Hou Hsiao-Hsien

i.e. without the opening titles you're at sea.

have you seen a hou film before?

You think that film makers should consider people who missed the beginning? 😳

I think posters should read what I wrote.

i am In Pain reading these posts

What you see in the film is what happened; there’s no CGI, it’s all natural and exactly as it happened. This was shot in Hubei province in Mainland China, in an area called Shennongjia, which is about 2,700 meters above sea level. So it’s very high up and it was a very humid day, so there were cloud after cloud just coming in waves through the mountain and the valley. So honestly, it didn’t take us very long at all to shoot the scene; it was just happening like that. So we just showed up and shot it. Had it not been a very humid day without clouds, I may have still been able to utilize it. It just so happens there were clouds, it was humid, and so it was the kind of scene we ended up utilizing for the film.

http://filmmakermagazine.com/96104-we-just-did-long-takes-every-time-hou-hsiao-hsien-on-the-assassin/

Hou has never been much good at plot

ok cool.

like Beckett, say

like James

It's very much worth watching, and still damn impressive, but I couldn't figure out who was doing what to whom, which in most Hou movies isn't a problem but the wry ending requires understanding what just happened. I'm gonna watch it again tonight or tomorrow.

turn off the vacuum cleaner this time.

Saw it in the theater! I felt most sorry for a tour bus full of Taiwanese tourists tangentially acquainted with Hou who hurried excitedly into the theater and when the lights went up a hundred minutes later looked like soccer balls had hit them in the gut.

I think posters should read what I wrote.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, October 26, 2015 1:32 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I read it and my response was flippant/stupid and I've really enjoyed your writing at times in spite of the fact that you've stated in that past you're not a particularly vigilant viewer. I mean you've been on record as being on the treadmill or doing housework or whatever else while you views films and I honestly don't know how that is a useful position for a critic. I dare say the new hou is confusing but criticising it for being confusing if you missed the credits is stupid.

ditto jed re: the general quality of alfred's posts, this tragically now something i can only wince, remembering, confronted with his terrible descent into philistinism. anyway i'm joking & i didn't mean to post-&-run whenever it was but just to clarify-

All I meant was that nothing in the story or images indicates the tensions between the assassin and the governor. Hou has never been much good at plot, but his compositions and editing were more than enough. Here there are many dead spots between the swordplay seuences.

just leaving the plot thing aside because: i can't, it's wild to me to read something dismissive of dead spots in this, or really for the knife fights to be invoked as if they were in some entirely separate, jarring tonal register (i saw a bunch of hou in quick succession during the retro, & so get everything mixed up, but the fights in this reminded me of a kind of believably-clumsy chase-&-fight scene, shot at a distance, & half-obscured by the long grass of a field, in one of the older films -- possibly dust in the wind?). i think maybe most perfectly in cafe lumiere hou manages to create this incredibly balanced micro-climate of just mood & feeling, akin to what other films control by periodically drip-feeding events & revelations, tension accumulated & diffused, with hou this kind of thing all depending on just like utterly transparent, lighter-than-air vibrations in scenes. & in this it just felt so incredibly well judged; there was an especially intense scene, after the assassin is wounded, when her cuts are being treated, in the room with the other wounded man, & it's this judicious, sparing close-up & the most direct confrontation we have with her just fierce concentration, like it's such an restrained & expressive performance & although it isn't explicit it's a real kind of direct shot. & then the next few minutes of the film are these light dance scenes, the ones before the woman collapses against the pillar, the lightness of this seeming exactly proportionate to the heaviness of the preceding scene, like the film is air currents circling & replacing one another. i really think the parts of the film that are maybe susceptible to confusion - like sure i could not draw a family tree or whatever - just kind of aren't important to the film that this is, & are aligned with the assassin's similar detachment from such matters.

also apropos of nothing another really beautiful thing, seeing this, & having seen stuff relatively recently in the retro, was just the joy of seeing new variations on a few kinda signature shots he uses, like the scene of the homestead the assassin quietly walks through, or some of the architectural shots.

ps 龜 did you see this yet, it's mark lee ping bin

I dare say the new hou is confusing but criticising it for being confusing if you missed the credits is stupid.

I saw the film in a theater and was there for every second; it was my first Hou in a theater, and because The Flowers of Shanghai and Cafe Lumiere are among my favorite films ("i think maybe most perfectly in cafe lumiere hou manages to create this incredibly balanced micro-climate of just mood & feeling, akin to what other films control by periodically drip-feeding events & revelations, tension accumulated & diffused, with hou this kind of thing all depending on just like utterly transparent, lighter-than-air vibrations in scenes" -- otm exactly) of their respective decades I dug in for more goodies. Without the benefit of the title card and the opening scene, it's impossible to figure out that, say, the governor and the assassin are related; I should think these facts should be obvious from subsequent scenes. I'm not sure why it's so offensive to admit I preferred other Hou films?

