city on fire
review
Asian Cult Cinema #26
City on Fire By Lisa Odham Stokes and Michael Hoover
Jerry White
CITY ON FIRE: Hong Kong Cinema
By Lisa Odham Stokes
and Michael Hoover
Verso, 372 pages
City on Fire (Verso Press) by Michael Hoover and Lisa Stokes reads like
a sequel to Teo's [Stephen Teo, Hong Kong: The Extra Dimension] book,
but drops the pedantic tone in favor of one that is lighter and even
more illuminating. The films discussed are more contemporary and each
genre - from action to horror to comedy - is given ample discussion. The
authors distinguish their book from others by offering quality not
quantity; the reader is not bombarded with hundreds of gratuitous plot
descriptions or throwaway title lists. Each film the authors choose is
considered carefully, and dissected with both style and flashes of
critical brilliance.
The City on Fire of the title is both a reference to the Ringo Lam film
and a symbol for Hong Kong itself, a postmodern world in constant flux
due to an accelerated rate of economic growth and political change. If
Teo's critical filter is political, Hoover/ Stokes's is economic; the
book is peppered with quotes from Marx and Engels, and constant
parallels are drawn between the films and capitalism. This view is
prominently on display in the chapter on John Woo, whose humanistic
idealism, according to the authors, provides "an alternative to a
world corrupted by capitalism." Reading this made me reconsider the
Woo canon in a different light, especially A Better Tomorrow, which gets
the best analysis in the book. It's all about the symbolic importance of
food.
The Woo chapter alone is worth the price, but the rest of the book is
equally engaging, illuminating films that I had already seen, or in the
case of Comrades: Almost a Love Story and Legend of the Wolf, adding to
my must see list. After reading their analysis of Chungking Express in
which "commodified objects contribute to a condition in which
alienation has become 'social practice'," I re-watched the movie
with a keener appreciation. Reading City on Fire will make watching Hong
Kong movies a more pleasurable experience for everyone. Buy it.
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