There have been some very full and interesting reviews and comments on this on the site, so I'll (try to) keep mine brief. It may differ from the others as well.I had been waiting for so long to see this film, having (yet again) missed it during its cinema run, it was, to be honest, beginning to enter that territory where the ache to see a film enters the protagonist into that otherworldly irrational arena of deep yearning love which, we all know, can lead to great disappointment. How many films have each of us seen which don't live up to the preconceptions we've given them in the deepest, cobwebbed, confines of our souls?
So, if I had this down, pre-viewing, as an A+, did it live up to it?
Ultimately, the answer to this is no. But this does not mean that it's a bad film. It isn't. It just isn't a great one, especially when compared to some of last year's fantastic offerings.
It was very interesting to note the NottingHillBilly's comments on the title. Very relevant indeed. I hadn't known any of that and could not agree more that something very significant has been lost, particularly, as the NHB (sorry!) points out, the scene referred to by the Mandarin title ('Colour Ring'), is easily the film's best and it's high point. The violin-bow taughtness and tension as Mr Yee (Tony Leung) and Wong Chia Chi (Wei Tang) pick out a diamond ring is almost on a par with Sonny's spectacular demise in The Godfather: Part one. Does Mr Yee meet his demise in a similar way? Well, you'll just have to watch and find out. It would certaily be no waste of anyone's time.
Reading people's comments, I cannot help reflecting that I should watch this again as my expectations could well have been too high. Although I concede that this shadowy, sinewy, film twists and turns like vines interweaved in old, crumbling, trees, it just didn't grip me in the way that it should have done and certainly in the way that it clearly aims to. That, for me, was the bottom line, but I may well watch it again and be forced to rethink my view.
I will dwell a little longer on the performances. They are spectacular. Wei Tang is magnificent and the level of torn, deserted, anguish in her eyes is, at times, too real for the viewer to imagine that she's actually watching a film. She delivers a bold, but subtly drawn, performance that anchors the film in a delicately ambianced emotional reality and takes the viewer directly into the heart of those anguished war-torn times many of us have never seen.
However, the star of the show is once again Tony Leung Chui-Wai. He will, once again, top my acting lists for a jaw-droppingly perfect performance. Leung is the kind of actor you watch and wonder why certain Hollywood types are as revered as they are. Leung has a range that surpasses all. By far. From Happy Together's lovestruck Lai Yiu-Fai (who is somehow grounded and dreamy in one breath), through Leung's two drasticly different reimaginings of Chow in In the Mood For Love and 2046 (this gap, more a chasm really, demonstrates Leung's ability more than anything else - I can't remember any one else even attempting, let alone accomplishing, something so dramatic regarding one character's development from one film to the next and the effects of what has got him there. It goes way beyond what even Pacino manages in the Godfathre films), to the bloodthirsty, sadistic torturer on show here, Leung always manages to collapse that boundary between audience and film. I'm not sure who is supposed to be among Hollywood's most revered males, it changes so frequently, but I cannot image a DiCaprio, a Clooney, a Norton, a Foxx, even playing any, let alone all, of these characters. And Leung has, of course, played many more besides. On show here, in other words, is the greatest living actor, at the very peak of his game, showing just how successfully great performing can collapse that irrepressible barrier between moving image and those lacy images of reality which ultimately inspire them. And that seems as fitting a place as any to end.
B-
No comments:
Post a Comment