KINO OBSCURA

GREAT SCENESThree Times / 最好的时光 (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2005) With...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 00:30:00 -0700

GREAT SCENES
Three Times / 最好的时光 (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2005)

With nary a word of dialogue, Hou orchestrates a spectacular opening scene. Mark Lee Ping Bin’s expressive camera dances around to The Platters’ “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” revealing Shu Qi and Chang Chen through subdued patterns of color and light.

Mirrors

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 01:42:00 -0700

Abbas Kiarostami’s Like Someone in Love

David Liu | 5 April 2013

Abbas Kiarostami’s latest picture suggests a grand illusion. Like any superlative cine-essay, the film’s opening shot doubles as its thesis: A young woman talks on the phone in a Tokyo nightclub, but we do not see her, only what she sees. Men and women shift in and out of the frame, punctuating the disconnect between sound and image.

By way of a long-awaited cut, Kiarostami introduces us to Akiko (Rin Takanashi), a college student who works a night job as an escort. Stranded between a cellular standoff with her fiancé and a chance to reunite briefly with her grandmother, Akiko embarks on a taxi for her latest patron saddled with more than a little dose of guilt. Through her eyes, we see flashes of Tokyo as the capital of modern alienation as envisioned by natives and foreigners alike — Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Sofia Coppola.

But of course Like Somewhere in Love is not about what it seems to be about. Unlike his contemporaries, Kiarostami seems less interested in making a sad treatise about a modern city than a playful ode to the possibilities that exist within. When Akiko arrives at her destination, her confusion mirrors ours. Her client presents himself as Watanabe Takashi (veteran television actor Tadashi Okuno), an elderly widower who only wants to chat and drink wine. After an awkward interval, they bond in quintessential Kiarostami fashion, discussing a Japanese painting that hangs on Takashi’s wall — Chiyoji Yazaki’s 1900 “Training a Parrot.” One of the film’s most thrilling shots occurs when Akiko walks up to the painting, turns her head and unwittingly (or willingly?) frames herself parallel to it. As a child, she was convinced the woman in the painting was actually her, she jokes. Only in Kiarostami’s world.

Themes of reproduction — echoes of the director’s last film, 2010’s remarkable Certified Copy — resurface here, first in the painting and again in the form of a lewd advertisement that Akiko’s jealous fiancé Noriaki (Ryo Kase) brings up later in the picture. Noriaki not only refuses to believe that his girlfriend moonlights as a call girl, but also confuses the well-meaning Takashi for Akiko’s grandfather when they meet the next day. The latter’s response to Noriaki’s question about family relations drives home the film’s inside joke: “Do I have to answer that?” Conversations follow, identities subtly shift and emotions eventually flare. As the narrative takes an unexpected twist for the macabre, Kiarostami’s use of off-screen space grows increasingly organic.

From the close-ups of women watching an off-screen film in 2008’s Shirin to the deceptive romantic intrigue of Certified Copy, the visual and aural interplay between obscurity and relevance has played a central role in Kiarostami’s recent efforts. Like Someone in Love both preserves and expands on this freely associative approach to time and narrative. By inviting us to absorb everything we see and hear, Kiarostami challenges us to do just the opposite. After 109 minutes, the effect is quietly exhilarating.

—

Dedicated to Roger Ebert, who taught us all how to look and what to look for.

It’s my great honor to present this collection of...

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 01:39:00 -0700

It’s my great honor to present this collection of never-before-seen stills from the set of Wayne Wang’s Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart (1985), graciously shared with me by the original photographer Nancy Wong.

Nancy is the youngest daughter of the late Chinese composer Hwang Yau-tai. She lived with Wang in San Francisco for about a year and a half starting in 1980, several months after the aspiring writer-director received a $10,000 AFI grant to make his first feature — the trailblazing Asian American film Chan Is Missing (1982).

Wang dedicated Chan Is Missing to Nancy, whose Chinese name, Wong Cheen, are the first words that appear in the film.

Eat Pray Love

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 01:05:00 -0800

David Liu | 8 March 2013

A study of Ang Lee’s twenty-year career in cinema reveals an artist undaunted by the constraints of history, ethnicity and cultural identity. Out of his rich canvas of compassion and inner struggle emerges one recurring master shot: the dining table, where the communal partaking of food and drink takes on quietly meaningful dimensions.

