Customer Reviews

Happy Times

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There was a time when I longed to see another Zhang Yimou film. His greatest films, "Raise the Red Lantern," "Shanghai Triad," "Ju-dou," and "Red Sorghum" are--without a doubt--some of the richest cinematic experiences--and I'll stress the word "experiences" that I've EVER had.

But something happened to Zhang Yimou, and his artistry--as perhaps one of the greatest directors of all time--waned. Was it perhaps because he lost his muse, Gong Li, star of "Shanghai Triad" and "Raise the Red Lantern"? Many professional reviewers speculate that Gong Li's departure is the cause for Yimou's artistic slump, but regardless of the cause, Yimou seems to be on the rise again with this film "Happy Times."

Zhao (Bensahn Zhao), an unemployed, middle-aged lonely factory worker longs for a wife. After being jilted 18 times, he decides to marry an unpleasant, domineering divorcee. While friends scoff at photographs of Zhao's large new fiancee, Zhao defends her rubenesque proportions by stating that the other 18 women left him because they were skinny, and as this fiancee is far from skinny, Zhao believes she will stay put and marry him.

Zhao, in order to impress the divorcee, brags that as the manager of the "Happy Times" hotel, he is fairly well-to-do. Problems develop when the divorcee contends that they need 50,000 yen in order to get married in style, and this is when Zhao starts to involve his friends in his relationship. Acting on the advice of his best friend (who also has no money), Zhao refurbishes an abandoned bus as a romantic retreat for lovers with the idea that the lovers will pay for their privacy.

The divorcee, who really is a most unpleasant character, decides that the non-existent "Happy Times" hotel would be the perfect place to dump her unwanted blind step-daughter, Ying, and before Zhao realizes it, he is responsible for the neglected, frail blind teenage girl. Zhao's faulty logic, accompanied by his unrelenting desire to please and placate his nasty fiancee lead to further fabrications and eventually to disaster.

The title of the DVD, "Happy Times," is ironic--just as the "Happy Times" hotel does not exist, there are also really no "happy times" for any of the characters in this film. Happiness remains elusive--or exists in the imagination, at best. Zhao's make-believe hotel--a metaphor for life--is really only a gutted, abandoned bus that serves as a tacky love nest. Similarly, happy times for Zhao and Ying are elusive and fleeting moments spent eating an ice cream, and describing the colours and patterns in a dress. There is no lasting happiness in reality, and yet indulging in fabrications and make-believe ultimately also brings unhappiness to those who indulge in fantasies--displacedhuman

I almost didn't rent this movie-because--quite simply--I thought the cover picture held promises of a silly little movie--good for maybe a few "chunky mama" jokes--boy was I wrong--this is one of the better movies I've seen recently. The movie does begin along the lines of what I expected-as Zhao creates his "Happy Times Hotel"-and there is a bit of humor--but once he begins his relationship with Ying--the story progresses into a dramatic touching relationship between the two outcasts--young blind Ying and middle aged, never married Zhao. Their relationship is not a romantic one--but a paternal one-with Zhao writing a fake letter to Ying from her father who abandoned her--among other things.
The ending is not the happy, feel good ending typical of American movies--which is probably one of the things that makes it stand out.
The movie is subtitled-which I have no problem with--but my wife doesn't normally like subtitled movies--but she loved this one. If you don't care for subtitles--give this one a try anyway--it's worth the little extra effort!

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I've long been a film buff - my favorite films tend to be artsy and rather pedantic. Because of this, my family generally doesn't like to sit with me and watch movies.

So, when I started "Happy Times" last night, I thought they'd gradually wander off and find something else to do.

But, they were enthralled! This movie is the perfect balancing act between comedy, drama, and the enduring love we feel for those who have touched us in a special way.

This is a great, great movie.

Too many Americans shun foreign films. This is one they shouldn't miss. When the movie ended, my oldest son turned to me and said, "Wow. I think Hollywood has forgotten how to make movies like this!"

American filmmakers seem to think they have to descend to the baser instincts in order to make "adult" movies.

Yet, "Happy Times" - and countless other foreign films - never seem to sink to this level. These films are always excellent.

I think the issue is that Hollywood has forgotten how to write a good story; they've forgotten that basic human values can be enduring, can be entertaining, if only they would jettison their cynical baggage.

"Happy Times" will make you laugh and cry, smile and reflect with pride on the better angels of our nature.

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Audrey Hepburn has always been one of my heart throbs. Last year, the French actress Audrey Tatou, whom many compared to the winsom Hepburn, burst onto the American screens in the hit AMELIE. Now, in HAPPY TIMES, perhaps the same can be said about Dong Jie.

In this English subtitled film that takes place in an unidentified Chinese mainland city, an impoverished fifty-something Lothario named Zhao (Zhao Benshan) claims to have found true love with a divorcée (Dong Lihua), and proposes marriage. Zhao's new fiancée is delighted, but says the ceremony will cost him a lot of money. Not admitting his penury, Zhao and his best friend Li (Li Xuejian) refurbish an old, abandoned bus out in the woods into the Happy Times Hut, a cozy retreat complete with bed and covered windows where young couples can "relax" - for a modest fee paid to our two heroes. Thus, Zhao can brag to his fiancée that he's a "hotel" manager, and business is booming.

