介绍:
Mortal men and women like success stories. They adore successful figures and enjoy projecting their own egos with such stories. Few of them understand that success sometimes comes as a curse rather than a blessing. Chinese director Chen Kaige is one of those successful yet unfortunate people who live their lives under a curse. His 1993 movie "Farewell My Concubine" made him the only Chinese director to win a Palme d'Or, but like his other recent outings, Chen's latest project "Monk Comes Down the Mountain" has once again put his name and fame into question.
The comedy-fantasy-adventure film is based on the best-selling novel Dao Shi Xia Shan by Xu Haofeng, who also wrote the story for Wong Kar Wai's martial arts drama "The Grandmaster." Chen's source material is about a Taoist monk who comes down the mountain to join the mundane world below. Like "The Grandmaster," "Monk Comes Down the Mountain" features Chinese martial arts and a spiritual pilgrimage. Although both offer stunning imagery and special effects, Wong Kar Wai's masterpiece trumps Chen Kaige's product in many aspects.
First of all, the action choreography in "Monk Comes Down the Mountain" mainly involves an awkward abuse of wire work, which is neither realistic nor romantic. Actor Zhang Zhen gave a brief but impressive demonstration of his Kung Fu prowess in "The Grandmasters," but here in Chen's story, his character is reduced to one of a mascot.
Secondly, in both movies Wong and Chen assume the role of a life coach and peddle plenty of inspirational reflections, but at least during his second try to render the film into 3D, Wong has managed to make the ideas coherent with the story and reachable for ordinary moviegoers. In comparison Chen's condescending stance alienates viewers from his story, like a mountain that separates the monks from the real world. The main idea of "Monk Comes Down the Mountain" is one who seeks the ultimate truth must experience the lives of the ordinary people, but this simple notion is deliberately made to sound mysterious and unfathomable in the movie.
Now I am not saying our dear director Chen Kaige is shallow-minded and incapable of having mysterious and unfathomable thoughts, on the contrary, as the son of famous director Chen Hua'ai, Chen is perhaps the most well-read and most thoughtful among China's fifth generation directors. But while having sophisticated ideas may be his stronger suit, conveying them to the general public is not.
In the 2005 fantasy film "The Promise" his tentative move to produce a blockbuster movie met a disastrous end. In the 2012 drama "Caught in the Web" Chen tried to catch up with developments in society and on the internet, but his own perspective was absent from the pictures. In "Monk Comes Down the Mountain", Chen somewhat retracts his steps and adds some cultural elements, but they amount to nothing but icon-mongering. It seems his attempts to court public favour always appear in the form of belated clichés, while his return to his own roots always end up confusing the audience.
Certainly "Farewell My Concubine" will forever be the highlight on Chen's resume, but that masterpiece is the result of many top level filmmakers working together as a team. Without the assistance of an adequate team, Chen Kaige is trapped in the shrine of his past glory and left alone to err. With a handful of setbacks in the past few years, now Mr. Chen may believe he has come down the mountain and lived with the ordinary people, but the truth is his learning days are not over. Unless he finds a way to translate his philosophy into accessible images and stories, or a team that helps him in that regard, the public will continue questioning his past success.
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