Life of Pi (2012)

A modern-day Indian family in Pondicherry discusses faith and religion.

Lust, Caution (2007)

With the Japanese occupation of China looming, a group of idealistic college students drink to an uncertain future.

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

In the Wyoming residence of Ennis Del Mar, Thanksgiving Day turns sour as old ghosts re-emerge.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

Shu Lien and Jen, counterparts and natural rivals, converse over tea.

The Ice Storm (1997)

A dysfunctional middle-class Connecticut family clashes on Thanksgiving Day, 1973.

Sense and Sensibility (1995)

In southwest England at the turn of the 19th century, the Dashwoods prepare for supper.

Eat Drink Man Woman (1994)

A widowed master chef cooks dinner for his three grown daughters in contemporary Taipei.

The Wedding Banquet (1993)

In Manhattan, an extravagant wedding signals a subtle shift in tone from comedy to drama. Lee himself cameos as an invited guest who comments, “You’re witnessing the results of five thousand years of sexual repression.”

A Cinephile's Instinctive Travels: Fentons, Oakland, California

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 19:47:00 -0800

Reliving the people and places I encounter through the sights and sounds of the films they inspired.

David Liu | 28 February 2013

Up (Pete Docter/Bob Peterson, 2009)

An old man, a boy and a dog enjoy Fentons ice cream.

Established in 1894 on the corner of 41st and Howe Streets in Oakland, Fentons Creamery moved to its current Piedmont Avenue location in 1961. The historic ice cream parlor and eatery has maintained its status as a Bay Area landmark, serving full lunch and dinner courses in addition to handmade ice cream and milkshakes.

The New Century

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 23:55:00 -0800

David Liu | 23 January 2013

“Our eyes see very little and very badly – so people dreamed up the microscope to let them see invisible phenomena; they invented the telescope…now they have perfected the cinecamera to penetrate more deeply into the visible world, to explore and record visual phenomena so that what is happening now, which will have to be taken account of in the future, is not forgotten.”

— Dziga Vertov, 1926

Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)

Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012)

Art & Film: Rembrandt/Tarkovsky

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 22:30:00 -0800

From the canvas to the cinema.

David Liu | 21 January 2013

The Return of the Prodigal Son (Rembrandt, 1669; oil on canvas)

Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972)

In the end: a dog, a father and a son. Like the works of Rembrandt, Tarkovsky’s adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 science fiction novel reveals a consummate humanist at work — an artist for whom the individual search for redemption transcends the realms of faith and waking consciousness.

'Can the horses see? That's all that matters!'

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 01:23:00 -0800

David Liu | 1 January 2013

As a new year arrives and something resembling a 2012 recap continues to gestate, here are a few thoughts to get out of the way from the past few weeks:

1. There might not be a more brazenly irreverent picture this season than Django Unchained, and that’s all for the better. Nearly a century after The Birth of a Nation stirred controversy on all fronts of the nation’s racial spectrum, Quentin Tarantino’s proverbial middle finger to decades of political correctness in American cinema plays out as a Joseph-Campbell-meets-Richard-Wagner slave revenge saga set in the antebellum Deep South. Also, no filmmaker alive could feature Ennio Morricone and Rick Ross on the same soundtrack and make it work — no one, that is, save for QT.

2. The verdict is still out on whether high frame rate digital cinema is the way of the future (count me a skeptic for now), and while I didn’t actually see Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in 3D, I’m more puzzled by the fact that two more installments still remain. While Jackson’s liberal insertion of Tolkien lore feels like an earnest attempt to connect the dots between Bilbo’s odyssey and Frodo’s 60 years later in The Lord of the Rings, it’s also heavy-handed and enervating in the long run — a Phantom Menace for our fantasy-saturated times.

3. Russell Crowe does a disservice to Les Miserables’ Inspector Javert — see Geoffrey Rush’s fascinatingly eccentric turn in the 1998 Bille August version for another interpretation of the Hugo character, whose complexity and divisive legalist worldview disappear under the cover of Crowe’s one-note performance.

