27th
4.27.08 -- Ju Dou
Dear Stella,
If you ask me to recommend a great introductory film for non-martial arts Chinese cinema, I’ll give you Ju Dou. If you ask me for a film tragic enough to rival Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, I’ll show you Ju Dou. If you want to see a delicate mix of beauty and sadness, love and pain, tenderness and cruelty, I’ll give you a mirror. And then I’ll watch Ju Dou with you.
I know you know what I mean.
Ju Dou was directed by Zhang Yimou and Fengliang Yang, but most often it’s called a “Zhang Yimou film.” Lately I’ve thought a lot about the ownership of films, the audacity and arrogance of auteur theory. The difference between “A film by Zhang Yimou,” and “A Zhang Yimou film,” and “Directed by Zhang Yimou.” The idea of a signature, the touch of the author, that a film has an original author at all. And I think of Lars von Trier, Catherine Breillat, the NSK, Cindy Sherman, Ben Marcus: all in their own way fighting against the conflation of identity and ownership. And the Tao Te Ching, reminding me that the sage “accomplishes without taking credit. When no credit is taken, accomplishment endures.”
And I wonder if I was born in the wrong country, the wrong century, the wrong clothing. Could you see me as a samurai, a peasant? I’d gladly be the concubine to your feudal lord, the student to your sage, the victim of your nationalism. But I’m away on a tangent.
Gong Li stars in this film. She’s a Zhang regular, like Anna Karina to Godard, like Hugh Grant to romantic comedies: friends in love. Gong is pretty much the Julia Roberts of China, Juliette Binoche with a heightened fear of government reproach. Her films have been censored for all the normal reasons: too critical of the CCP, promoting anti-communist beliefs, and, as with Ju Dou, having “a bad influence on the physical and spiritual health of young people.” Which to me sounds like more of an endorsement than condemnation.
Honestly, I don’t have any coherent thoughts about this movie yet. I watched it days ago, but haven’t finished digesting it, it’s that big. It’s as epic as an intimate romantic drama can get; it’s micro-epic the way Kurosawa’s films are macro. I’ve been thinking a lot about the gaze of the audience, the male gaze and the female object, the constant struggle between positive portrayals of women and fetishization. The horror I feel during any rape scene, not because of the way it’s portrayed, but the very fact that, once again, the rape scene is used as a plot point. Women are so often used as devices for telling the larger — and largely male — narrative. And so how do I, as a male, make sense of all this? As usual, I take long walks and write to you, hoping to get some understanding.
When I figure out what’s going on in this brain of mine, I’ll let you know. Until then, be well, Stella.
Xo,
David.
P.S. “The greatness of art makes its appearance only as dusk begins to fall over life.” That’s Debord. It’s getting dark, and I’m getting excited.