasphemy. Humans and spirits simply should not interact, plain and simple. He vows to put a stop to the relationship. Obviously, he's focusing his anger on the two lovers in an attempt to compensate for his own feelings of temptation and doubt. It's no surprise to anyone that the most wild-eyed, fire-and-brimstone preachers are often the ones with the most to hide. Nothing fuels a little righteous indignation quite like wishing you yourself could indulge once in a while. Fahai deals with his own guilt by projecting it on others and attempting to interfere in their lives despite the fact that they have no affect on him at all. Like most religious zealots, his divine call is pretty much what the rest of call "dickishness." Face it: it's pretty difficult to get behind a guy who's goal in life is to rid the world of Joey Wong and Maggie Cheung.

The blind priest, on the other hand, is a different type of corrupt religious leader. To him, battling "sin" is just a way to garner more attention and power for himself. It's not about righteousness; it's about career advancement. It's about the rush he gets by forcing his will onto others. Tsui's criticism of religion in these two characters is harsh but certainly not without sound foundation. Whether its nature is of a political or religious nature (if indeed there is any difference between the two), intolerance is, well, intolerable. It leads ultimately to destruction, alienation, and disaster.

Things get bad when Green (Maggie Cheung) starts getting jealous of her sister's romance. Green was already a bit jealous of the success her sister had in adopting human form. Sou Ching pretty much has it down, while Green still has trouble walking and maintaining her human form. She begins doing little things to sabotage the relationship, culminating in Hsiu Xien discovering Sou Ching is a snake spirit. The shock of the revelation sends him into a coma which only a magic herb can cure. Sou Ching is emotionally destroyed, vowing to do everything she can to shed her spirit self and become a real human. Green, in turn, realizes how her pettiness has potentially destroyed two people, and agrees to seek out the magic herb. Unfortunately for the two sister, Fahai is waiting to trap them and send them back to their own realm.

The whole ordeal is further complicated when the battle between Green and Fahai results in severe flooding. The entire village will be destroyed. Using their combined powers, Green and Monk Fahai could potentially stem the rising tide, but they are too caught up in their own vain battle with one another. By the time they realize the error of their ways, it's far too late, and their efforts to prevent the flood are a failure. The town has been destroyed. Hundreds have died in the flood waters, among them Hsiu Xien and Sou Ching. The final scene of Fahai and Green finally reaching a state of revelation as the world around them is washed away is powerful in the extreme. It's like a punch to the gut, and where most film makers would attempt to tie things up with some glimmer of hope, Tsui Hark just leaves it as it is. In a theme similar to Zu, the central characters discover their inability to compromise, work together, and put aside their own petty differences and jealousies has resulted in them losing everything they ever cherished.

Parallels to Hong Kong's situation going into 1997 are not difficult to make, of course. This movie seems like Tsui Hark attempting to come to terms with his own feelings toward Mainland China, a country to which he actually has very few ties (Tsui Hark is Vietnamese). His final resolution is bittersweet, to say the least. China has problems. The blind Taoist priest could easily be seen as the embodiment of China's contemptible past of intolerance and political persecution. If the reasonable people from both sides work together, however, perhaps progress can be made in healing China's ills. It's a message of hope, though Tsui's prognosis for whether or not it will actually happen seems doubtful, at best. He is, after all, a notorious pessimist when it comes to human character.

The acting ain't bad. Though Zhao tends to overdo stoic a bit, Maggie shines. And while she's outclassed by her "sister," Joey Wong manages to hold her own as the coy, innocent Sou Ching. It's a shame she disappeared from the scene soon after making this movie. Along with her role in Chinese Ghost Story, Joey Wong seems to be unmatched in making people wish they could just meet a nice ghost and settle down in some haunted temple or something.

The most subversive thing Tsui Hark pulls with this film is wrapping such a bitter pill in such a sumptuous package. Although a few of the wildly ambitious effects fall flat, Green Snake is a stylistic triumph. The beauty of every shot, the care that went into making every scene seem like a vibrant technicolor dream, is staggering. Few films are as overwhelmingly gorgeous as Green Snake. On that note, you'd be hard pressed to assemble a cast more entrancing and beautiful than Joey Wong, Zhao Wen-zhou, and Maggie Cheung. There's something unusual about all three of them. They're not just physically attractive. Something about each of the actors, even outside their roles here, is engrossing. Constant shots of flowing waters, billowing silks, mists, and swaying blossoms make the film unspeakably exquisite. Likewise, the scenes of magic and sorcery are breath-taking. There are no martial arts, but there's plenty of flying and summoning of natural elements.

As with most Tsui Hark films, it's possible to overlook the political and social commentary and simply let the grace and beauty flow over you, but you'd be missing out on what makes this far more than just a lovely little tragic fantasy film. If you go into it wanting tons of action and excitement, you're going to be disappointed. After providing us with some of the most wildly over-the-top fantasy action films in Zu and Swordsman, Tsui seems to be looking for a middle ground here between his early martial arts fantasy films and his later romantic tragedies like The Lovers. He hits the nail on the head. With the exception of a few weak visual effects, he creates the perfect fairytale mood: lush, haunting, dreamlike, and ultimately foreboding.

The failure of this film followed by the failure of The Blade was a good part of what lead Tsui Hark to seek success in America. Of course, that didn't work out either. He's been relatively quiet since returning to Hong Kong, though there are several projects in the works. Joey Wong went into semi-retirement, shifting her base of operations from Hong Kong to Japan. Zhao Wen-zhou should have been a huge star, but fantasy/martial arts films went out of style, and he found himself stuck is some astoundingly abysmal action cheapies that have done little to establish him as the future of Hong Kong action cinema, which is the title he seemed perfectly capable of inheriting. Maggie Cheung, of course, went on to become an international flavor of the month after some French guy got obsessed with her and developed an entire film called Irma Vep just so he could meet her. It worked. The film sucked (unless you really like watching French people talk about making movies as they chain smoke), but the director ended up marrying Maggie, so you can't fault the guy. He accomplished what he set out to do.

And Green Snake accomplishes what it sets out to do, which is to pull people into its rapturous beauty then leave them confused and depressed at the tragedy of human stubbornness and greed. As a tragic love story, it operates well. As a indictment of political and religious intolerance and persecution, it works even better. Too bad it wasn't as successful at the box office as it should have been, but then, no one wants an unhappy ending. Tsui Hark was hoping that an unhappy ending in the film would make a real-life happy ending a little more feasible.

Whether or not that's the case remains to be seen, but no amount of politics can change the fact that Green Snake is a profoundly affecting, ambitious, heart-breaking story. Even a hardened old curmudgeon like myself has a soft spot for terribly tragic romance, especially if it's between snake demons and flying monks and lazy scholars. Taken as Hong Kong fantasy spectacle or political allegory, Green Snake is one hell of a film, and it's the perfect final note for the Hong Kong New Wave to end on. It's only fitting that the man who started it with Zu would also signal its closing with this film so similar in theme and (lack of) resolution.

Ironic that the entire New Wave cycle would end up so closely reflecting the events in Zu. There was lots of flash, lots of innovation. There was a noise that, for a spell, shook the world and attracted everyone's attention. But at the end of the day, everything closed on the same note of doubt on which it opened. We were right back where we'd always been. With any luck, the seeds of dissent and dissatisfaction continue to burn in Tsui Hark, and he'll surprise us yet again.

Labels: B-Masters Roundtable, Country: Hong Kong, Director: Tsui Hark, Fantasy, Year: 1993