4. I love Silver Linings Playbook, if only for the little things that lend this small picture its enormous heart — the refreshingly imperfect cascade of zooms, pans and cuts that accentuate the film’s bravura final half-hour, Jennifer Lawrence’s wonderfully disarming performance and David O. Russell’s Scorsese-like mastery of elevating key sequences through music (for one, see: Bob Dylan/Johnny Cash’s “Girl from the North Country”). A throwback two-step to gravitas-driven comedies of a bygone age, it builds into something magical.

And a happy 2013 to all!

Reading Roundup: December

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 12:00:00 -0800

David Liu | 11 December 2012

Many are familiar with the Saul Bass’s work as an innovator in the field of film title sequences and promotional poster art — in a career spanning nearly half a century, Bass is credited with breathing life into the multimedia potential of the cinema. But Bass also holds a renowned place in the American corporate landscape as well, with logo designs for heavyweights such as AT&T, Quaker Oats, United Airlines and Kleenex rounding out his personal resume. This legacy is explored in comprehensive fashion in Laurence King Publishing’s Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design, a gorgeously conceived visual tribute to the late master curated by daughter Jennifer Bass and design scholar Pat Kirkham.

“Before I ever met Saul Bass, before we worked together, he was a legend in my eyes. His designs, for film titles and company logos and record albums and posters, defined an era.” — Martin Scorsese

The book opens on a foreword by Scorsese, who worked with Bass and his wife Elaine on title sequences for four consecutive features (Goodfellas, Cape Fear, The Age of Innocence, Casino). Decades removed from the legendary Hitchcock title sequences (North by Northwest, Vertigo, Psycho) and collaborations with directors ranging from Stanley Kubrick to Billy Wilder, Bass’s body of work experienced a minor renaissance through his partnership with Scorsese. In a way, their careers crossed at the right time; Scorsese’s early 1990s work was arguably the apex of his stylistic maturation, and as any of the aforementioned features can attest to, age scarcely withered Bass’s aptitude for astounding visual designs.

Beyond the spotlight on Bass’s contributions to the motion picture industry — and to be sure, the book contains plenty — Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design manages to conjure its strongest material from the man himself: affecting portraits of Bass’s birth and upbringing in the Bronx, painstakingly curated individual sections devoted to his contributions to the landscape of American postwar corporate culture, among others. With close to 1,500 illustrations reproduced from both private and professional sectors of Bass’s life, the volume — whose overall presentation and execution would have make its subject proud — works as a towering reminder of the vision, perseverance and influence of one of the last century’s great visual minds.

“The ideal trademark is one that is pushed to its utmost limits in terms of abstraction and ambiguity, yet is still readable. Trademarks are usually metaphors of one kind or another. And are, in a certain sense, thinking made visible.” — Saul Bass

—

A strong antidote to the bland pages of mainstream film-related coffee table books, British critic David Parkinson’s 100 Ideas That Changed Film tells the story of cinema by honoring its roots and anticipating its future. Featuring gorgeous color and black-and-white images juxtaposed with analyses of cinematic innovation, the book spans over 300 years of moving-image culture, from the advent of the magic lantern in the 17th century to the digital video revolution. As with Laurence King Publishing’s Saul Bass, I was drawn to the visual presentation and delicate balance between words and images, and especially to Parkinson’s refreshing emphasis on foreign and avant-garde cinema to construct what nearly sums up to an alternate history of the medium.

A smattering of highlights:

Idea No. 38: “Film Schools” — departing from narratives on elite educational centers based in Los Angeles and New York, this section presents a refreshing exploration of the achievements of Europe’s notable film schools: for one, the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), founded in Moscow in 1919. Although a lack of resources meant that early assignments often centered around reediting of existing American pictures, the school would eventually gain prestige and produce a crop of influential auteurs — Sergei Eisenstein, Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergei Bondarchuk and Aleksandr Sokurov, to name a few — as well as assist in the rise of African cinema by fostering the development of foreign students such as Ousmane Sembène and Souleymane Cissé. (Who knew?)

