Hou Hsiao-Hsien

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.

seeing it tonight. half wary, half excited. the interviews he has given about the film make me go for the former. like 'i just cut out everything that might tell you anything just for the hell of it'.

i watched this not caring about the plot beyond the basics. i gave up trying to follow it. but i found this enjoyable. and surprisingly light in how it feels as i was expecting it to be austere and heavy going. but it was sort of mythic and almost fairy tale-like. but i still didnt pay much attention to the narrative - it seemed inconsequential and pointless task. but also as i read so much about how ravishing it was to look at. which is actually where i found the film a let down. it looks like HD TV really. compositionally, i think the appeal was more to do with the set design than the cinematography, which seemed adequate but lacking in his usual control/deliberation. the crystalline, ultra high def images lacked anything interesting texturally. it looked like a quality TV mini series, the black and white sequence at the start even more so. a lot of the fights were presented as awkwardly as the grandmaster, though i appreciate the attempt to do something new there. its enigmatic, enjoyably light-footed, and strangely intriguing, but something i would file as a modest, low budget, late period addition to someones filmography rather than one of the great films of recent memory. i cant help thinking a lot of the praise poured onto it is a kind of compensation for his older/better films not being shown/known more.

Best bit was the panning revealing and hiding again the assassin listening through the curtains. I almost fell asleep several times but in sort of a nice way and wasn't helped by having to travel across to Edinburgh and back before work having missed it at the GFT last week.

it looks like HD TV really.

The gap between film and TV look has narrowed considerably over the last 15 years. Hou has probably gone with the times, or the tech. Its hard to know how well it might look compared as the older films (as I saw in the BFI retro) aren't in as good a condition. But for what it is I think decisions as to what is shot (and what is kept out too), angles of light etc. and mixed shooting settings - not only B&W but also that scene where the image is made grainier. That was all well-handled. I think the guy is in control of his materials.

The appeal - well you'd expect a Hou film to be well shot (its done in a way you don't like), to have as few a cliche's as poss (compared to other wuxia). Its just a very good film that had an award - which is wider recognition for a director that is pretty much well-known already in art house circles. I wouldn't call it overcompensation. Its top 10 stuff in most years.

youre right about the decreased gap between film and tv. but it made me think a bit in terms of the look of something like raul ruiz' mysteries of lisbon. the production values felt more tv something like say, house of flying daggers. i kept thinking someone should tap HHH to do a long form series, like a wuxia twin peaks. im surprised that it was shot on 35mm (suppose it shows that you can make film look like digital tv and vice versa). but there was def something slight about this compared to what else ive seen of his - it def had that stillness, and moments of opaqueness, but it didnt seem to come with as much meaning. that might come if i watch it again maybe, not sure.

im glad hes getting accolades. obv if youre 'into film', you will prob know of him, but hes not nearly as famous as other east asian auteurs.

i think im thinking texturally, or in terms of the grain, as well as attention to lighting, and atmosphere, etc.

compare this still from city of sadness to the assassin -

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/City-of-Sadness-400.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5f7BVKfXipQ/Vciw4l4gJDI/AAAAAAAE8qc/x3ru511ewII/s1600/assassin7.jpg

Anybody seen the wuxia tv shows? I seen some trailers and was amazed because the movie-like quality of them seems far beyond even American tv shows.

I haven't seen Mysteries of Lisbon but he is so diff to HHH. 'TV production values' vs film - again, I wonder how much of a gap there is in the first place between either of them.

From the two screenshots I take your point but City of Sadness does, iirc, evoke a very different mood in its intentions and its a very different story - which I think why at least trying to follow some of the story's strands (and I didn't follow all of them) might be worthwhile.