The Dragon Chronicles: The Maidens of Heavenly Mountains
(Xin tian long ba bu zhi tian shan tong lao, 1994)
Andy Wing-Keung Chin
Hong Kong
96 mins, color, Cantonese (English subtitles)
This film is also, and perhaps better, known as SEMI-GODS AND SEMI-DEVILS, although this does not make the story any clearer. I have to admit to being in utter confusion for the most part of the film. There's way too many things happening all at once, too many characters to keep track of (and the fact that some are twins, and others appear at various stages of their life does not make it any easier), the story develops at a breathtaking pace, and so do the subtitles; I actually had to pause several times to read and then try to make sense of what appeared to be English. I heard the film is based on a novel, but without access to the source, and being entirely dependent on the awful translation of the dialogue, I am not sure I followed the story.
As far as I could tell, here's the rough take on the plot. There's an all-powerful demigod Siu Yiu Tze, who controls the innermost secrets of the martial arts. He has three students: the twin sisters Li Chou-Shui and Li Chong-Hoi (both played by Brigitte Lin), and the lesbian Mo Han-Wen (Gong Li). There's also a student wanna-be, Ting Chun-Chou (Norman Chu). Now, this master apparently isn't very good at picking (or teaching) his students because of the three "juniors," two are rotten apples. Chou-Shui is power-hungry and evil, and in love with the master, while Chong-Hoi is graceful and good, and also in love with the master. Han-Wen, isn't any good, but she's in love with Chong-Hoi. The disgruntled student Master Ting poisons Siu (what a way to deal with bad grades) and the all-powerful retreats to some spiritual realm, where no one can find him. He also takes Chong-Hoi with him, so I guess the hermit life must not have had a great appeal for him. Anyway, this pisses off the other two: Han-Wen, because he's taken her lover, and Chou-Shui, because he did not take her instead of the twin sister.
The story then develops along the lines of power struggle for domination in the world of martial arts. The two evil juniors set up sects of their own and periodically fight it out for dominance. The control some magic knowledge that allows them to rejuvenate, fly like crazed butterflies, and shoot laser beams with incredibly campy sound effects. There's a whole lot of loud proclamations, claims to omnipotence (all unsubstantiated), slo-mo blow ups of fake rocks, and even lightning powers obviously stolen from the Emperor in RETURN OF THE JEDI. While the evil juniors are busy jockeying for first place, Master Ting is conquering other sects, and with each conquest he learns an additional "stance" (I guess that's like getting a new spell or something). Nobody notices as he gains more and more power.
Simultaneously, Master original demigod is waiting for some unspecified chosen one to show up so he can transfer his essence (yang, powers, magic, knowledge, whatever) into the unsuspecting victim. Such an opportunity presents itself when the clueless monk Hui-Chok (Frankie Lam) stumbles into heroics and wins a game of go (despite the film's insistence, that most definitely was NOT chess). He gets the powers but can't do shit with them because the master (did I forget to mention he was omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniboring) neglected to give him the user's manual. So the poor monk is stuck, much like an average user of UNIX: he's vaguely aware that he can do everything but can't write a shell script to save his life. So he ends up begging the sysadmin for help, or in this case Purple (Man Cheung). Oh, Purple is another bizarre character. She seems to be serving Master Ting, but actually has an agenda entirely on her own. Unfortunately this demigod-in-training isn't too good at stealing the magic sutras, so she's not progressing very fast.
To cut the (really) long story short. Push eventually comes to shove when it turns out that Chong-Hoi is dead (?!). The enmity between the two juniors is temporarily shelved and they both turn against Master Ting, who gets blamed for everything. The combined powers of the four (Chou-Shui, Han-Wen, Purple, and Hui-Chok) eventually subdue him, and then everything ends, and Purple seems to have become the new ruler of the best apartment in martial arts.
Yeah, well, the story is complicated, that's for sure. Almost nothing is explained or motivated, everything has to be constructed from flashbacks, flashforwards, repeated viewings, and thoughtful head-shaking. One should perhaps ignore the story and concentrate on the visuals. Just as well, the film boasts some excellent cinematography. Although the weird camera angles, and the frequent resort to alternative speeds may make it less than compelling, the film is dazzling. It can literally make your head spin. Naturally, Gong Li is a film in herself. The dreamy lesbian is so damn beautiful, one could just make it through on her scenes alone. Brigitte Lin is superb: she can portray the melancholic sister and her raging lunatic twin without blinking, and she's always had that commanding screen presence that makes audience stand up in attention. Cheung Man is utterly cute, with her constant exclamations and childlike wonder and mischief. She is apparently quite talented as well because she did an excellent job of portraying a scheming character with many hidden agendas.
There is no doubt that the three maidens save the film from sinking into utter oblivion (although they did not save it from bombing at the box office). The Mei Ah DVD is not very good. There are a lot of scratches and grain. It also looks like the letterboxing has lost parts of the original 1.85:1, which is evident when the long subs get cut off. Other than that, the murky colors seem to have been intentional and cast a dreamlike pall over the film. The color values, however, are a bit off now and then, making some scenes appear too yellow, and other - too blue. Finally, the English subtitles are burned in. Again, this is not a problem for me. However, they appear right below the Chinese subtitles, which are also non-removable. This is now getting annoying. How long can companies like Mei Ah copy Chinese laserdiscs to DVD without bothering to remaster them? The sound is ok, nothing spectacular, but then nothing to sneeze at either. The Cantonese track sounds better than the Mandarin, which is muffled. Overall, a decent DVD that could stand some improvements.
April 18, 2001. BLS