Idea No. 71: “Safety Film” — here, Parkinson recounts the fragility of early film material, namely cellulose nitrate, which accounts for the loss of roughly half of the 21,000 features made in America before 1951. Beyond the history lesson, however, the real attention-grabber are the two sets of plates that adorn the page — the metaphorical disintegration of the celluloid in Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966) and the use of burning celluloid as history-altering fantasy in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009).

Idea No. 76: “Offscreen Space” — a recap of notable uses of offscreen space throughout the history of movies, from D.W. Griffith’s The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) to Abbas Kiarostami’s Shirin (2008). This section also deservedly highlights the mastery of off-screen space by Yasujiro Ozu, whose use of “off-center framing [exploited] an image’s centrifugal force to guide the viewer to the edges of the frame and the real world that existed beyond.”

Idea No. 86: “Feminist Film Theory” — an enriching look at the development of patriarchal hierarchy in cinema and the subsequent resistance to it, both academically (via Laura Mulvey’s landmark 1975 essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”) and stylistically (through the works of filmmakers such as Chantal Akerman and Marguerite Duras).

Idea No. 95: “Home Entertainment” — preceded by a full-page still from Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander (1982), in which Alexander, played by 10-year-old child actor Bertil Guve, prepares a slide show on his magic lantern. A luminous tribute to the immortality of cinema in a volume full of them.

—

All images courtesy of Laurence King Publishing and respective distributors.

GREAT SCENESThe World / 世界 (Jia Zhangke, 2004) One of the many...

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 23:01:00 -0800

GREAT SCENES
The World / 世界 (Jia Zhangke, 2004)

One of the many magisterial moments in The World consists of a simple rack focus from nighttime Beijing to a shot of two friends separated by the language barrier yet paradoxically united in their loneliness. We see Anna and Tao riding in the back of a rickshaw cart as “Nights of Ulan Bator” — a Mongolian folk song about a lover’s solitude — captures an entire generation’s alienation.

Art & Film: Monet/Allen

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 19:00:00 -0800

From the canvas to the cinema.

David Liu | 1 December 2012

Le Bassin Aux Nymphéas (Claude Monet, 1919; oil on canvas)

Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen, 2011)

Last Days

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 14:32:00 -0800

Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln

David Liu | 9 November 2012

There is nothing in Lincoln that immediately suggests the superlative moments of Steven Spielberg’s career: Quint’s USS Indianapolis speech in Jaws, the first hour of War of the Worlds, the candle-to-locomotive cut in Schindler’s List, the five-tone musical phrase at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In his new feature, America’s foremost purveyor of populist spectacles instead offers a vision of restraint, and the result is an unusual achievement — a small picture about a man with a titanic task to finish.

Scripted by playwright Tony Kushner, Lincoln refrains from painting a panoptic portrait of its subject’s life and the Civil War he presided over, instead focusing on the Republican Party’s battle to pass the 13th Amendment in the contentious House of Representatives. The controversy leads the President to resort to political tactics in an attempt to sway votes in favor of the slavery-outlawing bill, whose legitimacy is championed by Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones in a scene-stealing turn). With members of his own cabinet unable to agree on the issue, Lincoln enlists Secretary of State William Seward (David Strathairn) to form a team of lobbyists (three buffoons by way of John Hawkes, James Spader and Tim Blake Nelson). Meanwhile, the stability of the First Family continues to fluctuate, with Mary Todd Lincoln (Sally Field) still despondent over son Willy’s death and son Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) bemoaning his parents’ refusal to let him enlist in the army.

If all this gives the impression that Lincoln leans heavily on exposition to get by, it isn’t far from the truth — but rather than detracting from narrative with overwrought plotting, Spielberg and Kushner have risen to the challenge by essentially crafting a 19th-century political procedural. Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski’s blue-and-gray, largely static compositions suggest an intimate chamber drama; minor pacing glitches are remedied by a rich collection of personalities and the backroom intrigue of representative politics. Occasional miscues of Spielbergian sentiment are kept to a minimum, although the picture ultimately suffers from the director’s all-too-familiar penchant for rousing denouements. (A back shot near the end would have sufficed for this audience member, but perhaps one doth protest too much.)

