One of the reasons I participated in the Toronto International Film Festival this year was because I was looking for something different, something challenging that would engage the mind and not just another fluffy movie to be filed in the annex of “things I’ve watched but don’t really remember.”
So for my last movie of the 2005 TIFF season, I picked Tsai Ming-Liang’s The Wayward Cloud (Tian Bian Yi Duo Yun). Starring Lee Kang-Sheng as Hsiao-Kang and Chen Shiang-Chyi as Shiang-Chyi, this was also one of the movies recommended by the Toronto Star. My past experiences with independent Asian cinema have always been pleasant: not too artistic to be unenjoyable by the masses, not too overproduced to make the art descriptor seem like contrived bullet point added to the advertising campaign. I’ve never experienced any of Tsai’s movies before but the description provided on the TIFF website was quirky enough that I was rather excited to watch this movie.
My original plan was to go watch The Wayward Cloud with PD and PL. _AFTER_ I purchased the tickets, PD and PL both found excuses to not attend: something to do with a Les Mis show and a U2 concert. Bogus! I think both they had hot dates for a Friday night and conveniently decided to ditch this hopelessly single guy. Fortunately I have other cool friends I can hang out with. Instead of PD and PL, I went with SL and ML. SL and ML are both in the creative business so they were much better companions anyways. (PD/PL, you suck!)
What a brilliant movie! The Wayward Cloud turned out to be everything I was expecting. This was by far the most enjoyable movie I’ve watched during this year’s TIFF, and the best movie I’ve watched in quite a while. For me, this movie is definitely a 5 out of 5. A disclaimer though for this rating: as one reviewer put it, this movie is for people who enjoy reading movies and not for people who just want to watch a movie. SL estimates that maybe 10% of the attendees would have understood the movie, and by the nature of the event, this was already a very select crowd.
I am unable to resist putting my thoughts about this movie on paper (or in my blog as the medium may be). And since I have proven myself unable to be terse, here comes an unintended dissertation on Tsai Ming-Liang’s The Wayward Cloud:
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What is The Wayward Cloud? Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to hear Tsai speak after the showing, but my take on the movie is that it’s an exploration of human desires: having a lot of something but wanting something else. While that premise does sound rather boring, its Tsai’s use of cinematic devices throughout the movie that makes it such a pleasure to watch. It is also a black comedy (at least that’s what ML said… I really don’t know what that term means). You will find yourself wanting to laugh but suppressing it because your sense of common decorum tells you that it’s rude. My advice: go ahead and laugh. It is funny!
What glorious sounds (or lack thereof)!
When you watch a movie, you expect certain sounds to emanate from the film. Whether it is the dialogue, the background music or the sound effects, you expect to hear “regular” sounds. In The Wayward Cloud, Tsai plays around with the sound by muting most of the ambient noises and exaggerating selected ones, for example the clanking of the wooden clogs, the squishing of the watermelons, the staccato of the jackhammers. In terms of character dialogue, I don’t even remember if Lee spoke at all.
The Wayward Cloud is not a silent film where the addition of sound is used to mask the silence. Through his use of sound, Tsai pulls you into the movie by attenuating your senses to the film: you are not distracted by noise but are focused on the sound; you are able to hear and enjoy the musical qualities of the sounds and become hypnotised by the simplicity. And this clarity is such a pleasure to experience that your ears perk up and demands more.
For me, the aural aspect of the movie was a particularly pleasurable because of my poor eyesight. Being as occularly challenged as I am, when my eyes are tired they can become overwhelmed by the visual noise of everyday life. When that happens, I close my eyes to shut out the noise and just focus on using touch and sound to guide me. Tsai’s use of sound was able to reproduce that experience.
Surprisingly, I found that at the end of the movie – right about the time the Chen dropped the watermelon – this sound effect wasn’t quite as prominent. I’m not sure whether it’s because Tsai turned down the sound, or whether it was because I was so engrossed in the character development that I wasn’t paying as much attention to the sound.
What a funny place!
The Wayward Cloud takes place in Taipei during a severe drought. Hoarding and conserving water becomes a way of life for these people; for Chen is her raison d’être.
This Taipei is perpetually caught in the twilight of the afternoon, that period of time during the day where there is an absence of activity on the streets because everyone is in their offices, at school, etc. The time of day when you feel out of place if you were wandering those same streets.
So why Taipei during a drought? First, the drought serves as a backdrop for the absurdity that occurs in the movie. It gives the characters a reason to engage in their bizarre behaviour. Second, the city’s blandness helps to illustrate the character’s isolation; when you are bored of life, everything seems so far away.
Have you f*cked a watermelon today?
Tsai utilises two key devices in The Wayward Cloud to illustrate the leimotivs of sexual desires: the watermelon and water. These devices symbolize two extremes on the sexual scale with the watermelon representing wanton sexuality and the water representing the absence thereof.
Tsai introduces the watermelon at the beginning of the movie with Lee literally fucking a watermelon juxtaposed against the vagina of the porn actress Sumomo Yozakura. You aren’t quite sure whether the watermelon is just a method that Tsai is using to avoid showing the vagina, or whether it is a kinky toy used by Lee. Tsai isn’t quite as obvious with his use of water and it almost seems to be just a necessity of the drought.
Lee’s affinity is to the watermelon. He makes his money from pornography and therefore has more than a sufficient supply of watermelon. But his enjoyment of the watermelon is a double-edged sword. Once done with his job, he is obsessed with washing the taint of the watermelon off with water. But the water – and correspondingly sexual purity - is elusive; his own supply is limited or tainted (à la the shower sex scene) and he is happy to partake in Chen’s supply.
Chen’s character’s affinity is to the water. She hoards it, but her acquisition and consumption is more obsessive in nature than necessary. While she has more than ample water to survive, she is curious and desires Lee and his watermelon. But Lee doesn’t want to taint Chen and refuses her offer of watermelon [juices].
One of the funnier subtext is the fictional government warning that is pervasive throughout the movie. During the drought, the government is encouraging its citizens to drink watermelon juice instead of water. Perhaps Tsai is suggesting in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way that sex can be a substitution for the boring normalcy of every day life.
Did they get what they want?
The procession of the story can be anticipated by Chen’s acquisition of her own whole watermelon. Watermelons are fragile fruits and you can foresee the watermelon cracking open in a very violent way. And it does.
The movie starts to come to a conclusion when Chen shatters her precious watermelon quite clumsily and soon she finds herself the subject of Lee’s sexual desires. To put it bluntly, he ejaculates in her mouth instead of completing his porn shoot with a dead woman. Chen gets her watermelon, and Lee gets his water. But is this what they want?
I wonder what Tsai would have said if I asked him that question?
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Okay, I’ve written enough. This posting took me forever to complete. Now I’m bored. Moving on to something else…