Enter Dong Jie as Wu Ying, the teenage stepdaughter of Zhao's bride-to-be, abandoned into the latter's care by her former husband, Wu's father. Wu is totally blind, and is treated with petty cruelty by her stepmother and stepbrother. For example, the former forbids Wu to eat the treats (Håagen-Dazs ice cream) she brings into the house for her grossly overweight porker of a son (Ling Qibin), who, in turn, steals food from the sightless girl's bowl. Wu is affection starved, and dreams only of being reunited one day with her father, who will by then have earned enough money to have her sight restored. In the meantime, the stepmother nags Zhao into giving Wu a job at his "hotel". Zhao is understandably reluctant, but finally agrees. He figures he can convince the girl that the bus is one of the hotel's outlying cabins, and can employ her to tidy the place up after each set of "guests". However, his plan goes terribly awry when, as he and Wu arrive at the site, the bus is being hauled off by a crane in a public beautification effort. By this time feeling sorry for the girl, Zhao concocts an even more elaborate plan with several retired cronies to give Wu a "job" as a masseuse in a "massage room" created much like a movie set in an abandoned manufacturing plant. After all, the girl is blind and she won't know the difference, will she? And having a job apparently earning her own money makes her incredibly happy, especially as she's now living away from her cruel family in Zhao's own poor apartment, passed off by Zhao as his hotel employees' living quarters.

Director Zhang Yimou has crafted a simple yet lovely film around the lives of ordinary people. Dong Jie is delicate and winsome in the best Audrey Hepburn tradition. Her Wu Ying persona illustrates how little is required for happiness when one's life is basically miserable, and she demonstrates an inherent toughness of spirit that earned this viewer's profound admiration. Benshan works his way into the audience's heart as the man willing to become something of a father figure to the lonely girl. Lihua and Qibin are extremely effective as Wu's hateful tormentors. I suspect that if a film with an identical plot had been produced in America, those groups advocating the rights of the "visually challenged" would vociferously complain that the storyline was patronizing and initiate a lawsuit. Give thanks that HAPPY TIMES comes from a less politically correct environment, and see it.

Don't kid yourself reviewers. There's a whole lot more here than meets the eye. You don't have to be a friendless blind girl in a city of ten million to appreciate human frailty and kindness. Yimou Zhang is a very fine director and his vision can be thoughtful and appreciated on several levels. China is still exotic to look at from my American standpoint. The colors are garish and bright. The modern city bustles, the young are hip and making it where they can. The old worker's, many victims of the poverty and cruelty caused by The Great Leap Forward and other catastrophic Marxist disasters, are still searching for happiness. Now, in their fifties, they look about and their old factories are rusting, glass office towers are going sky high.

I'm still not sure that the actress that played a blind teen is not actually blind. Either way, she's a genius. Her final scene, forsaken, blind, but brave China, venturing into the traffic. This is filmmaking.

The only reason I watched this film was because Zhang Yimou directed it. That's the respect I have for him as a director in this industry. At first blush, I thought that "Happy Times" was going to be a shallow, corny type of movie. I couldn't have been more mistaken. While there are more light-hearted moments than in Yimou's other works, "Happy Times" gives glimpse into the lives of common Chinese people and a much more penetrating and uplifting look into the human heart and human spirit.

From the reviews you should already know that "Happy Times" is about an aging Chinese man trying to court a potential wife. He tries to persuade her by pretending to be something he is not - the general manager of a luxury hotel. But in the process he finds himself taking responsiblity for the woman's blind stepdaughter. How this all works out in the end is something you just have to see for yourself. Trust me, it is an exquisite Zhang Yimou finish.

I am not at all familiar with the actors but they were all wonderful. In particular, actress Dong Jie gives a heartbreakingly eloquent performance as the blind stepdaughter.

Zhang Yimou's ironically titled *Happy Times* is really a remarkable tightrope act: it offers us some very sappy melodrama while commenting on its own artifices, and gets away with it like a charming thief. Get a load of this plot. . . . A fat divorcee with two teenagers -- her own boy and a blind, unwanted step-daughter left behind by her ex-husband -- gets involved with an unemployed proletarian named Zhao. Zhao, depressed, broke, and lonely, claims he's a big-shot hotelier in order to impress the divorcee, who turns out to be very hard to impress. Hence, Zhao's lies -- as one might expect -- become more grandiose and difficult to sustain, especially after the divorcee dumps the unwanted blind girl onto his doorstep. "I'm sure you can find SOME work for her at your fancy hotel!" the woman declares. Zhao hits upon the idea of hiring the girl as a masseuse for the imaginary hotel's wealthy guests. But how is he going to pull THIS off? Desperately, he lets the girl stay in his shabby apartment, which he claims is a "worker's apartment" -- his OWN place, of course, is some unspecified mansion elsewhere. Of course, by now he's forced to get his fellow-unemployed friends in on the act: they pose as the wealthy guests and receive massages from the girl in a decrepit factory that they have hastily dressed up as a massage parlor at the "hotel". Once these jobless pensioners run out of real disposable income, they tip her with rectangular cuttings from brown paper bags instead of money. This all sounds very cruel, I know, but just watch the movie: Zhao and his friends come to feel a deep fondness for the poor wretch, who -- you guessed it -- just wants to find her father somewhere in Beijing so that he can pay for a procedure to cure her blindness. This whole set-up -- poor man, blind girl, and their unlikely friendship -- could so easily slide down toward appalling sentimentality. But Zhang Yimou avoids that by making his characters well-rounded: selfish one minute, solicitous the next; hopeful one minute, suicidal the next; comic one minute, tragic the next. The story requires an artist to negotiate the narrative through the pitfalls of cliches that would otherwise sink it. But then, there aren't too many directors equal to Zhang Yimou's artistry, anyway. And here's a tip to the filmmakers out there: don't mistake the manipulative plot devices in *Happy Times* for universal situations. This is a story that could only happen in China. Therefore, no "loose remakes", please. Leave it alone.

