Asian Cinema Thread

[Vashdaman]

There's nothing wrong with having your own weird headcannon on movies but pushing it on others as the only possible interpretation that everyone should see as well is just incredibly narcissistic.

Not sure if this is directed at me or not, but if it was, then a) despite my flippant remark about not understanding how people read the film differently in the following line (and post) I acknowledged there is a variety of valid interpretations and b) describing it as my "own weird headcannon" is you trying to push your interpretation as the correct one by belittling other views. Otomo and Aion don't agree with my views on Woo, but they're able to not be rude about it!

Anyway back to the topic, I know what @Aion means about the way male oriented movies and culture can often seek to minimise women and centre men as the core of the universe. It's a weird thing. Maybe female culture does a similar thing, but possibly not quite to the same extent, I don't know. It's not just that phenomenon that make Woo's HK movies feel very homoerotic to me though. Ringo Lam's City on Fire has a lot of the same themes really, but somehow does't feel so obviously homoerotic to me, it is an absolutely amazing film though! The difference in Woo's films is the intense romanticism and emotion that you don't always find in other male oriented works. He was inspired by the romanticism of French cinema. You don't have to read these films in a homoerotic way at all, but I'm clearly not the first person to do so either.

 

[Professor Irony]

To the best of my knowledge, the reading of Woo’s films as queer-coded is something that’s been popular among fans in the west from around the time they started to become available on VHS. I wouldn’t want to deny anyone the opportunity to read it that way (or even want to definitively say that it isn’t there) but having seen a lot of HK genre films over the past few years (one of my mates is very big into that scene) I do feel it’s probably something that comes from our western interpretation of things that symbolise something else in another culture.

On a lighter note, I am pleasantly surprised to see all the love for ABT2. Bagged down though it is by the efforts of both Woo and Tsui Hark to make two very different films, it’s a movie I like more every time I see it.

Also gonna go out on a limb and say I think you’d like My Heart Is That Eternal Rose, if you’ve not seen it Vash.