I don't really polish shoes or whatever while watching screeners -- I said it to irritate Morbs, who considers it a distraction if you take notes during a movie.

shot at a distance, & half-obscured by the long grass of a field

I thought this was Hou's shrewdest decision

Haven't seen any of his other movies but I'm seeing The Assassin tonight, and I'm psyched.

Wow was this ever hard to follow, and the opening title didn't help at all with trying to figure out and track the intertwined familial + political relationships between everybody. The whole time I was trying to figure out whether it mattered or not, and we spent the rest of the night trying to piece everything together. Very pretty though.

LOL @ this:

Without the benefit of the title card and the opening scene, it's impossible to figure out that, say, the governor and the assassin are related; I should think these facts should be obvious from subsequent scenes. I'm not sure why it's so offensive to admit I preferred other Hou films?

You are not offending anyone at all. There is another film I've heard about that has a lot of stuff around assassins and people like that, something to do with an agent called James Bond. Looked at a news item on it and the plot might be easier for you, maybe you ought to try that instead.

Just trying to help.

It might be easier for you to fuck off. No reason for the attitude, hoss. You're acting as if I haven't commented in this thread many times over the years. Plus, I watched it a second time and quite loved it.

Btw every single person I talked to that night had no idea what was going on in terms of plot, who was who, characters appearing & disappearing, etc.

Still not sure if the woman in the mask was another assassin sent by the nun or a metaphor.

It might be easier for you to fuck off

I am not sure why that was so offensive? Can you help?

zzzzzz

Off to do some ironing now. brb.

be sure to get the wrinkles out of your brain

Getting the wrinkles out of the fridge today.

ithout the benefit of the title card and the opening scene, it's impossible to figure out that, say, the governor and the assassin are related

wasn't true at all btw

It wasn't not true at all either.

What has or is about to happen?

I've seen critics far more intelligent than I call this his most perplexing movie. I don't think Alfred is alone on his flags.

his most perplexing movie

that would be the puppetmaster

all you really need to know is that the assassin and the person she's assigned to kill are related. that's the driver!

you aren't even told that in the titlecard. it's repeated throughout the first half!

Is The Puppetmaster perplexing? I was following it ok..

The one that I felt was pretty convuluted was City of Sadness but there is so much else to Hou there are other things to follow if you are weighed down by narrative.

i saw a really bad 35mm print (touted as one of the last in existence) so maybe that was why

and yeah exactly, i think with hou so rarely is the payoff in the narrative denoument

i still think most critics were sold on this as being a sort of spiritial sequel to crouching tiger i.e. high class wuxia with lots of fights

the critical response has been excellent though; I think the poor suckers were the theater owners.

i saw a really bad 35mm print (touted as one of the last in existence)

I saw a rough print, someone needs to restore this - one of the best screenings this year.

http://hyphenmagazine.com/blog/2015/10/talks-legendary-filmmaker-hou-hsiao-hsien-his-latest-film-assassin

Assassin Blu/DVD tomorrow

Watched it yesterday - thought the knife fights had that clean clinical look of scenes from Kobayashi's Harakiri.

Seeing it tonight, excited. GFT are doing it justice by showing it on their smallest screen :-(

Its great - had to wait 3/4 months for it.

Now to decide where it places on the best films of 2015 ballot. (I suppose ppl will vote for this as a 2015 film so if I'll join in)

I won't get to see it until may/june, so it'll wait til next years ballot for me :(

Rewatched Flowers of Shanghai yesterday afternoon. The last scene killed me.

I won't get to see it until may/june, so it'll wait til next years ballot for me :(

― Frederik B, Monday, 25 January 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

LOL how come? You watch everything :-)

Danish release dates. It's incredible that it even gets released here, and I'm giving major kudos to the distributors, but they keep it until june, out of the prolonged oscar-season. Amour Fou, for instance, suffered the same fate. But Amour Fou I managed to see at both Gothenburg at CPH:PIX before, but it isn't at Gothenburg, and PIX is moving to the fall this year. So no luck at all, I have to wait until june. :(

And thanks :) But I don't watch everything, not at all. I'm just lucky enough to live within distance of a bunch of festivals, and spend my vacations that way. Cannes films are pretty much always delayed for me.

I'd get a DVD but its not the same - watched at the biggest screen at the NFT

Well, yeah, I could probably do that. But I know I'll see it this summer, probably a couple of times, so I might prioritize all the other stuff I want to see.

Needless to say this was ravishing, and demands to be seen on a big screen.

Really felt like there was a lot of self-identification between Hou and the Assassin - both of them creep up on things (narrative/victims) and both of them refuse the expected or demanded (exposition/the killing stroke). Seemed very significant that a lot of the action moments took place just off-screen, or are seen from a distance - the film simultaneously polishes myth and views it sideways.

Scrolled up and the talk upthread re: plot gets funnier.