Lust, Caution is a 2007 erotic espionage thriller film directed by Ang Lee, based on the novella of the same name by Chinese author Eileen Chang. The cast includes Tony Chiu-Wai Leung, Wei Tang and Joan Chen. The story is mostly set in Hong Kong in 1938 and in Shanghai in 1942. With this film, Lee won the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival for the second time, the first being with Brokeback Mountain. Tony Leung and Ang Lee are my favorite Asian actor and director. I watched almost all of Ang Lee’s movie. After this movie came out, I went to movie theater to watch it immediately. Unfortunately, some scenes were cut in the mainland China version, so I didn’t feel that I watched the entire movie. Luckily I found the full version online and watched it again. My initial interest about this movie is the story itself. I read a lot of Eileen …show more content…
I remembered when I watched this movie in theater, the audience looked so serious. Love is like an illusion in this movie, and I can’t guess the end. There’re a lot of stories and emotions going on between the two main characters. While I was watching this movie, I kept asking myself, If I was Wong Jiazhi, would I tell Mr. Yee the truth? After Wong Jiazhi got shot, it’s hard to read Mr. Yee’s expressions. Looks like he tried his best to control himself to not express and sadness or madness, but he didn’t say anything or comment anything on the death of Wong Jiazhi. All the characters in this movie are Asians, as well as the director. Lust, Caution was produced on a budget of approximately $15 million. Worldwide, it grossed $67,091,915. The movie won and got nominated many awards. Focus Features was very satisfied with the United States release of this film. Therefore, I think Lust, Caution is a successful Asian movie which was released in Asian and United States. The story’s intense, the cheongsams worn by the women in this movie are very beautiful. It shows the Chinese culture and
In his 1937 film Street Angel, Yuan explores the inequities facing Shanghai’s urban proletariat, an often-overlooked dimension of Chinese society. The popular imagination more readily envisions the agrarian systems that governed China before 1919 and after 1949, but capitalism thrived in Shanghai during that thirty-year buffer between feudalism and Communism. This flirtation with the free market engendered an urban working class, which faced tribulations and injustices that supplied Shanghai’s leftist filmmakers with ample subject matter. Restrained by Kuomintang censorship from directly attacking Chinese capitalism, Yuan employs melodrama to expose Street Angel’s bourgeois audience to the plight of the urban poor. Yuan presents capitalist Shanghai as a binary and deeply unequal society, at odds with the “more pluralistic sense of cosmopolitanism” desired by leftist filmmakers of the 1930s (Pang 62).
Most films captivate the audience’s interest in the main character. This film did just that. Through the main character Li Cunxin, I was able to notice the amount of hard work and dedication which led Li to become a famous ballet dancer known worldwide. The film, based on the autobiography by Li Cunxin, “Mao’s Last Dancer” directed by Bruce Beresford, is about a Chinese boy named Li Cunxin who was born into a large family of 6 boys. At the age of eleven, Li was selected from a poor Chinese village by Madam Mao’s cultural representatives to leave his family and study ballet in Beijing.
The movie is essentially a series of flash back. The movie begins with a prison train full of war criminals going to a prison in 1950s Manchuria. Piyu took the throne from the empress when he was three years old. He was treated above everyone else this is apparent when he met his brother at ten and later at fifteen when he met his wife. Throughout the entire movie there is a sense of rich kid never grows up and cannot fend for himself. Even in his forties when he is delivered to the prison-camp he cannot even tie his shoes. Arranged marriages is an evident tradition in Confucian culture. The changing China from Imperialism to a republic is portrayed well. One example of the revolution was Reginald, the tutor going to the Forbidden City and the car is surrounded by revolutionaries gathering outside the walls of the Forbidden City.
The Sun of the Revolution by Liang Heng, is intriguing and vivid, and gives us a complex and compelling perspective on Chines culture during a confusing time period. We get the opportunity to learn the story of a young man with a promising future, but an unpleasant childhood. Liang Heng was exposed to every aspect of the Cultural Revolution in China, and shares his experiences with us, since the book is written from Liang perspective, we do not have a biased opinion from an elite member in the Chinese society nor the poor we get an honest opinion from the People’s Republic of China. Liang only had the fortunate opportunity of expressing these events due his relationship with his wife, An American woman whom helps him write the book. When Liang Heng and Judy Shapiro fell in love in China during 1979, they weren’t just a rarity they were both pioneers at a time when the idea of marriages between foreigners and Chinese were still unacceptable in society.