In the end, Lincoln’s strengths lie in the man whose reticence, wit and stillness imbue the picture with its finer qualities. Portraying the weary commander-in-chief ambling around the White House during his final months in office, Daniel Day-Lewis turns in a performance for the ages — a stunning modulation from the Anglo-Irish actor’s embodiments of cantankerous American ubermensch, chief among them There Will Be Blood’s Daniel Plainview and Gangs of New York’s Bill the Butcher. (The latter’s xenophobia and murderous distaste for Lincoln’s policies make for a great Scorsese-Spielberg Civil War double feature!) From the ungainly slouch to the folksy, high-pitched twang, Day-Lewis projects more man than myth, elevating the Lincoln of historical record over the Lincoln of popular lore — and in the process, merging both into one remarkable monument.

Prelude: The Atlas March — Reinhold Heil, Johnny Klimek, Tom...

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 10:51:00 -0800

Prelude: The Atlas March — Reinhold Heil, Johnny Klimek, Tom Tykwer

Cloud Atlas (Andy Wachowski/Lana Wachowski/Tom Tykwer, 2012)

After multiple viewings, Cloud Atlas still strikes me as one of the most interesting cinematic failures in recent memory. There may be as much to admire about the film (its technical razzle-dazzle, its naked sentiment) as there is to lament (its hamfisted message, its problematic “post-racial” posturing) — but let us turn the page to the musical score, a deft juxtaposition of multiple narrative threads with a gorgeous progression of Western music tropes. For what it’s worth, this former middle school orchestra geek loved it.

GREAT SCENESPersona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966) A foghorn sounds...

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 19:28:00 -0800

GREAT SCENES
Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)

A foghorn sounds offscreen, a wordless patient approaches her sleeping nurse, and cinematographer Sven Nykvist’s reliance on natural light attains magisterial dimensions.

Art & Film: Feininger/Wiene

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 21:00:00 -0800

From the canvas to the cinema.

David Liu | 5 November 2012

The Green Bridge II (Lyonel Feininger, 1916; oil on canvas)

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920)

Born in New York City to a German-American violinist and an American singer, Feininger traveled to Germany early on to work as a cartoonist and fine artist. After over two decades as a leading figure in Expressionism, Feininger departed to America after the Nazi ascension to power in 1933 resulted in his works being categorized as “entartete Kunst” — “degenerate art.”

Meanwhile, Wiene left Berlin in 1934, traveling to Budapest and Paris before dying of cancer in 1938. Both The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Wiene’s Raskolnikow (1923), an adaptation of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, have been cited as profound early landmarks in Expressionist silent cinema. Caligari was the first silent film I saw during my childhood, and even then the innovative frame story and grotesque beauty of Wiene’s set design left a memorable impression.

A Wind in the Door

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 02:59:00 -0800

David Liu | 4 November 2012

“It is a mistake to talk about the artist looking for his subject. In fact, the subject grows within him like a fruit and begins to demand expression. It is like childbirth.”
— Andrei Tarkovsky

The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg, 1977)

Closing Shots: The Scorsese Romance

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 21:37:00 -0700

David Liu | 29 October 2012

Apotheosis - noun: elevation to a preeminent or transcendent position. (from Greek apotheoun, “to deify”)

The Age of Innocence (Martin Scorsese, 1993)

Paris, turn of the century. Horse-drawn carriages have been replaced by automobiles. Twenty-six years after seeing Ellen Olenska for the last time, Newland Archer gets up and walks away from his past.

“Just say I’m old-fashioned. That should be enough.”

Kundun (Martin Scorsese, 1997)

The Tibetan Himalayas, 1950s. Arriving in India for the first time to seek political asylum, the 14th Dalai Lama looks back at home.

“I think that I am a reflection, like the moon on water. When you see me, and I try to be a good man, you see yourself.”

Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese, 2002)

New York City, 1860s. Amsterdam Vallon and Jenny Everdeane fade away from the rubble. Behind them, the skyline transforms.

“And no matter what they did to build this city up again, for the rest of time, it would be like no one even knew we was ever here.”

Breaking Bad: What's on TV, ABQ?