As a longtime fan of director Zhang Yimou, I was surprised to see him change directions with 1998's Not One Less. After watching his four most recent films (Not One Less, The Road Home, Happy Times and Hero), I can say with assurance that Zhang Yimou is not changing directions but branching out. He can direct almost anything. I've always appreciated movies that had both comedy and drama and defied categorization. Too bad Blockbuster can easy categorize this film under "Foreign." Happy Times starts off lighthearted and easily amusing, but becomes more complicated as it progresses. I can compare this movie to a more well-known and more controversial one, Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful. Happy Times is not striking like Zhang Yimou's earlier films, but it is more heartfelt. It's less artsy so it can be enjoyed by almost anyone. Note: The Chinese and American versions of this film have different endings. I can't advise you on which one to see since they are practically equal in degree of happiness or sadness. I would say the difference between them is like the difference between the two separate endings of Dickens' Great Expectations.

I really don't care for some of Yimou Zang's films that other people seem to love. Hero and House of the Flying Daggers are really great visual masterpieces, but to me they seem rather silly and unrealistic on many levels (not just technical).

However, I really love his other films dealing with ordinary people in realistic settings. Among them, Happy Times is by far the best.

This movie's central theme is about one person lying to another to bring him/her joy and meaning in existence. It is the act of deception that somehow gets turned into a great expression of love. That is an amazing thing to capture.

The actors are just perfect, especially the two leads. The girl playing the blind actress made the best performance I've seen ever.

If you like this movie, check out Shanghai Triad and Keep Cool.

Very common error among Western viewers about "Happy Times" is the idea that this film is a comedy, or "basically comedy." And another mistake is to see this one as too light-weight, remembering the past works of the director Zhang Yimou, previously known for his collaboration with Gong Li (in "Red Sorghum" "Ju Dou" "Raise the Red Lantern" and others) and more recently for "The Road Home" starring beautiful Zhang Ziyi. Yes, "Happy Times" is often very funny; and yes, it is short and simple. But you should not miss the messages at the subliminal level.

The film stars a newcomer Dong Jie, formerly a student at a dance school in Beijing, as Wu Ying. Wu Ying is a blind girl, adopted by the reluctant step-mother, and living at her house while being treated very badly. Wu is just another trouble to the family, and she knows it.

Then, a middle-aged guy named Zhao steps in, as a possible husband to Wu's step-mother. Zhao, unemployed, is so desperate to marry her (step-mother), so keeps on lying about his social background, claiming he can offer plenty of money at the marriage, and even promises to "employ" Wu as one of staff at his imaginary hotel. Thus meet the two unlikely persons: a blind girl and a preposterously lying forty-something man.

We are to follow the relations between them; Zhao has to keep Wu "employed" even though she is a sulky girl, and the "hotel" exists no longer. However, Zhao, not an unkind chap, comes to feel sympathy for her while the girl Wu begins to understand what is going on around her.

I should not reveal more about the story except that though the whole framework of the film is that of comedy, the underlcurrent feelings are very tragic one, as you see in Zhang Yimou's recent works "Not One Less" and "The Road Home." The film unfolds its story very smoothly, thanks to the perfect performance of Zhao Benshan, to the bitter-sweet ending (more bitter than sweet, perhaps), and if you don't care for that kind of story, you will find another Zhang Ziyi in the strong acting of the heroine, of Dong Jie, who had to lose her weight by nearly 10 kilometers to prepare for the audition. Well, she looks natural, and is natural, but that's what you call good acting.

The most important thing might be that the director shrewdly inserts the shots and episodes that reflect the today's social conditions in China, the gaps between those who have, and have not. Ads for items like icecream or cosmetics are abound in the city, but they are out of the reach of the two main characters. But Yimou handles subtlely these matters, never letting them impede the film.

This is a simple tale, and might be too simple for some people. (If you want a more dynamic film, wait to see his next epic film "Hero" starring again Zhang Ziyi.) Still "Happy Times" offers vivid portrayal of two convincing characters and heart-wrenching (but heart-warming) moments. If you loved "Not One Less" or "The Road Home," definitely it is yours.

The film is co-produced by Terrence Malick, director "Thin Red Line."