The River Film - Chinese Cinema Paper PDF

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Marie Thomas Chinese Cinema April 8, 2015 Viewing Notes for The River This past viewing was of a peculiar 1997 film called The River directed by Tsai Mingliang. That portrayed a family dynamic littered with incestuous and homosexual affairs. One of the main elements that appeared throughout the film was water, which is alluded to in the title, and then is seen throughout the film in bathhouses, the thunderstorms, and the use of it within the house. Water is one of Chinese elements that signifies harmony, flow of life and balance; at least it does in Chinese fung shui. That being said the use of water in this movie seems to do the opposite of healing. Tsai manages to portray in this movie a family with a lack of connection and communication that is distant and impersonal with three people that go separate ways and perform life almost entirely by themselves that is a very real thought in today’s modern society. The first scene I wish to talk about is the scene in which I am assuming is the reason for the title when the main character runs into his ex-girlfriend and the dynamic of the movie is a movie within a movie and the main character, Hsiao-Kang, is convinced to play the part of a dead body in the river, to do so he must lie face down in the dirty Tamsui River. This image is striking to me because for a moment I was reminded of the horrifying pictures I saw of postKatrina with the bodies lying in the river, but then in another horrifying moment I saw the beauty in the image. The water is a lovely yet ominous blue color that as it reaches farther out into the edge of the upper screen it starts to seem to reflect the horizon and change to a more purplish color. He is wearing a white shirt that is in contrast to the water, and easily seen, if I didn’t know better I would think he was corpse. The high angle shot of this scene perfectly frames the body between the camera people on either side of him. It’s a shot within a shot, the same shot being use to capture the movie is what we are seeing as an audience, only we also see the other body

lying off to the side, and the colors that surround the body including the entire feel for the rest of the film. As nothing in this shot suggests a happy ending. Instead all put together the scene invokes ideas of pain and suffering of what is to come, suggesting that perhaps our main character main indeed become a corpse. It is made abundantly clear that it is probably this moment that has poisoned Hsiao-Kang and the reason his neck is in such pain. He has been contaminated. Throughout the film it is clear that there is a lot of sex that is present throughout the film, and while pretty intense at times I also find it also interesting that during these times are some of the only times that the characters seem to acknowledge others within the film. I find the lighting within these moments also very interesting as Tsai has drafted the bodies of the characters in shadow and only allowing few shots of light, we are able to hear the muffled noises and moans of pleasure but we are unable to see the people who are making the sounds. This lighting further suggests this idea of distance that Tsai has portrayed throughout the movie, it also suggests the anonymousness of sex and how in the scene between the main character and his ex-girlfriend are having sex it then changes to the father engaging in homosexual sex. As an audience member I hadn’t even noticed that the pair of people had changed, thus reasoning that the director sees no difference in either hookup. The moment I believe is the change is the long shot of the hang resting on the orange blanket. We see only moments of bodies in the light beams otherwise the people are obscured in totally darkness. The first article, The Enigma of Incest and the Staging of Kinship Family Remains in The River, written by Rey Chow discusses the idea of incest and sex, she proposes many questions within the first few paragraphs trying to answer the enigmas of incest, how do we chose to answer the confusing scene in the gay bathhouse of the father and son participating in hand jobs

together, how do we define what happened? How do we, as Rey Chow asks, “clarify this status of the event shown?” The end of the opening couple paragraphs leaves the reader with a question: “if same-sex marriage should become socially permissible and recognizable, wouldn’t it mean that same-sex incest, too, must finally become thinkable?” (183). The main idea of this paper however is stated just a line above this question stating that Tsai’s film in 1997 has already breached and taken us to an new insight before the same-sex controversy in North America. He had already produced us with a foresight that helps us understand the idea of same-sex incest. It is apparent as the article continues that Tsai’s films portray many scenes that put us out of our comfort zones, as there are many scenes of sexual puzzles and enigmas and scenes that are oddly disturbing. But what everything has in common, as it is made clear to Rey Chow is that all of his movies are idealized rather on the mind but on the bodies of humans, Tsai makes his movies clear with the movement and the emphasis on what the human bodies do throughout his films. In The River, this is really no different, but it isn’t the only interesting approach he uses, the other that he uses is the “visual/visible” idea that “enacts a sense of isolation, a deliberate “disconnect”.” Tsai’s cinematography and character portray these ideas very well. What I find most interesting about this movies and the insights of this article is the idea that there is a since of intimacy throughout ever sexual interaction within the film although anonymous. Even in the last sexual encounter between the father and son we find a great deal of intimacy, “the exchange we witness nonetheless commands sympathy and respect: as the two men caress and satisfy each other, just for a few moments, their mutuality touches some us in a profound way.” Then it switches to the father and son doing their activities after what has happened, still distant. The film offers no intense plot, no death no problem is ever solved and instead we find this same-sex and same-sex incest filtered in the lives of a family that gives us a interesting insight at what the

world is to become. As Rey Chow’s last sentence of the article breathes true, that these “allegorical social figures that Tsai has made are giving a sense of the life still to come.” The second article, On Tsai Mingliang’s The River, written by Gina Marchetti discusses the idea of “queer” cinema which is what some Chinese Cinema has been referred to because it at times deals with same-sex issues for a long time. In this article Marchetti looks at The River “within the context of global Chinese cinema as it intersects with international queer cinema in order to explore this double articulation of issues of concern to those inside and outside the Chinese diaspora, the Chinese gay community, and the audience for international queer cinema more generally.” Marchetti gives us a brief history of Tsai Mingliang continuing by letting us know he is considered a “Second phase” of the Taiwan’s New Cinema by way to let people know that gay life is abnormal within more dominant media, Tainwan wants to “normalize it while simultaneously maintaining the Confucian status quo.” We continue through this article to continue to see the idea of Confucian within the movie, as the central relationship is one between a father and son. There is the social hierarchy, but as an audience member I would to say even more so that in the ending same-sex incest scene the son really does submit to the father, so the idea is still there, we still see Confucian ideals even with subjects that are risqué. Marchetti argues that “gay life becomes a metaphor for Taiwan” and that the “father’s homosexuality is the sign of decadent patriarchy and political vulnerability” that has already been idealized when Tsai was quotes in the beginning about his father who had in the end become so fragile and while in this metaphor the son is “an emblem of shifting identities, loss of essence and questionable future.” This idea spreads wide and far and attracts this to a new meaning an idea that the “diaspora did not create the queer, but the queer fueled the diaspora” which is powerful believe that is present throughout the world today....