CAPSULE REVIEWS

A little under the weather with a late winter cold, enjoying a few capsules of Alka Seltzer Plus, I turn to the Chinese medicine of videos. Finished Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber, the wuxia fantasy set in part in Wudangshan, nearly as familiar to me as my own neighborhood. The double-edged plot swirls around the acquisition of two important magical weapons in the Yuan Dynasty, and the plight of Zhang Wuji (or Chang Mo Kei, for the Cantonese speakers), the ultra-cute top-knotted orphan, who has a bad habit of promising to marry any woman he meets along the way. He has extraordinary kung fu and leadership skills, but is a little blind in the relationship area. (He has over-committment issues, and celibacy seemed not to be an option.) Of the four fiancees, one returns in self-exile to lead her monastic sect in the jianghu; another conveniently, but poignantly, dies (or so everyone thought); the third carries out some revenge missions that both help and hinder Wuji/Mo Kei, and the fourth, the most unlikely, but perkiest, a Yuan princess, disowns her Mongol heritage to become his life-partner. This all suggests that arranged marriages may have been a good idea. But who speaks for an orphan?

Or maybe not, as seen in In the Wild Mountains (Ye Shan), another hilly escape, this time to the Shaanxi countryside, where the lifestyle is undergoing Deng Xiaoping's economic transition. Here, the setting also looked familiar to me; in 1988, the Wizard and I took a train for a weekend in a remote area three hours out of Beijing in a peasant's guest house to wander about the mountains, eat noodles and ride horses. Last spring, I mentioned to my guide in Beijing that I had been to Ye Shan Po, but I was never quite sure where it was...west, north, south? "How do you know about Ye Shan Po," he asked, as if I had discovered a state secret. He told me it has become much more developed as a tourist destination. I feel partly responsible. (I was part of the rising of the Chinese middle class?) It only occurs to me at this moment that the movie's Chinese name is the same as the area I visited: Ye Shan. Wild Mountain. Don't know what the "Po" might be, a yin, earth spirit maybe?

In the movie, two brothers, one traditional and lazy, the other, fired up by the idea of money-making schemes, are married to the wrong women. In an effectively legal wife swap, they manage to live the lives they were supposed to. If you're an entrepreneur, probably a supportive equally driven spouse is a good match; if you just want to kick back and smoke the tobacco and make babies, a quiet domestic partner is probably more suited for happiness. The movie explores the changes in social and economic structures that were (and still are) happening as a result of economic reforms in rural China, but the landscape was what really grabbed me.

I picked up My Son, a more recent Korean film, at the going-out-of-business sale at my neighborhood Blockbuster (everything must go...no one seemed to want this one but me). The tale of a father, imprisoned for life for robbery and murder, gets a day's leave to meet the son he hasn't seen since the boy was an infant. That leaves a lot of room for emotional drama and some comic moments too (mostly rendered by the guard who accompanies the prisoner on his visit home). Compassion in the face of great tragedy is the theme of this, and if you liked Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, you will enjoy this one as well. Pay close attention the first time around; it has a completely surprising twist that you will only be able to experience once.

Lightening the mood with some martial arts, The Prodigal Son, not a Biblical epic, but a 30-year-old and fabulous kick flick by Sammo Hung (rendered as Samo in the credits) with his buddy Yuen Biao in his first big break...all these actors who were younger then, but still kicking. I especially like a scene, Chapter 12 on the DVD, the "Drunken Calligraphy" demonstration: Sammo Hung performing with a huge inky brush, not quite the way my Chinese painting teacher delivers her lessons. This is hard to find to buy (even Netflix had to get it from another location), but in a simple search I found it for you to watch here. (For a calligraphy lesson from a master, start at about 56:50 in the video.)