Sun, 14 Oct 2012 23:50:00 -0700

David Liu | 15 October 2012

Breaking Bad’s Vince Gilligan is quite the perceptive cinephile. Among the show’s cornucopia of cinematic homages and references are several moments in which key scenes from films are shown on television, often to foreshadow or augment character motivations as the series moves forward.

—

Breaking Bad 1x4: Cancer Man (Jim McKay, 2008)

The oft-sedentary Walter Jr. is watching Edward D. Wood Jr.’s infamous Plan 9 from Outer Space (1956), in which aliens attack Earth with rays that instantly melt humans into skeletons. This can be seen as a nod to the previous two episodes, in which Walt and Jesse concoct a plan to decompose a dead body using a gallon of hydrofluoric acid — to darkly comical results.

Breaking Bad 4x11: Crawl Space (Scott Winant, 2011)

When Gus visits Hector to inform him of the cartel’s demise, the latter is watching David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). In the scene, Lt. Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) realizes that he has alienated his own men in his drive to boost troop morale and finish building the bridge by any means necessary. Moments later, he is mortally wounded by shrapnel and, staggering, falls onto a detonator, blowing up the bridge. The season finale — pun alert — ends on a similarly explosive note.

Breaking Bad 5x2: Madrigal (Michelle MacLaren, 2012)

At the beginning of the episode, Mike is watching Edward Dmtryk’s The Caine Mutiny (1953), starring Humphrey Bogart as an increasingly unstable U.S. Navy ship captain. The scene suggests a twofold purpose: paralleling the collapse of Gus Fring’s drug empire and possibly forecasting the consequences of Walt’s coup d’état and ascension to the throne.

Breaking Bad 5x3: Hazard Pay (Adam Bernstein, 2012)

After a successful cook, Walt and Jesse sit back with beers and enjoy a couple of Three Stooges shorts: Ants in the Pantry (1936) and A Bird in the Head (1946). Back at home, Walt, Walter Jr. and baby Holly are watching Brian De Palma’s Scarface (1983). “Everyone dies in this movie,” says Walt, off-handedly.

Breaking Bad 5x7: Say My Name (Thomas Schnauz, 2012)

As DEA agents raid his house, Mike calmly sits back on his couch and watches Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat (1953), in which a tough but unscrupulous cop plans to take down a crime syndicate after the murder of his wife.

In Memoriam: Harris Savides, ASC

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 16:36:00 -0700

David Liu | 11 October 2012

Director of photography Harris Savides passed away in New York today at 55. His short 15-year career working in both film and digital formats — in which he revolutionized the depiction of physical spaces and the individuals who inhabit them — produced some of my favorite images in modern cinema.

Left column, top to bottom:
Zodiac, The Game, American Gangster, The Yards

Right column, top to bottom:
Elephant, Gerry, Somewhere, Margot At the Wedding

—

“I light a room and let the people inhabit it, as opposed to lighting the people.”
— Harris Savides (1957-2012)

Mo Yan in Film

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 13:12:00 -0700

David Liu | 11 October 2012

Chinese writer Mo Yan (a pen name that roughly translates to “don’t speak,” referring to the collective sentiment toward the political climate of 1950s China), was announced as the 2012 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature this morning. Over the years, the Shandong native has seen several of his works adapted into feature films.

In 1987, Fifth Generation director Zhang Yimou burst onto the international scene with his first feature Red Sorghum (红高粱), adapted from Mo Yan’s novel of the same name. Painting an unorthodox portrait of 20th century China through the eyes of sorghum distillery workers, the film went on to win the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival — China’s first major win on the global festival circuit.

For his 2000 tragicomedy Happy Times (幸福时光), Zhang returned to Mo as a literary source — this time loosely adapting the latter’s novella Shifu: You’ll Do Anything for a Laugh (师傅越来越幽默) into a Chaplinesque tale of a nebbish factory worker and a neglected blind girl.

Zhang’s fellow Beijing Film Academy classmate Huo Jianqi adapted Mo’s short story The White Dog and the Swing (白狗秋千架) into his 2003 feature Nuan (暖), a small-scale rural drama about love and lost innocence in modern China.