By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.25
Director: Luo Li
Starring: Dian Mai | Hai Zhang | Jia Liu | Jie Zi | Juchuan Li | Li Wen | Wei Wu | Yi Zuo
Original language title: Tang huang you difu
Country: canada, china
Year: 2013
Running time: 67
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2431406/combined
Kyle says: “The awkwardly but amusingly Anglicized title EMPEROR VISITS THE HELL is based upon three chapters from the 16th century Chinese novel, Journey to the West” — not to be confused with Hong Kong actor-director Stephen Chow’s recent film version with the same title as the novel. Interested parties are directed to a helpful article on the novel in Wikipedia, since some audience members have found the story indecipherable. In a nutshell, the gangster Dragon King attempts to alter the weather and fails, dooming him to death, in response to which he becomes a ghost haunting bureaucratic boss and calligrapher Emperor Li Shimin, who manipulates both fiction and reality to alter events according to his own plans. Words like ‘gangster’ and ‘bureaucratic boss’ are used because this adaptation is in modern dress, instead of the lavish period costumes and weaponry beloved by fans of traditional Hong Kong cinema.
”We smile at the film’s disjuncture between ancient and modern China, in tacit conspiracy with both narrative events and subtitles. In further possible confusion, the director introduces ‘comic book’ storytelling — a device in widespread use during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s with still frames and text in evocation of movies largely unavailable in China. This device deepens the relationship between word and image, even as it challenges the viewer. At one point there is a line about society’s need for ‘a congress to salvage stray ghosts,’ a notion with which I could not agree more. During a delightfully drunken dinner party that concludes the film, an actor proclaims, ‘The things in real life are the f***ing hell!’ Lusciously creamy digital black-and-white photography establishes a new artistic benchmark for independent cinema. An early scene of an automobile drive at night along a deserted country road is breathtakingly scored with German countertenor/East Village performance artist Klaus Nomi’s rendition of Henry Purcell’s 1691 aria of the Cold Genius from ‘King Arthur’ Aside from the tune being the basis of Michael Nyman’s score for Peter Greenaway’s memorable THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER (1989), it seems that this road to the hell is paved with icy cold instead of fiery coals. 3.5 cats
“Seen Saturday, March 23, 2013, New Directors/New Films at the Walter Reade Theater, Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York.”
Bruce says: “Rarely have I been more aware of the culture gap with other cultures than I was while viewing EMPEROR VISITS THE HELL. Based on chapters nine through eleven of the classic 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West, this film is somewhat of an enigma from start to finish. In all fairness, the lacking coherence may have as much to do with budget constraints as cultural differences. Director Luo Li has made many interesting artistic choices. Overall the film reflects a bold, daring attempt – sometimes forced but always engaging. Beautifully filmed – almost poetically so – in black and white, the film is set in modern times which moves the story from the epic to the mundane world of two-bit gangsters. Klaus Nomi singing Purcell adds to the mysterious, eerie beauty of one sequence.
“The film begins with a man seemingly engaged in calligraphy. He is copying text. We later learn that he is the eponymous character but that is not immediately evident. The remainder of the film is a sequence of vignettes with rival gangs, including the capture of the emperor and his ultimate return to his position of pre-eminence.
“At the end of the film, the action moves to a restaurant where one drunken man is ranting at his table. It takes more than a few seconds to realize this is the actor who plays the emperor and what we are seeing is akin to a drunken wrap party for the film. It is an unusual stylistic choice, to say the very least.
“EMPEROR VISITS THE HELL was filmed with no permits and will in all likelihood never be released theatrically in China due to its critical nature. Modern China does not fare well here. At the screening director Li did explain that the Chinese concepts of heaven and hell were quite different from those in Western culture. ‘They are extensions of our own reality,’ is the way he puts
it. 3 cats
“(EMPEROR VISITS THE HELL screened at the 2013 New Directors/New Films Festival co-sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln center and the Museum of Modern Art.)”