Asian Cinema Thread

cfx said:
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.
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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.
 
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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.
 
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Bullet in the Head (1990)

Holy smokes, this was amazing. Completely and utterly insane movie. An absolute fever dream, or more like nightmare. This one was like ABT x Twin Peaks x Apocalypse Now x a Chuck Norris film. But really this is just Woo taking his hyper emotionally intense, melodramatic, romanticised stylised violence formula to its extreme.

This just does not relent for a single second of its 2 hour runtime, it's one ultra intense emotional scene after another, and one bloodbath after another. It must have been exhausting to make. It's Shakespearian HK ultra violence. And as such, yes it's once again very homoerotic (if you're inclined to reading it that way, as I am). It's also the most brutal and harrowing Woo movie I've seen yet. Mostly set in Vietnam during the war, Woo really leans in to the horror of it all. As a result, despite still being full of Woo's trademark glamorous romantic violence, it's genuinely quite horrifying too.

There seems to be quite an anti capitalist bent to Woo's movies too, money and greed causing the downfall of blissful brotherhood and the spiral of violence in every instance. This movie is probably the most emphatic one of them all in that regard.

This is right up with Woo's best for me. It's one hell of a trip. I'll be interested to see how this compares to Tsui Hark's ABT 3 which was released the year before this and also set in Vietnam, although I fear this will be an impossible act to follow.
 
It’s definitely worth watching ABT3, but it’s easily the least of the series. Apparently Bullet in the Head started life as Woo’s intended third Better Tomorrow film before his falling out with Tsui Hark, so I don’t know if maybe Hark was rushing to get his film done first out of spite, but it just feels like something is missing. It does have Anita Mui though, always good to see her in a leading role.
 
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