A Woman, a Gun, and A Noodle Shop (San qiang pai an jing qi, 2009)

[randy_byers]

Saw this at the Harvard Exit with holyoutlaw last night. It's Zhang Yimou's remake of the Coen Bros.' Blood Simple (1984), which I have to confess I've never seen. It felt very much like a Coen Bros. movie, with dumb hicks hoist on the petard of absurdity, and a highly stylized, fish-eyed visual style. I thought it looked great, in fact, particularly the long section set at night with a huge full moon always in the background and curtains of cloud flowing across the sky -- with flowing sound effects! It's actually a very quiet movie, with long periods in which you hear nothing but (highly-stylized) ambient sounds -- squeaking leather, crunching footsteps, creaking doors. (In the theater last night this meant I could frequently hear the soundtrack of the movie playing upstairs.)

It takes place in an isolated noodle shop near some painted hills (an utterly beautiful, unearthly landscape), with an owner that tortures his unhappy wife, who has a effeminate boyfriend she wants to escape with. The wife gets a gun from a Persian trader. The husband hires a detective to find out what she's up to. Absurdity ensues. This is set in a past era where guns are rare, and the (imperial?) police look like soldiers, dressed in black armor and armed with swords and spears. Part of the absurdity is setting a neo-noir in this era of Chinese history.

It's an interesting choice for Zhang Yimou, who was last seen directing the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. Before that he made a trio of period swordplay movies (usually a favorite genre for me) that I disliked so much that I didn't bother with the third one. Those movies were quite a departure from his earlier films, of which the two I've seen were quiet stories (one comedic, one nostalgic) about village life in modern China. This one seems like a complete lark. Well, more power to him. He probably needed a lark after representing the country to the world at the Olympics.

Comments

[wrdnrd]

My curiosity is piqued about this movie, but i'm still not sure how i feel about continuing to try Zhang Yimou films. They're just so intense. I love the visual intensity, but they're also emotionally intense. I enjoyed "Raise the Red Lantern" and "To Live," but i HATED "Curse of the Golden Flower." Maybe i'm better able to appreciate emotional intensity when it's focusing on victims of a cruel system rather than on the perpetrators of a cruel system.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was really put off Zhang after Hero and House of the Flying Daggers, but while I wouldn't say this is a great film, I liked it better, maybe because it was an outright, goofy farce.

[wrdnrd]

Yeah, about the only thing left from Yimou that i might be willing to try is "goofy farce."

I'd forgotten i'd seen "House of Flying Daggers," but i also hated it. Well, no, i loved it up until the last 15 minutes.

[kdotdammit.livejournal.com]

It's coming to The Loft soon, so I'll check it out.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I know you're not a Coen Bros. fan, so it would be interesting to see what you think of someone else doing an adaptation of their worldview.