Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment

David Bordwell

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000. Pp. 329, index.

This is a book by a very erudite scholar who also happens to be a great fan of the cinema he is analyzing. The usual problem with most academic studies is that they tend to sneer at the subject matter, treat it contemptuously (unless it's the work of Kurosawa or Bergman), or be apologetic for it. Although this book has a little bit of the last, it certainly has none of the other two arguably more annoying traits.

Bordwell knows his stuff and even though the book takes some patience to read through (as it is riddled with the inevitable jargon and suffers from some confused organizational problems that should have been handled by a better editor), it is a wealth of information and offers plenty of insights in the wonderful, if somewhat crazy, world of Hong Kong cinema.

The book is loosely structured around nine chapters dealing with the history of the industry, its organization of movie-making, and how it produces the directors who adapt to its requirements to make cinema wildly different from Hollywood or Japan, the two other huge vertically-integrated industries. Bordwell deals with the perennial kung fu, triad, and history dramas, and he tries very hard to place them in a wider cultural and social context, link them to Chinese traditions, and even seek out the anxiety of the 1997 handover by the British.

He succeeds to various degrees mostly because one may quibble with his take on violence and "low-brow" humor that pervades many of the films. His discussion of style, cinematography---especially the choreography directors and their work on less explosive than wushu but equally impressive fare (cf. the glorious description of the scene from A Chinese Ghost Story where Joey Wang tries to conceal Leslie Cheung's presence from her ghost sister and mistress)---the use of color, wide-angle lenses (the bane of many HK directors), and even the wonderfully trite Cantopop, are insightful and full of admiration. At one point he even challenges Hollywood to show him a director who could make the above scene as well as Chung Sui-tung.

The major chapters end with the "avant-pop" cinema of Wong Kar-wai and his numerous imitators but the tone of the whole book leaves no doubt that the author thinks the golden days of HK cinema are gone, probably forever. Forced to deal with shrinking budgets and unable to withstand the onslaught of Hollywood's global tentacles, this great regional cinema is now looking for a niche it can safely fill. Whether it lies in the artsy film-festival fare like the films of Wong or something outrageously delicious like the ones of Jackie Chan remains to be seen. The fact that the major stars have all moved to America to do second-rate drivel is not heartening.

Dispersed among the chapters are short digressions on various people, from Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan to John Woo and Wong Kar-wai. These are very interesting in collecting in one place a great many tidbits of information about their subjects. There will be nothing new there for the dedicated fan but they are sure to delight the newcomer with some extra glimpses at his/her favorite movie-makers.

I enjoyed most two of the work's analyses. One is Bordwell's take on the controversy about working within the confines of a strict industry regimen and how that can stifle creative expression and limit the directors in their ability to freely realize their vision. This, according to many, renders HK (and many Hollywood) directors second-rate craftsmen who can never achieve the level of "true artists" like the auteurs Bergman or Welles.

Bordwell does not buy that and presents a powerful argument in defense of the directors for hire. The idea that structure is only limiting if the director does not have enough imagination to stretch and make use of it is especially appealing. Turning the claim on its head, Bordwell argues that conventions are necessary because they render plot, situations, and events readily comprehensible to the audience. Far from being simple cliches (or perhaps because they have become ones), these conventions enable the creative director to explore new ways of presentation and interpretation. Few can blaze new trails but how you make use of the existing ones is perhaps even more important.

The other bit of analysis that I really enjoyed is Bordwell's take on violence. Hong Kong movies are not nearly as viciously violent as many Japanese ones (but then no other cinema comes close to these) but they are not tame by Western standards. Hong Kong films rely on unabashedly simple plot lines, and the violent ones tend to cluster around the motif of revenge in its various forms.

Usually, and in complete contrast to Hollywood, the heroes of the story do not trace the standard "character arc". That is, they do not undergo a change as a result of their travails. They usually come complete and then doggedly pursue their goals until they achieve them or die in the attempt. This sort of static characterization will perhaps seem galling to a Western viewer because it appears to render the whole exercise rather pointless. Instead of "grander" changes in the hero, we usually witness the pursuit of revenge and its often brutal realization in detail that leaves many wondering whether violence is just gratuitous titillation of the depraved audience.

Bordwell traces the violence/revenge motives to the brutish history of China. The Chinese have never really experienced "rule of law" but have instead lived for centuries under a never-ending succession of strongmen, some more benevolent than others but most indifferent to their subjects and interested in personal glorification. Despite its strong traditions of scholarship and learning, even the T'ang system of centralized bureaucracy that has characterized Chinese governance for many centuries was really an amalgam of nepotism, corruption, and misrule.

In a world where life for the common folk was nasty and short, reliance on the law as the impartial arbiter of justice was wholly absent. Strong family ties, strong clan ties, or strong master-student relationships substituted for the lack of security and sought to provide some in this combination of self-reliance and complete dedication to the immediate kin, however defined. Revenge becomes more than the lust for vengeance but a moral and social imperative, the dereliction of which could unravel the fabric of society. Without recourse to law, people had to design their own methods for enforcement, and these invariably tended to center around swift retribution.

Adaptability is a Western ideal where "fitting" the environment can be seen as a virtue, especially when one cannot change the environment. In a world where stability depended on people fulfilling duties even when these were most onerous and dangerous, adaptability is a threat because it provides the temptation to neglect one's duty in favor of short-term personal gain. Mutability is dangerous, and a character arc would therefore make the character irredeemably evil if s/he finds a way out of the personal sacrifice demanded by duty. When this duty places the character in an unsolvable moral dilemma, they way "out" is not to find a solution that would somehow reconcile the two but to commit suicide. Hence the tradition, both literary and cinematic, that celebrates these changeless heroes. (At this point I have to admit that Bordwell does not make much of this explicit, but it is not difficult to read it in his analysis. If you disagree, feel free to assign the interpretation to me.)

There are lots of black-and-white shots scattered throughout but many of them are of average quality. This is no great handicap as they are mostly used to illustrate a point about editing or camera positioning. As I mentioned near the beginning of this review, the book can become rather tedious. There are two reasons for this. First, it is jargon-laden and the writing style is not straightforward, making it difficult and less enjoyable to read. Second, the organization of the chapters is quite poor and it is sometimes hard to tell what point the author is trying to make or where he is going with the discussion. I blame the editor for both.

A useful exploration of Hong Kong cinema and some of its most prominent personalities, this book should be a definite read for any self-respecting fan. Nothing, of course, can be a substitute for actually seeing these films. With the availability of dirt-cheap HK DVDs, there is no excuse not to.

February 16, 2003

@book{bordwell-00,
    title     = {Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment},
    author    = {David Bordwell},
    year      = {2000},
    publisher = {Harvard University Press},
    address   = {Cambridge},
    isbn      = {0-674-00214-8},
    note      = {Index, bibliography; Pp. 329}
}