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Hong Kong's new wave filmmakers, emerging on the scene
in 1979, are characterized as being the first generation of directors to
grow up in Hong Kong, thereby loosening bonds to the Mainland. Receiving
their early education under the British system, many studied film abroad
and returned to Hong Kong in the early 1970s, working in television
studios before making their first films. But the new wavers are an
eclectic group, and a look at some shows their common interests and
differences. Ann Hui, Yim Ho, and Tsui Hark are all members of Hong
Kong's first new wave; yet Ann Hui spent her formative years in Macau
and partly in Hong Kong, Yim Ho grew up in Hong Kong, and Tsui Hark in
Vietnam; all attended film schools, Hui and Yim Ho in London, and Tsui
in Texas. All trained in television studios before making movies. Each
would bring a hybrid perspective and a concern with politics, yet their
intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic distinctions styles would share
little else. The new wavers are so named because of their new vision and
experimentalism, as compared to the imported views and techniques of
previous Hong Kong films. A second new wave followed ten years later,
including Stanley Kwan, the team of Cheung Yuen-ting and Alex Law, and
the partners Clara Law and Eddie Fong. Many second wave directors,
trained in tv studios rather than film schools abroad, learned
moviemaking through experience. All can be described as 'Hong Kong
belongers.' Home is, or has become, Hong Kong. The phrase 'made in Hong
Kong' implies a mixture of cultures and influences because of the
colony's history and its combined population of primarily Mainland
immigration and British presence. Not until the 1970s was Chinese
declared an official language. In the 1970s, the advent of its economic
miracle insured a cosmopolitan population was exposed to television and
popular entertainment from the West. While family roots remain on the
Mainland, Hong Kong belongers' feet are firmly planted in the territory.
[Image: Chow Yun-fat in Johnnie To's All About Ah Long,
courtesy/permission of Johnnie To]
Displacement grows out of predicaments faced by working
class characters. Johnny To's All About Ah Long (1989), which Chow Yun-fat
describes as a Hong Kong version of The Champ, is an upside-down Hong
Kong version of Kramer vs. Kramer, yet this Chinese Kramer, called
Ah-long (Chow), is far removed from Dustin Hoffman's yuppie dad. A
construction worker and former motorcycle racer, he works harder and
suffers more, both physically and emotionally, for the good of his son.
Detailed attention to the everyday routine of their lives, the
intimacies they share and the adjustments they've made enrich the story.
When his ex-wife reappears, part of the professional-managerial strata,
she offers the boy social mobility and emigration to the U.S. with an
upper middle class businessman stepfather. The son easily moves into
mother's world (she's an advertising executive, and the child is
recruited for an ad campaign), while Ah-long is outsider; no matter how
hard he tries to be part, he is exiled, a displaced person. Numerous
close ups register Ah-long's pain and selfless love as he determines the
best for his son. Ah-long's death, through his attempt to race and
provide financial stability for the boy, is to be expected. There are
winners and losers.
Chapter 8 |
