Customer Reviews

Good Men, Good Women

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GOOD MEN GOOD WOMEN is the third part of his Taiwan-trilogy (which is in all respects with Ritwik Ghataks refugee trilogy the greatest trilogy in the history of cinema). And this film is a masterpiece like THE PUPPETMASTER or A CITY OF SADNESS. It proofs again that Hou is probably one of the last great stylists in cinema. He re-etablished the long shots (what the French call plan sequence) and he is probably the master of this long shots. GOOD MEN; GOOD WOMEN is Hous most emotional film and a strong reflection about film making (this film is a film in a film) and his most complex film, told in at least three different time levels. And again I feel that Hou began there where Orson Welles stopped or had to stop because of his producers. Beside that, we find as well in this film one of the outstanding performances of an actress of the Nineties: Annie Shizuka-Inoh who interpreted one of the deepest female characters I have ever seen in a film by a male director. And she brings two diferent styles together in her acting: the exhibitionistic play of Chaplin and the introverted play of Ozus favorite actor Chishu Ryu. For my side it is Hous most moving film and it complets this outstanding trilogy in its deep wise reflection on history and cinema as well.
Hou is not just a good director; he belongs to the greatest directors in the history of cinema beside Ozu, Ford, Ghatak, Renoir or Hitchcock.

Like the films of Ozu, Dreyer, or Von Trier, Hou Hsiao-Hsien's films tend to alienate a good portion of their audiences and turn the others into raving mad fanatics of the director's work. I'm definitely one of the fanatics.

Good Men Good Women is one of Hou's more ambitious films. It, like the Puppetmaster, attempts to meld the lives of its main character to the history of the period of Taiwan in which that character lived. In this film, Hou examines the life of an actress in the present day as she prepares for her next role as an anti-Japanese freedom fighter who was of some national acclaim in the 1940's and 1950's. The film freely changes time periods between the modern day actress's life, the life of the freedom fighter she's playing, the actress's own past, and the actress's conception of her role in outtakes from the film she's to shoot. This is somewhat confusing, as the film expects you to put it all together yourself, but the answers are all there for you to find.

The film's acting and pacing are similar to other films by Hou, but the film is shorter than most of his others, which might make it a great introduction to his work. I'd reccomend it highly to anyone though, as it proves challenging, artistic, politically bold films are still being made.

For me, this is the best application of Hou's rigorous formality. His long-take style and the manner in which three generations of Taiwan are woven through one character are breathtaking. It's amazing to watch the shots echo and reflect each other, while the lives of the characters do the same. (My favorite: a shot in the bedroom, using a mirror. The scene builds to sex between the two leads. Later, a discussion in the same room, shot the same way, with a conversation concerning parenthood and abortion.) This is certainly not for all tastes, but is unquestionably a masterpiece.

Good Men, Good Women opens with the enigmatic words, "When yesterday's sadness is about to die. When tomorrow's good cheer is marching towards us. Then people say, don't cry. So why don't we sing." A static, monochromatic shot then focuses on a group of travelers laden with baggage, singing as they traverse the rural countryside of Guangdong Province. The image proves to be a transitory glimpse of a painful chapter in Taiwanese history, as a group of idealistic students travel from Taiwan to mainland China during the 1940s in order to lend their support for the resistance fight against the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, only to be denounced, years later, as Communist sympathizers during the Kuomintang's White Terror campaign of the 1950s under Chiang Kai-Shek. The tragic plight of these well-intentioned resistance fighters is the subject of a proposed film in modern day Taiwan entitled Good Men, Good Women, and the role of the real life heroine, Chiang Bi-Yu, has been offered to an emotionally withdrawn and inscrutable actress named Liang Ching (Annie Shizuka Inoh). One morning, Liang is awakened to the sound of a ringing telephone in her apartment amidst the background distraction of a television set (which is ironically playing Yasujiro Ozu's Late Spring). She receives a disturbing fax that details her intimate thoughts from an ill fated relationship with a smalltime gangster named Ah Wei (Jack Kao), culled from her stolen personal diaries. Soon, it is revealed that Liang has been repeatedly harassed by an anonymous thief and perpetually silent telephone caller whose underlying motives remain unclear. The violative transmission of her diary entries compels Liang to reluctantly revisit her unsavory past as a promiscuous and drug-addicted bar hostess in Taipei, and her volatile relationship with the gentle Ah Wei. As Liang becomes the entrusted emissary for the story of Chiang Bi-Yu's struggle, she gradually becomes the generational conduit between Taiwan's turbulent past, and the decadent, uncertain future.

The final chapter of Hou Hsiao-hsien's trilogy on Taiwanese history (that also includes A City of Sadness and The Puppetmaster), Good Men, Good Women provides a poignant, harrowing, and thematically complex portrait of postwar and contemporary Taiwan. By presenting the temporal confluence of three separate historically and personally relevant time periods, Hou not only reveals Liang's behavioral pattern of anonymous affairs, emotional isolation, and inner turmoil, but also parallels her self-destructive behavior with the national crisis of identity, hedonism, and cultural disconnection in contemporary Taiwan. In essence, Liang's betrayal of Ah Wei's memory is a modern day, personal manifestation of a national, historical event: the seemingly random persecution of Taiwanese people by their own government during the White Terror. Inevitably, like the nation, Liang is forced to reconcile with her own culpability and ignominious past in order to find closure and inner peace.

"Good Men, Good Women" is a gorgeously compelling film that artfully captures the experience of modern Taiwanese history and the struggle for a national Taiwanese identity. Hou Hsiao-Hsien overlaps the story of Chiang Bi-Yu, a Taiwanese woman executed in the 1940s for distributing Communist pamphlets, and an actress in modern times playing the role of Chiang in a movie about her life (both women played by the same actress), in a way that the two lives seem nearly intertwined, each reflecting on the other in light of Taiwanese history. Most compelling, though, are the relationships and loss of these women as presented by Hou. Each woman is tormented by the loss of her lover, losses that resonate not merely in relation to these characters, but in the national strife of Taiwan and its effect on the people. Hou employs slow, concentrated cinematography, reminiscent of Yasujir' Ozu, allowing the characters to expand into the silence and space created around them. Though it may take more than one viewing to piece together the symbolic confusion of the storyline, it is well worth the patience. "Good Men, Good Women" challenges many Western conventions and sensibilities of film, but it is an utterly moving portrayal of the tangles of modern Taiwan and the implications of its history.