This analysis draws focus on the differences between Hua’s novel and Zhang’s film by juxtaposing two key themes and dual-symbolism that had changed from one format to another. The paper is broken up into two parts and begins with an introduction and analysis of Yu Hua’s novel and Zhang’s film. Finally, the second part analyzes the film and novel’s representations of two themes and symbolism that tie in with the GPCR. This paper posits that while Zhang’s film does contain many adjustments based on its adaptation, those changes were not simply a means by which he would meet the status quo, rather they were a means by which the film could become more realistic and exploits the true nature of the GPCR.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a martial arts chivalry film released in 2000. It was directed by Ang Lee, who also directed films such as “Broke Back Mountain and “Life of Pi.” The film focuses on the three main characters Li Mu Bai, Shu Lien and Jen. Li Mu Bai stays on a Taoist monastery, and is an expert in sword fighting; famous for his Kung Fu. Unlike Li Mu Bai, Shu Lien is a Confucianist who runs a security company and has deceased fiancé. Another important character, Jen, is from a wealthy family and is taught by Jade Fox, who disguises as a nanny, how to fight. Jen is egoistic and contradicts the rules of both Confucianism and Taoism. Lo, also known as the “Dark Cloud” is a bandit who falls in love with Jen. The film mainly tackled on the importance of Confucianism and Taoism in one’s life and how these two are alike to each other when they are put together. In the film, we will see how they influence the character’s lives having Confucianism and Taoism beliefs performed together. We all know that these two philosophies are different from each other. Confucianism emphasizes morality, familial piety and respect for authorities to create peace and harmony among people. On the other hand, Taoism focuses on the harmony of yin and yang, detachment from worldly things, oneness with the nature and to go with the flow.
Rickery, Carrie. "History And 'The Last Emperor' Parts Of The Film Are Accurate, But Much Is Missing, Says A China Scholar." Http://articles.philly.com. Http://articles.philly.com, 30 Dec. 1987. Web. 04 Apr. 2014.
The quest for identity quickly finds its place in the construction of the notion of ‘Hong Kong-ness’ in films. The local cinema has remained as a powerful cultural institution, both reflecting and intervening in the discourses of alterities and selfhood. It is therefore not surprising that in local films, the cinematic representations of Hong Kong have been seen as inextricably interwoven with the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland, and Hong Kong itself. Since its inception in the 1910s, the Hong Kong film industry has enjoyed much independence from colonial control, yet simultaneously much association with Western culture. Many films openly deal with the theme of ‘East meets West’ in which ‘Hong Kongese’ identity is often expressed in "transnational settings" against the existence of a Western Other, in particular through the portrayal of Westerners visiting Asia, and vice versa. After the handover, "Hong Kong" as a geopolitical en...
The film Hero depicts one of the most culturally rich and diverse country, China. China is one of the largest countries in the world with the long profound history. It is also the most diverse country in terms of language, religion, rituals, traditions, and beliefs. The film Hero has an unusual movie theme, it repeats similar events through flashbacks and with different outcomes. The tale is about the nameless warrior and the triumph of Qin’s idea of unifying China. The king invites the warrior to honor him for defeating his three most dangerous enemies, who are often proclaimed as the unbeatable warriors. The film is a cultural description of Chinese traditions. It has expanded my understanding of Chinese culture by portraying the spectacular
Chungking Express marked Wong Kar-wai's major break onto the international film scene and remains one of his most memorable work, if not the best, in his filmmaking career. American director and filmmaker, Quentin Tarantino, convinced his distributor, Miramax, to buy over the rights to Chungking Express for d...
In conclusion, Lust, Caution is a story that an be considered to be adapted from multiple sources including the writer and director’s life experience. The short story was a seed that grew from the soil of Eileen Chang’s life and became a flower, and Ang Lee was the maestro that painted the flower on a canvas to show the world how beautiful this flower was.
As the movie goes along further, the film introduces a Vietnamese girl Trinh that he fall in love with. Try to hook up with her, he has made friends with her brother Tuan, and teaches the English class that she was in. The movie at this point has embrace in some love comedy factors in it. Like his unique radio hosting style, he does not teach like the others but using American style and more often cuss languages. It might seem facially riotously funny, but in the deeper sense, I can not take the way that he portrayed
The 1993 movie directed by Kaige Chen, Farewell My Concubine, addresses the Chinese political issues during the war against Japan via interpersonal issues of an opera troupe of young male actors. The movie is as long as it is engaging. With two orphan boys who are raised to act in an Opera for their entire lives, dedication obtains a whole new meaning. Dieyi's training to act as a woman and to reflect femininity in his whole life increases the dissension that is observed within the film as well as its connections to the politics of China. The use of ghastly sound effects, close-up cinematographic techniques, and military involvement combine together in this movie to create a devastatingly dramatic experience.
First of all, I was touched by the following statement “ You can be mad as a mad dog at the way things went. You can swear, curse the fates, regret everything you ever did but when it comes to the end. You have to let it go”. Actually, I was in a gloomy mood before I watched this film, something really grieved happened and I was lost and confused. I cursed the fate and blame everyone and everything include myself. Nevertheless, the word “let it go” helped me lay my burdens down and I understood that something I had to accept truth which had happened and let it
The movie uses drama and action mixed together. The emotions of the men when one of